CHAPTER XLVI.

AN UNWELCOME VISITOR.

Mark Cray and his wife were attiring themselves by gas-light for some scene of evening gaiety. The past fortnight--for that period had elapsed since the arrival of Mrs. Cray in London--had brought nothing else but gaiety. Shopping in the morning, drives in the afternoon, whitebait dinners at Blackwell or Greenwich, dinners at Richmond, theatres in the evening, receptions at home, parties out; noise, bustle, whirl, and _cost_. Caroline loved the life; were it taken from her, she said randomly to Mrs. Cray one day, she could not survive, she should die of _ennui_; and the Miss Crays had never been so happy in their lives, or their mother either.

Their visit had come to an end now, and they had left for home that morning. Unwillingly, it is true, but Mrs. Cray had deemed it wise not to wear out their welcome. They were a large party; and she privately contemplated a longer visit in the spring, during the glories of the London season. Mark had treated them right regally, and had contrived to screw out from some impossible pocket a twenty-pound note, which he put into his mother's hands for the journey. "I shall be able to allow you and the girls something worth having next year, when the ore's in the market regularly," he said to her. Altogether, Mrs. Cray was well satisfied with her impromptu visit.

"I say, Carine," cried Mark, coming forth from his dressing-room, "what's gone with my diamond studs?"

"Where's the use of asking me?" was Carine's answer, who was turning herself slowly round before the large glass, to contemplate the effect of a new dress which her maid had just finished fixing upon her. "You must make haste, Mark, or we shall be late. The dinner's at seven, mind; and I know it does not want above a quarter."

"We shall get there in five minutes," carelessly answered Mark. "I can't find my diamond studs."

"I think they are in your dressing-case, sir," spoke up the maid. "I saw them there a day or two ago." Mark went back, and found he had overlooked them. He finished dressing himself, all but the coat, and came into his wife's room again.

"Carry, isn't it old what's-his-name's affair tonight in Kensington Gardens? We promised to go, didn't we?"

"Of course we did, Mark. I intend to go, too. He says it will be a charming party in spite of the world being out of town. We shall get away from the dinner by ten o'clock, I daresay. Shall I do?"

She was turning herself round before the glass, as before. Between two glasses, in fact, one in front, one behind. Her dress was some beautiful fabric, white and mauve; and her violet eyes and her glowing cheeks spoke all too plainly of her besetting vanity. Certainly, if vanity is ever pardonable, it was in Caroline Cray as she stood there, so radiant in her youth and beauty.

"Oh, you'll do," returned Mark, with scant gallantry; but his white necktie had been refractory, and he was resettling it again. At that moment he heard a knock at his dressing-room door.

"Who's there? Come in," he called out, stepping into his own room.

One of the men-servants entered and presented a card to him. Mark, whose hands were busy with his necktie, bent his head to read it as it lay on the silver waiter. "Mr. Brackenbury."

"Mr. Brackenbury!" repeated Mark to himself. "Who on earth's Mr. Brackenbury? I can't see anybody now," he said to the servant. "Tell him so. I am just going out."

"I told the gentleman you were on the point of going out with my mistress, sir, that the carriage was waiting at the door; but he insisted on coming in, and said you would be sure to see him."

"Who is it?" cried Caroline, stepping forward.

"Some Mr. Brackenbury. Don't know him from Adam. Go down, George, and say that I can _not_ see him, or any one else, this evening."

"The idea of strangers intruding at this hour!" exclaimed Caroline. "Mark, I daresay it's somebody come to worry you to get them shares in the mine."

Mark made no reply. He was in enough "worry" just then over his necktie. "Bother the thing!" he cried, and pulled it off entirely with a jerk.

The servant came back again. He bore another card, a few lines added to it in pencil.

"I must and will see you. Denial is useless."

Mark Cray read the words twice over and decided to go down. They almost seemed to imply a threat, and he did not understand threats. Mr. Brackenbury had arrived in a Hansom cab, the horse reeking with the speed it had made; but Mark did not know that yet.

"I won't be a minute, Caroline. The fellow insists on seeing me. I'll just see what he wants."

Tying on a black necktie temporarily--the one he had taken off earlier--and putting on his morning coat as he descended the stairs, Mark entered the room where the visitor was waiting. And then Mark recognised Mr. Brackenbury as a gentleman who had recently purchased a few shares in the mine. Amidst the many, many shareholders, it was not surprising that Mark had forgotten the name of one of them. In point of fact these few shares had been Mark's own. Being excessively pressed for ready money he had ordered his broker to sell them out.

