CHAPTER LI.

WEARY DAYS.

The cold, bitter, biting winter passed away, and when the lovely spring came round again little trace was left of its effects, save in the remembrance of those in whose homes sickness, or privation, or death, had been busy.

_Two_ of those visitations had been rife in the poor house of Caroline Cray: sickness and privation. Perhaps you noticed Caroline's reply to Dick's question of whether Mark had no money: there was a little left, she said, not much. Left from what? Dick did not ask.

If ever an unfortunate company had come to grief more completely than other unfortunate companies, it was surely that noted one, the Great Wheal Bang. Sympathising friends--Barker's and Mark's--were wont to assure those gentlemen that they had "managed wretchedly:" and if we may dare to assume that the reproach was levelled at the fact of having secured nothing for themselves, it was a right one. On the day that Mark Cray went up to the offices for the last time he had but a trifling sum of money about him: Caroline had even less in her own purse; and that was all. Barker's word of precaution had secured the diamond ring and studs, and these were converted into money, Mark and Barker equally dividing the spoil. Barker, with his share, took a little tour abroad while the cloud blew over; Mark, as you have seen, went into hiding, and lived upon his part as long as it held out.

Yes, it was an unhappy fact, very debasing indeed after all the glory of Grosvenor Place, lowering as you may feel it to be to this history, Mr. Mark Cray hid himself by day, and slipped out to take the air at dusk in a moustache and blue spectacles. Mark Cray could but be a coward in the hour of trial; he ran from the danger instead of facing it. Had Mark but looked the angry shareholders and the trouble in the face, he need not have been so very fearful; but to look a difficulty in the face was not in the nature of Mark Cray. He scarcely understood what he was afraid of; he did not know what they could do to him--whether imprison him, or make him a bankrupt, or what; and Mark would rather have jumped into the sea than ascertain. He was exactly like a child who runs away screaming from a dark closet, and dare not look to see whether cause for terror is there. Some of us, my friends, have been sadly frightened at shadows.

When this state of affairs was to end, and what was to get Mark out of his difficulty, he did not at present see. As long as the money lasted he was not unduly anxious. He had great faith in something "turning up," he had unlimited faith in Barker; and Barker's letters were pretty frequent, and in the highest degree cheering. Barker happened to have a cousin, about the nineteenth remove, settled at Honfleur, in Normandie, and Barker had steered for the same port, and seemed to be living at ease there. Towards the close of the winter he wrote word to Mark that he had something good in contemplation, connected with Paris, and if it came to anything Mark should share in it.

But when Mark's money was gone things changed. He grew restless and gloomy. He could not starve, he could not go to the workhouse: he must do something. Miss Bettina Davenal would not help them: she said she could not--perhaps with justice. Leopold Davenal had been an expense to her, and was still; he went back to school after the Christmas holidays with Dick, but he was not strong yet, and sundry expensive extras were provided for him out of her pocket. That was not much: but a heavier expense had fallen upon her: for she had repaid Mr. Wheatley the two hundred pounds borrowed by Sara. Sara had disclosed to her aunt the fact of borrowing it, and in her pride Miss Bettina had made a sacrifice and repaid the sum. She had none left to bestow on Mark; there was clearly no help to be had from her.

And Caroline? You can take a look at her as she sat in the sun, which was shining into the room this bright day in early April. Perhaps you remember a remark Dr. Davenal once made--that Caroline was not one, as he believed, to bear well the adversities of life. Dr. Davenal was quite right: neither physically nor mentally did they agree with poor Caroline.

I don't know whether anybody gets ill at once under a great shock. Caroline had not. When it fell upon her she was too stunned, too entirely surprised, to be anything but bewildered. It may be questioned if a change so sudden--from seemingly assured prosperity to hiding and disgrace and poverty--has ever fallen. You may feel inclined to question it in this instance; nevertheless, I repeat that I am telling you the simple truth. The reaction had come now, and Caroline Cray gave way sadly. Her cough, that Dick remarked upon, had got well; but she would lie back in her chair all day, and it seemed next to impossible to get her out of it.

But if the body was at rest the mind was only the more active. Caroline's hours, in point of fact, were pretty equally divided between outward complaining and inward lamentation. Such lamentation is nearly always rebellious, and so was hers. The blow had been so complete; the change was so very great! All that pomp and vanity, all the luxuries, the carelessness, the pleasure attendant on that one past sunshiny wave in life's current, to have given place to this! Perhaps the worst mortification, looking back, was that the play now seemed to have been so _unreal_; as if they had had no right to indulge in it, were such fools to have embarked in it, worse than fools to have believed in it. Mortified, fretful, miserable, Caroline Cray seemed to live but in repining and repentance. Mark was different He neither repined nor repented; he was always restless, always expecting something to turn up; and he would stalk up and down the room, giving tongue to all sorts of wild visions of what he would do were he but clear of the world and the Great Wheal Bang.

As he was doing now. While Caroline sat listless and inert in her chair, Mark was indulging a dream of the future, sanguine as a child. He had lately taken to consult the newspapers, and one tempting advertisement in particular had attracted him. Mark Cray was getting that experience which comes inevitably in a life of vicissitude; he had yet to learn how many of these advertisements are but traps for the unwary, how next to impossible to be the one successful applicant, if they are genuine. But ever and anon Mark's dream was brought unpleasantly to a break, as the recollection intruded itself that he was not a free man.

