CHAPTER XXXI.

BAD NEWS FOR HALLINGHAM.

"I say, Neal, what sort of a place is St. Paul's Churchyard?"

The questioner was Watton. She sat in the servants' room near the window, against which the rain was pattering, some household sewing in her hand. Neal, who had entered to get a glass he wanted was rather taken with surprise, but he was not one to show it in his manner.

"Did you never see it?" he asked.

"I saw it in a picture once. I couldn't see it elseways; I've never been to London?"

"It is a large space of land with houses round it and the cathedral in the middle," explained Neal, who seemed always ready to oblige his fellow-servants, especially Watton. "It's a thoroughfare, you know; the road from Ludgate Hill to Cheapside winds round on each side the cathedral, between it and the houses."

"Is it very noisy?"

"Pretty well for that. But the London people don't seem to care for noise. I expect they are so used to it that they don't hear it."

"The houses round St. Paul's are warehouses, aren't they?"

"Warehouses and shops. The shops are mostly on one side and the warehouses on the other."

"Do you know a place called Cannon Street?"

"I should think I do! It leads down from St. Paul's to King William Street. Why do you ask?"

"Well," said Watton slowly, as if she mere deliberating something in her mind, "I am not sure but I am going to live there."

"To live in St. Paul's Churchyard?" repeated Neal.

"I have had a place offered me there, and it seems to me to be a very eligible one," said Watton. "It's to go as housekeeper in a house of business; some large wholesale place, by what I can understand. I should have two or three servants under me, and twenty-five pounds a-year. It seems good, doesn't it?"

"Capital," assented Neal. "Is it in St. Paul's Churchyard?"

"It's either in St. Paul's Churchyard or Cannon Street. She isn't quite sure which, she says. Anyway, it's close to St. Paul's."

"Who's 'she'?" questioned Neal.

"My sister. Her husband is in this establishment, a traveller, or something of that. He has got on well: he was only day assistant in a shop when she married him, fifteen years ago, and now he gets two or three hundred a year. When Miss Bettina told me I should have to leave, I wrote to my sister and asked her to look out for me, and she has sent me word of this."

"But can she get the place for you?" inquired Neal, who was prompt at weighing probabilities and improbabilities in his mind.

"It is in this way. The present housekeeper has been there a good while, and is much respected by the masters, and they have asked her to look out for somebody to take her place. My sister's intimate with her, and has spoken to her about me."

"Why is she going to leave, herself?" questioned Neal, liking to come to the bottom of everything.

Watton laughed. "She is going to begin life on her own score: she's about to be married. I think it's rather venturesome those middle-aged persons marrying: I wouldn't, I know."

"Wait until you are asked," returned Neal, not over gallantly.

"I have been asked more than once in my life," said Watton. "But I didn't see my way clear. It's all a venture. A good many risk it, and a few don't. I'd rather be one of the few. My goodness! how it rains!"

"When do you leave here?"

"When I get a comfortable place. Miss Bettina said I was not to hurry. It isn't as if I were leaving for any fault, or to make room for another. _She_ doesn't like my leaving at all, you know."

Neal nodded. "I heard her grumbling to the doctor, like anything, about it. She talks loud, and one can't shut one's ears at will."

"She need not grumble to the doctor. It is not his fault. He spoke to me himself, saying how sorry he was to part with me, but he could not help it. 'He had had a severe loss of money,' he said, which rendered it necessary that he should alter the rate of his expenditure. I wonder," added Watton, musingly, "how he came to lose it?"

Neal coughed. "Perhaps some bank broke."

"Perhaps it did," answered Watton. "They are ticklish things, those banks. I say, Neal, there's the doctor's bell."

Neal heard the bell for himself, and quitted the room to answer it. Watton got up, put down her work, shook a few threads from her gown, opened a drawer and took out a letter.

She was going upstairs to Miss Bettina to show her the letter she had received, and to ask her advice upon the situation mentioned in it. She felt very much inclined to try for it; only she felt a shrinking doubt of London. Many persons do who have lived to middle age in the country.