"Oh, Mr. Brackenbury!" said Mark, shaking hands with him in a cordial manner. "Do you know, your name had completely escaped my memory. I have not a moment to spare for you tonight. I am going out with my wife to dinner."

"Mr. Cray," said the visitor, a middle wed, solemn-looking man, "you must return me my two hundred pounds. I have come for it."

"Return you your two hundred pounds!" echoed Mark. "My good sir, I don't understand you. What two hundred pounds?"

"The two hundred pounds I paid for those shares. They were transferred from your name to mine; therefore I know they were your own."

"They were my own," said Mark. "What of that?"

"Well, I must have the money returned to me, and you can receive back the shares. I have brought them in my pocket. I am of a determined spirit, sir, and I will have it returned." Mark flew into a rage. He was a great man now, and great men do not take such words with impunity. "You can have your money back tomorrow," he said, with haughty contempt. "Take the shares to my broker--if you don't possess one of your own--and he will repurchase them of you."

"Ah," said Mr. Brackenbury. "But I want the money from you tonight. I want it now."

"Then you can't have it," returned Mark.

Mr. Brackenbury advanced--both of them were standing--and laid his finger on Mark's arm. "Mr. Cray, I have not come to you as an enemy; I don't wish to be one, and there's no occasion for unpleasantness between us. I want my money back, and I must have it--_I must have it_, understand, and tonight. After that, I will hold my tongue as long as it will serve you."

Was the man talking Greek? was he out of his mind? What did it mean? Mark's indignation began to lose itself in puzzled curiosity.

"I have had a private telegram tonight from the mine," resumed Mr. Brackenbury, dropping his voice to a cautious whisper. "Something is amiss with it. I jumped into a Hansom----"

"Something amiss with it!" interrupted Mark, cutting short the explanation, and his tone insensibly changing to one of dread; for that past summer's night which had brought the telegram to Mr. Barker recurred vividly to his mind. "Is it water?" he breathed.

Mr. Brackenbury nodded. "An irruption of water. I fear--you'll see, of course--but I fear the mine and its prosperity are at an end. Now, Mr. Cray, you repay me my money and I'll hold my tongue. If this does not get about--and it shall not through me--you'll have time to negotiate some of your shares in the market tomorrow morning, and put something in your pocket before the disaster gets wind. I only want to secure myself. Trifling as the sum of two hundred pounds may seem to you, its loss to me would be utter ruin."

Mark felt bewildered. "And if I do not give you the two hundred pounds tonight, what then!"

"Then I go out with the dawn of morning and publish the failure of the mine to the City. I'll publish it tonight. But you'll not drive me to that, Mr. Cray. I don't want to harm you; I have said it; but my money I must have. It would not be pleasant for me to proclaim that there has already been one irruption of water into the mine, which you and Barker kept secret. I happen to know so much; and that the shares were sold to me _after_ it, as I daresay shares have been sold to others. Perhaps the public might look on that as a sort of fraud. _I_ do; for I consider a mine never is safe, once the water has been in it."

Mark paused. "It is strange that news of this should have come to you tonight and not to me."

"Not at all," said Mr. Brackenbury. "I am having the mine watched. It is only lately that I heard about that first irruption of water: I did not like it; and as I happen to have a friend down there I got him to be on the look-out."

"Is it any one connected with the mine?" asked Mark, sharply.

"Yes, it is; no one else could do it. But that's of no consequence. I had a telegram from him tonight----"

"Will you let me see it!" interrupted Mark.

"I did not bring it with me. It told me that the water was flowing into the mine; _flowing_, mind; and it added these words. 'Not known here yet.' I infer, therefore, that the men had left the mine for the night, that the mischief will not be generally known there until the morning, and consequently cannot be known here. You will have time to save something."

Mark felt as if water were flowing over him. He stood there under the gas-burner--the servant had only lighted one--a picture of perplexity, his face blank, his hand running restlessly through his hair, after his old restless manner, the diamond studs in his shirt sparkling and gleaming. All this sounded as though some treason, some treachery, were at work. If this man could get news up, he and Barker ought to have got it.

A knock at the door. It opened about an inch, and Caroline's voice was heard.

"Mark, we _must_ go. We are keeping the dinner waiting." And Mark was turning towards her, when Mr. Brackenbury silently caught him by the arm, and spoke in a whisper.

"No! Not until you have given me my money."

"Allow me to say a word to my wife," said Mark, haughtily. "I will return to you in an instant."

Caroline stood there with questioning eyes and a rebellious face. Mark shut the door while he spoke to her.

"You must go on alone, my dear. I can't come yet. I'll join you later in the evening."

"Mark! What's that for?"

"Hush! This gentleman has come up on business from the City, and I must attend to him," whispered Mark. "I'll get rid of him as soon as I can."

He was hurrying her out to the carriage as he spoke, and he placed her in it, she yielding to his strong will in her bewilderment. Once seated in it then she spoke.

"But, Mark, why should he come on business _now?_ What is the business?"

"Oh, it has to do with the Great Wheal Bang," said Mark, carelessly. "It's all right; only I can't get away just at the minute. I won't be long. They are not to wait dinner, mind."

The carriage drove away, and Mark returned indoors. His unwelcome visitor stood in the same place, apparently not having stirred hand or foot.

"How am I to know whether this news you have brought it true?" was Mark's first question. And Mr. Brackenbury looked at him for a minute before replying to it.

"I don't altogether take you, Mr. Cray. You cannot think I should knowingly bring you a false report; my character is too well respected in the City for you to fear that; and you may rely upon it, unhappily, that there's no mistake in the tidings forwarded to me."

"Well--allowing that it shall prove to be true--why can't you take your shares into the market and realise tomorrow morning, as well as coming to me for the money tonight?"

"Because I am not sure that I could realise!" was the frank response. "I don't suppose the intelligence will be public by that time; I don't think it will; but I cannot answer for it that it won't. You must give me the money, Mr. Cray."

Mark took an instant's gloomy counsel with himself. Might he dare to defy this man, and refuse his demands He feared not. Mark was no more scrupulous than are some other shareholders we have read of; and the chance of realising something in the morning, to pit against the utter ruin that seemed to be impending was not to be forfeited rashly. But how was he to pay the money? He had not two hundred shillings in the house, let alone two hundred pounds.

"I can't give it you tonight," said Mark; "I have not got it to give."

"I must and will have it," was the resolute answer. "I daresay you can go out and get it somewhere: fifty people would be glad to lend you money. I shall stay here until I have it. And if you deem me scant of courtesy tonight, Mr. Cray, you may set it down to the sore feeling in my mind at the circumstances under which the shares were sold to me. I'd never have touched them had I suspected water had been already in the mine."

"That's talking nonsense," said Mark, in his irritation. "The mine was as sound and as safe after the water had been in it as it was before. It was nothing more than a threatening; nothing to hurt."

"A threatening--just so. Well, it is of no use to waste time squabbling over terms now. That will do no good."

Mr. Brackenbury was right. It certainly would do no good. Mark went out, leaving him there, for he refused to stir; and, not seeing a cab, ran full speed to Mr. Barker's lodgings in Piccadilly. A Hansom could not have gone quicker. It was not that he hoped Mr. Barker would supply the two hundred pounds; that gentleman was as short of ready cash as himself; but Mark was burning with impatience to impart the disastrous news, and to hear whether Barker had had intelligence of it.

Disappointment. When Mark, panting, breathless, excited, seized the bell of Mr. Barker's house and rang a peal that frightened the street, he was told that Mr. Barker was not within. He had gone out in the afternoon: the servant did not know where.

"Has any telegram come up from Wales tonight?" gasped Mark.

"Telegram, sir? No, sir; nothing at all has come tonight, neither letter nor anything."

"I'll be back in a short while," said Mark. "If Mr. Barker returns, tell him to wait in for me. It is of the very utmost importance that I should see him."

He turned away, jumped into a cab that was passing, and ordered it to drive to Parliament Street. The two hundred pounds he _must_ get somehow, and he knew nobody he could apply to at the pinch, save Oswald.

Mark was not the only visitor to Oswald Cray that night. He had been sitting alone, after his dinner, very deep in deliberation, when Benn came up showing in a gentleman. It proved to be Henry Oswald.

They had not met since the funeral of Lady Oswald twelve months before, and at the first moment Oswald scarcely knew him. Henry Oswald was a cordial-mannered man. He had not inherited the cold heart and the haughty bearing so characteristic of the Oswalds of Thorndyke, and he grasped Oswald's hand warmly.

"I have been out of England nearly ever since we met, Oswald--I am sure you will let me call you so, we are near relatives--or I should have sought to improve the acquaintance begun at that short meeting. I want you to be friendly with me. I know how wrong has been the estrangement, and what cause you have to hate us; but surely you and I can afford to do away with the prejudice that has kept you from Thorndyke, and Thorndyke from you."