Neal entered the room in answer to the ring. The doctor had been out that morning, but returned earlier than usual, for it was not much past twelve. It was the day subsequent to the departure for school of Dick and Leo.

"What a poor fire you have got here, Neal!" said the doctor. "Bring a few sticks and pile the coal on. I feel chilly."

"I hope you have not taken a fresh cold, sir," respectfully observed Neal, as he stirred up the fire preparatory to getting the sticks.

Whether Neal was right or not as to the fresh cold, certain it was, that before night unfavourable symptoms began to manifest themselves in Dr. Davenal. And they increased rapidly.

A few hours and the news went forth to the town--Dr. Davenal was in danger. The consternation it excited cannot well be described--and if described would scarcely be believed. Numbers upon numbers in that town looked upon Dr. Davenal in the light of a public benefactor: they honestly believed that his death would be one of the greatest calamities that could befall them; they believed that, if he went, nobody else could bring _them_ through danger, should it come upon them.

They hastened to the door with their anxious inquiries; they saw the medical men of Hallingham pouring in. What was the matter with him? they eagerly asked. How was he seized?

It was inflammation of the chest, or lungs, or both, they were told. It was in fact an increase of the cold which had been so long hanging upon him, and _which he had neglected_. Oh, only a cold! they repeated carelessly as they listened--what a mercy that it was nothing worse! And they went away reassured.

A day or two, and there came down a physician from London in answer to a telegraphic dispatch. A day or two more and an ominous whisper went forth to the town--that hope was over. The saddened inhabitants paced to and fro, collected in groups about the door, and glanced up at the doctor's windows, fearing if perchance the blind should have been drawn since they last looked. They watched the medical men glide in and out; they saw a lawyer go in with a bustling step, and came to the conclusion that he went to make the will. Altogether Hallingham was in a fever of excitement.

But there occurred a change; contrary to even the most sanguine expectation a change seemed to take place for the better. Dr. Davenal rallied. The most painful symptoms left him, and some of those around him said he was getting well.

One evening at dusk Neal was observed to come out of the house with a quick movement and hasten up the street. As usual he was instantly surrounded, waylaid by anxious inquirers.

Yes, it was perfectly true, Neal answered, his master was so much better as to surprise all who saw him. The change took place early that morning, and he had been mending ever since. He was well enough to sit up: was sitting up then.

Then there was a hope that he'd recover? the questioners rejoined, scarcely daring to speak the joyful words.

O yes, there seemed every hope of it now. Mr. Cray, who had just gone out, remarked to him, Neal, that he looked upon his master as cured. But Neal couldn't stop to talk more with them then, he said; he was hastening to the chemist's for a draught which the doctor himself had sent him for.

Neal got the draught, imparted the news of the doctor's wonderful improvement to the crowd collecting at the chemist's, for no end of gossipers pressed into the shop when they saw Neal there--retraced the streets with his soft tread, and arrived at home. Entering the consulting-room, where the fire in the grate was getting low, he passed on to his master's bedchamber. Quite a bright chamber for an invalid's. The fire was blazing in the grate, and a handsome lamp, shining through the ornamental pink shade that covered its globe, stood on the small round table. The bed was at the far end of the room in a corner, and Dr. Davenal sat in an easy chair near the fire. He was dressed, all but his coat; in place of that he wore a warm quilted dressing-gown of soft rich silk; one of those rarely handsome dressing-gowns that seem made to be looked at, not to be worn.

He did not appear very ill. Wan and worn certainly, but not so ill as might have been expected. His breath and voice were the worst: both were painfully weak. The table had been drawn close to him, and he was writing at it. A tolerably long letter it looked like, covering three sides of large note-paper. Perhaps if the truth had been declared, he had got up purposely to write this letter.

Sara sat on the other side the fireplace, ready to wait upon him. How she had borne the agony of the last few days and been _calm_, she did not know, she never would know: it was one of the sharp lessons learnt from life's necessities. "You may be with him," the physician in London bad said to her, "provided you can maintain composure in his presence. The witnessing of a child's grief is sometimes the worst agony that the dying have to bear. I cannot sanction your being in the room unless you can promise to be calm."

"I will promise it," replied Sara in a low tone; but that one expression "the dying" had turned her whole heart to sickness.

Yes, it was one of the lessons that must be learnt in the stern school of life--the maintaining a composed exterior when the heart is breaking. That she was given to reticence of feeling by nature, was of service to Sara Davenal then. But surely the trials that had latterly fallen upon her were very bitter; the battle just now was sharp and keen.

She sat there in her soft dress of violet merino, so quiet and unobtrusive in the sick-room, with its little white lace collar and the narrow lace cuffs turned up on the bands of the sleeves at the wrist. The first day of his illness she had on a silk dress rustling against the chairs and tables, and she had the good sense to go and change it. The chair she sat in was an elbow one, and her hot cheek rested on her fingers as she strove to drive back the inward question that _would_ intrude itself, whether this improvement was for good, or only a fallacious one. She sat perfectly still, her eyes following the motion of his feeble fingers, and it was thus that Neal interrupted them.

"The draught, sir," he said, laying it on the table.

"Set a wine-glass by it," said the doctor. "That will do."

So slowly and feebly! The voice seemed to come from deep down in his chest, and not to be the doctor's voice at all; Neal put the wine-glass as desired, and quitted the room; and the doctor wrote on.

Only for a minute or two: the letter was drawing to a close. Dr. Davenal pressed it with the blotting-paper, read it to himself slowly, and then folded it and put it in an envelope. In all this, his fingers seemed scarcely able to perform their office. He fastened it down, and wrote on the outside his son's name. Then he looked at Sara, touching the letter with his finger.

"My dear, when the next mail goes out, should you have occasion to write of me, let this be enclosed."

"To write of you, papa?" she repeated in a faltering tone. But she need not have asked the question--its meaning had only too surely penetrated to her.

"Should the worst have happened."

"Oh, but--papa--you are getting better!"

She checked the wailing tone; she remembered how necessary, as she had been warned, was calmness in that room; she remembered her promise to maintain it. She pressed her hands upon her bosom and remained still.

"I will take that draught now, Sara, if you will pour it out."

She rose from her seat, undid the paper, poured the contents of the small bottle into the glass, and handed it to him. The doctor drank it, and gave her back the glass with a smile.

"Not one of those clever fellows thought of ordering me this; yet it's the best thing for anybody suffering as I am. Ah! they have got something to learn yet. I don't know how they'll get on without me?"

"Papa, you may get well yet!" she interrupted; anti she _could not_ prevent the anguished sound with which the words were spoken.

He turned and looked at her; he seemed to have fallen into a momentary reverie. But he made no direct answer.

"Can you draw the table away, Sara? I don't want it so close now. Gently; take care of the lamp."

"Where shall I put this, papa?" she asked, referring to the letter.

"In my desk in the next room. You'll know where to find it in case of need. My keys are here, on the mantelpiece."

She stopped to ask one question which seemed to be wrung from her in her pain. "Is it to go all the same if you get better, papa?"

"No. Not if I get better."

Passing into the other room, which was lighted only by the fire, she drew the desk from underneath the table, knelt down, unlocked it, and put in the letter. It was addressed: "For my son, Edward Davenal." Sara was locking the desk again, when some one entered the room and came round the table to where she knelt.

"My goodness! are you saying your prayers?"

Wrapped in silks and ermine, her lovely face peeping out from a charming pink bonnet, was Mrs. Cray. The doctor had expressed a wish to Mark Cray that afternoon that Caroline would come to him, and Mark had delivered the message when he got home.

"Mark says Uncle Richard wants to see me," she explained, "so I thought I'd run down at once. I can't stop; Berry and another friend or two are going to dine with us. I am so delighted to hear of the improvement in Uncle Richard! Mark says the danger is quite over."

"If I could but be sure it was!" was Sara's answer.

"There you are, with your doubts and fears! Never was anybody like you, Sara. Don't I tell you Mark says it is? Yes, I'll take my cloak off for the few minutes that I stop."