Oswald saw how genuine were the words, how earnest the wish imparted in them; and from that moment his "prejudice" went out of him, as far as Henry Oswald was concerned, and his eye lighted up with an earnest of the future friendship. He had liked Henry Oswald at that first meeting; he liked him still.

They sat together, talking of the days gone by, when they two were unconscious children. Of Oswald's mother; of the conduct of her family towards her; of the insensate folly--it was his son called it so--that still estranged Sir Philip from Oswald Cray. They talked freely and fully as though they had been intimate for years--far more confidentially than Oswald had ever talked to his half-brother.

"I shall be _proud_ of your friendship, Oswald," cried the young man, warmly; "if that's not an ominous word for one of us. But I fancy you inherit the family failing far more than I. You will be one of the world's great men yet, making yourself a name that the best might envy."

Oswald laughed. "If the world envies those who work hard, then it may envy me."

"I can tell you what, Oswald, if work's not envied in these days, it is honoured. In the old days of darkness--I'm sure I can call them so, in comparison with these--it was such as I who were envied. The man born with a silver spoon in his mouth, who need do nothing his whole life long but sit down in idleness and enjoy his title and fortune, and be clothed in purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously every day--he got the honour then. _Now_ the man of industry and talent is bowed down to, he who labours onwards and upwards to use and improve the good gifts bestowed upon him by God. It may be wrong to say it, but I do say it in all sincerity, that I, Henry Oswald, born to my baronetcy, envy you, Oswald Cray, born to work."

From one subject they went to another. In talking of the Cray family, they spoke of Mark, and from Mark the transition to the Great Wheal Bang Company was easy. Henry Oswald had heard and read of its promise, and he now asked Oswald's opinion of its stability. He had a few hundreds to spare for he had not been an extravagant man, and felt inclined to embark them in the Great Wheal Bang. Oswald advised his doing so. He himself had embarked all his saved cash in it, a thousand pounds, and he thought he had done well.

"Then I'll see about it tomorrow," decided Henry Oswald; "and get it completed before I go down to Thorndyke."

He departed soon, for he was engaged out that evening, and Oswald resumed the train of thought which his entrance had interrupted. The _deliberation_ it may be said. He was pondering a grave question: Should he not despatch Frank Allister to Spain in place of himself? Allister was equally capable; and two or three years' residence in that climate might renovate him for life. It would be a great sacrifice for him, Oswald; a sacrifice, in some degree, of name and fame, and of pecuniary benefit; but he was a conscientious man, very different from the generality of business men, who seek their own elevation, no matter who is left behind. Oswald as a child had learnt the good wholesome doctrine of doing to others as we would be done by: and he _carried it out practically in life_, content to leave the issue with God. How many of us can say as much?

A few minutes' earnest thought and he raised his head with a clear countenance. The decision was made.

"Allister shall go," he said, half-aloud. "Should he get ill again in this wretched climate next winter, and die, I should have it on my conscience for ever. It will be a sacrifice for me: but how can I put my advancement against his life? I ought not, and I will not."

The words had scarcely left his lips when Mark came in. Not Mark as we saw him just now, troubled, eager, panting; but Mark all coolness and smiles. A little hurried, perhaps, but that was nothing.

He had come to ask Oswald a favour. Would he accommodate him with a cheque for two hundred pounds until the banks opened in the morning? A gentleman, to whom was owing that sum on account of the Great Wheal Bang bad urgent need of it that very night, and had come bothering him, Mark, for it. If Oswald would accommodate him, he, Mark, should feel very much obliged, and would return it in the morning with many thanks.

"I have not got as much of my own," said Oswald.

"But you can give me a cheque of the firm's, can't you?" returned Mark, playing carelessly with his diamond studs.

Oswald did not much like this suggestion, and hesitated. Mark spoke again.

"It will be rendering me the greatest possible service, Oswald. The fellow has to leave town, or something, by one of the night trains. You shall have it back the first thing in the morning."

"You are sure that I shall, Mark?"

"Sure!" echoed Mark, opening his small grey eyes very wide in surprise. "Of course I am sure. Do you think I should forget to bring it you? Let me have it at once, there's a good brother. Carine will think I am never coming; we have to go to two parties tonight."

Oswald wrote the cheque and gave it him. It was a cheque of the firm: "Bracknell, Street, and Oswald Cray:" for Oswald's name appeared now.

And Mr. Mark carried it off with him. "There's a good brother," indeed! I wonder how he slept that night!