She threw off her bonnet, and let the cloak slip from her shoulders, displaying her evening attire, for she had dressed before she came out: a silk, so light as to look almost white, that stood on end with richness and rustled as she walked; the dazzling necklace, given by Captain Davenal, on her white neck; a dewdropped pink rose in her gleaming hair.

Utterly unaccordant looked she with the chamber of the dying, as she stepped into the other room. Dr. Davenal's eyes were fixed on her for a moment in simple wonder, as if he saw a vision. Then he recognised her, and held out his hand, a glad look pervading his countenance.

"Well, Uncle Richard! I am so rejoiced that you are getting better. You'll come and dance at our housewarming yet."

"Are you going to hold one?" asked the doctor, as he held her hand in his, and gazed up at her beauty.

"Mark and I are thinking of it. We can do everything, you know, now that that money's coming to me."

"Ah," said the doctor, "it's about that money I want to talk to you. Sit down, Caroline. How smart you are, my dear!"

"Nay, I think it's you who are smart uncle," she returned with a gay laugh. "So it has come into use at last!"

Caroline touched the dressing-gown as she spoke. There had always been a joke about this dressing-gown. A patient of the doctor's, as fanciful as Lady Oswald and nearly as old, had made it with her own hands and sent it to him. It had remained unused. For one thing, the doctor was too plain in his habits and too busy a man to require a dressing-gown at all; for another he had looked upon the garment as extravagantly fine.

"Yes," said he, in answer to Caroline's remark, "I have found it useful today. It is very warm and comfortable. Caroline, I have been talking again to Mark about the money."

"Well, uncle?"

"I don't know that it is well. Mark does not appear inclined to make me any promise that it shall be settled upon you when it comes. I urged it upon him very strongly this afternoon, and he answered me in his light careless manner, 'Of course. O yes doctor, I'll remember;' but he did not give a specific promise; whether by accident or design, I cannot say. So I told him to send you down to me."

"Yes, uncle," she said, thinking more of the weakness of the voice to which she was listening, than of the import of the words.

"This money must be settled upon you, Caroline, the instant that you touch it. It is essential that a married woman should, if possible, have some settlement. If I recover, I shall take care that this is so settled, but----"

"_If_ you recover!" she interrupted. "Why, Uncle Richard, you are getting well as fast as you can. Mark says so. You are sitting up!"

"True; I am sitting up; and I could not have sat up two or three days ago. Still, I am not sure about the getting well."

"But Mark says so; he says you are," reiterated Caroline.

"And Mark's opinion, as a medical man, must be infallible, you think?" rejoined the doctor, with a momentary look in his face that Caroline did not understand. "At any rate, my dear, it is well to remember all contingencies. 'Hope for the best, and prepare for the worst,' was one of your grandpapa Davenal's favourite maxims. You must have the money settled upon you----"

"But, Uncle Richard, are you quite sure that it would be for the best?" she interposed. "If the money is settled in that way, it would be all tied up, and do us no good after all."

"You would enjoy the interest."

"That's not over much," said Caroline slightingly. "I and Mark have been planning a hundred things that we might do with the money. Refurnish the Abbey splendidly for one."

"You and Mark are a couple of simpletons," retorted the doctor, regaining momentarily his energy of voice. But the effort was too much, and he lay panting for several minutes afterwards. Caroline sat gazing at him, her finger unconsciously raised to her neck, playing with the gleaming toy there. Which should she trust to, these signs of illness, or Mark's opinion?

"Caroline, I insist that the money be settled upon you. Were you and Mark to waste it in nonsense, it would be nothing less than a fraud upon your West Indian relatives from whom it is derived. You may tell Mark so from me. That money, Carine, secured to you, would at least keep the wolf from coming quite in, should he ever approach your door."

Caroline sat aghast, wondering whether the doctor had lost his senses. "The wolf at the door for us, Uncle Richard. As if that could ever be."

"Ah, Carine, I have lived to know that there is no permanent certainty in the brightest lot," he answered with a sigh. "My dear, more experience has been forced upon me in the past year or two than I had learned in the whole course of my previous life. Understand me once for all, this money must be secured to you."

"Very well, Uncle Richard," she answered with ready acquiescence. "It shall be so, as you seem so much to wish it. I'll tell Mark all you say."

A few minutes longer, and Caroline rose. Dr. Davenal was surprised that she should be going again so very soon, and looked inquiringly at her. "Can't you stay a little longer, Caroline?"

"I wish I could; but I shall hardly get back to dinner, and we expect some friends today. Goodnight, Uncle Richard."

He drew her face down to his, murmuring his farewell. Little did Caroline Cray think it would be his last.

Sara went out with her cousin, and saw her depart with the servant who had waited for her. When she returned to the chamber, the doctor was in deep thought.

"I think you must bring the table near to me again, Sara," he said. "There's another word or two I should like to write."

"Yes, papa. Do you want Edward's letter?"

"No, no; it's not to him. There. Dip the pen in the ink for me."

It was a tacit confession of weakness that she did not like to hear; and she saw that even in the short space of time that had elapsed since he wrote before his strength had visibly declined. He was scarcely able to guide the pen.

"That will do," when he had traced a few lines. "Sara, should you have occasion to send this, enclose it in a note from yourself, explaining my state when I penned it; that I was almost past writing. Will you remember?"

"Yes, papa," she answered, her heart beating painfully at the words.

"Fold it for me."

Honourable in all her thoughts and actions, Sara folded the note with the writing turned from her. It is just possible some children might have been sufficiently actuated by curiosity to glance at least at the name at the commencement of the note. Not so Sara Davenal. She placed it in an envelope and fastened it down.

"I think I can direct it, Sara. Just the name."

She gave him the pen, and he traced the name in uneven, doubtful letters. Sara noted it with surprise, and perhaps her pulses quickened. "O. Oswald Cray, Esquire."

"Put it in my desk with Edward's, my dear. If you have occasion to send the one, you will the other." As she unlocked the desk again her tears were raining down fast. In all that her father was saying and doing there seemed to be a foreshadowing in his own mind of his approaching death. She quitted the room for a few minutes that her emotion might spend itself, and in the interval Miss Davenal entered. The soft rustling of Miss Bettina's sweeping silks aroused the doctor, who had fallen into a dose. She went up and took his hand.

"Richard, how are you tonight?"

"I hardly know. Middling."

"Sara is fancying you are not so well."

"Is she?"

"But she always was given to fancies, you know. Is it right that you should sit up so long the first time of leaving your bed?"

"Yes, I like the change. I was tired of bed. Sit down, Bettina. There are one or two things I want to say to you."

"Are you finding yourself worse?"

"Bettina, I have not been better."

"The doctors have thought you so," she said, after a pause.

"Ay, but I know more of my own state than they can tell me. When the suffering and its signs passed, they leaped to the conclusion that the disease had left me. In a measure, so it has, but they should have remembered in how many of such cases the apparent improvement is all deceit, the forerunner of the end."

Bettina Davenal fully understood the words and what they implied. But she was not a demonstrative woman, and the rubbing together of her white and somewhat bony hands was the sole sign of the inward aching heart.

"And I am thankful for the improvement," added the doctor. "It is not all who are permitted this freedom from pain in their dying hours."

"O Richard! is there _no_ hope?"

"I fear not," he gravely answered. "I am accustomed to impress upon my patients the great truth that while there is life there is hope, and I should be worse than a heathen to ignore it in my own case. But, all I can say is, I cannot trust to it."

She had laid one of her hands upon the folds of the dressing-gown, and the doctor could feel the twitching of the fingers. He had asked her to sit down, but she preferred to stand. Close to him, with her head bent, she could hear his low words without much misapprehension, so deliberately were they spoken between the panting breath.

"Bettina, I don't go to my grave as I thought I should have gone, providing for my children. I have been obliged to sacrifice all I had put by. It was not a great deal, it's true, for I am but what's called a middle-aged man, and my expenses have been high. Could I have foreseen my early death, I should have lived at half the rate. And this sacrifice will not die with me. The house--I daresay I shall shock you, Bettina--is mortgaged; not, however, to its full value. I have directed in my will that it shall be sold; and the residue, after the mortgage is paid--can you hear me?" he broke off to ask.

"Every word."

"The residue and the proceeds of the furniture, and those two small cottages of mine, and other effects which will be likewise sold, will make a fair sum. There's money owing to me in the town, too. Altogether I expect there will not be much less than three thousand pounds----"

"Richard!" shrieked out Miss Bettina, in her emotion. "_Three_ thousand! I thought you were worth ten at least."

"No, it was not so much as that altogether. I had four or five thousand put by. Never mind: I say I have had to sacrifice it. I feel how imprudent I have been, now that it is too late."

"To what have you had to sacrifice it?"

The doctor paused before he replied. "A sudden claim came upon me of which I knew nothing: a claim for thousands. No, Bettina, I know what you wish to say--believe me, I _could not_ resist it: to pay it was obligatory. The worst is, I could not pay it all: and the sum which the property will realise will have to be applied to liquidate it."

"But you can tell me what the claim was for?"

"No, I cannot. It is not altogether my secret, Bettina, and you must not inquire into it. I need not have mentioned it at all to you, but for speaking of Sara. My poor children must suffer. Edward has his day, and he will have to make it suffice: Sara has nothing. Bettina, you will give her a home?"

"There's no necessity for you to ask it," was Bettina Davenal's answer. But she spoke crossly; for the want of confidence in not intrusting to her the nature of this secret was hurting her feelings bitterly. "Should anything happen to you, Sara will naturally find a home with me--if she can put up with its plainness. I shall make her as welcome, and consider it as obligatory on me to do so, as though she were my own child."

The doctor lay back for a moment in his chair, panting. His fingers clasped themselves over hers in token of thanks.

"Richard, surely you might place more confidence in me! If you have been called upon to pay this money in consequence of--of any bygone trouble or debt contracted in your youth--and I conclude it must be something of that sort--do you suppose I cannot be true and keep your counsel? I know what follies the young plunge into!"

"Follies? Crimes, rather!" And the words broke from Dr. Davenal with a groan which told of the deepest mental anguish. It pained even the dull ear that was bent to it.

"Bettina, I say that you must not ask me. If it concerned myself alone you should know as much as I do, but I could not tell you without betraying another; and--and there might be danger. Let it rest. Better for you that it should do so, for it would disturb your peace as it has disturbed mine."

"It's a dreadful sum," said Miss Bettina.

"It is that. And my poor children must be left beggars. I have enjoined Mark Cray to pay three hundred pounds yearly to Sara for five years, out of the proceeds of the practice. He can well afford to do it: and if you will give her a home, this had better be invested for her, Bettina."

"Of course. But what's three hundred for five years? You might make better terms with Mark Cray than that."

"Mark has promised faithfully to do it. I have been talking with him this afternoon about that and other things. I asked him what sum he would feel inclined to pay to Sara out of the business, and for what term. He said he thought he could give three hundred a-year, and would continue it for five years."

"Considering all things, it is not a very generous offer," persisted Miss Bettina. "Had your life been spared, Mark could not have expected to step into the whole of the practice these twenty years."

"It is very fair, I think, Bettina. Mark must acquire experience, remember, must work his way up to the public confidence, before people trust him as they have trusted me. He will not have his rooms filled daily with patients at a guinea a head. This has come upon me suddenly, or all things might have been managed differently. I think it would be a good plan for Mark to leave the Abbey for this house; I have told him so; but he will be the best judge of that." Miss Bettina quitted her stooping posture by the doctor and sat down, revolving all that had been said. She sat slowly rubbing her hands the one over the other, as was her habit when anything troubled her.

"I cannot realise it," she said, in a half whisper, "Richard, I _cannot_ realise it. Surely you are not going from us!"

"I am but going to those who have preceded me, Bettina," he answered. "My wife, and Richard, and others, who have gone on before, are waiting for me, and I in my turn shall wait for you. This fretting life is over. How poor!--_how poor!_"--he added more emphatically, as he clasped his hands--"do even its best interests now seem beside eternity!"