"You see, Carine, if I were but clear of that resentful company, there are a hundred good things to be picked up. I'm sure there's a dozen at least in the paper every day. That's a splendid thing, I know, that one advertisement of this morning; any fellow securing that----"

"Where's the use of talking of it?" interrupted Carine. "It all comes to nothing. You know you are not clear of the company."

She spoke in a fretful, peevish tone. Just at first, Mark's sanguine visions of rising again more gloriously than ever, like a phoenix from its ashes, had somewhat infected her, but she was learning what they were worth: as she had just said, "it all came to nothing." Utterly weary was her spirit. Hope deferred making the heart sick; but hope destroyed--and it had come to that with Caroline Cray--maketh it die.

Physical privation tells terribly on the mind as well as the body, and it was telling upon her. They were next door to starving. What made it worse for Caroline was, that hers was a constitution _requiring_ the best of nourishment. The Davenals were a healthy family, but there had been a taint in her mother's blood. These physical privations would alone have made Caroline fretful: and she could not help it.

"I shall be clear of it soon," said Mark.

"But how?"

Even sanguine Mark could not detail the precise means by which the emancipation was to be accomplished. "Oh, somehow," said he, in his careless way. "The company must wind itself up."

"Why can't you apply to Oswald?"

He shook his head very decisively. "I can't face _him_. And if I did, he'd not assist me. He has lost too much, and is sure to bear malice."

"Are we to go on like this for ever?"

"I hope we shan't go on so for a month. I wish you'd not talk so, Caroline."

"How am I to talk? You have been saying the same all along?"

"Well it's of no good your looking on the dark side of things. You are always doing it now." Caroline was silent for a few moments, when she suddenly lifted up her hands, and her voice broke into a passionate wail.

"Oh, if that money had been but settled on me, as Uncle Richard wished! This must be a judgment upon us for defying his last commands."

"Rubbish!" said Mark.

"Are we to go out in the street and beg?" she plaintively asked.

"Are you going to be a child? One must get a rub or two through life; Caroline. Barker has been down upon his beam-ends five or six times, just as much as we are, but it has always come right again."

She relapsed into a fit of weeping; half her hours, abed and up, were so spent. Mark had ceased either to soothe or reproach; he had tried both, but ineffectually; and now was fain to let her weep simply because he was helpless to prevent it. Mark Cray could not be unkind; he was not that; but he was hardly the right sort of husband for adversity. Shallow-minded, shallow-hearted, possessed of no depth of feeling, there seemed something wanting in him now. He did his best to cheer his wife; but the result was not satisfactory.

The fits of weeping would sometimes go on to hysterics; sometimes stopped just short of it. As this one stopped. Caroline suddenly roused herself and looked round wearily at the mantelpiece, as if there were a timepiece there, perhaps in momentary forgetfulness. Grosvenor Place had been rich in such; elegant bijoux, worth no end of money.

"I wish Sara would come!"

"Sara?" repeated Mark, halting in his monotonous promenade.

"I wrote to her to come."

She spoke the words half defiantly. Sara, in consequence of the discovery of Mr. Dick Davenal, had come to see them once; but she was not encouraged to repeat the visit. Mark especially was against it. "If we have them coming here, we may get dropped upon," he had said to his wife; "it would never do." But poor Caroline, wearied out with the wretched loneliness that seemed to continue month after month, and to have no end, had at length written to her cousin.

"Why did you not tell me, Caroline?"

"You might have forbidden me."

"It's just what I should have done. We don't want her here. What good will she do?"

"What good will anything in the world do? I wish I was out of it!"

Mark Cray began to ask himself the question whether the expected visit could be stopped now. He had an intense dislike to meet Sara Davenal; we all shrink from meeting those whom we have injured directly or indirectly. But the question was set at rest by Sara's entrance, and Mark, after a short greeting, disappeared.

All Caroline did for the first quarter of an hour was to sob hysterically. Sara, in slighter mourning now, unfastened the white crape strings of her straw bonnet, and sat over her in dismay, her sweet face full of compassion for the change she saw.

"I want to know how it is all to end," were the first distinct words Caroline uttered. "Am I to stop here till I die?"

A question difficult for Sara to answer. "Is Mark doing nothing?" she asked.

"He is doing nothing. He can't do anything while that business of the Wheal Bang hangs over him. If that were settled, there are fifty things he might get into. And if it can't be settled, we may both of us as well die at once as be famished to death. For that's what it would come to. Those poor creatures that shut themselves up with the fumes of charcoal are not so much to blame, after all."

"Caroline!"

"Well, I mean it," returned Caroline, a sullen tone beginning to mingle with her sobs. "It is all very well for you to exclaim 'Caroline!' as if I were mad; but you don't know what sorrow is. Nobody does until poverty comes."

Sara thought that there were worse sorrows to be borne in the world than poverty. And she was right; bad as poverty, to those unaccustomed to it, undoubtedly is. "What can I do for you?" she gently asked.

"Here we are, buried alive, and nobody comes near us! Sara, if you only knew how I yearn for a home face!--how I lie and cry for it!"

"Mark--and you also--said I must not come, lest it might lead to discovery."

"Neither must you, I suppose. At least, not often. But sometimes I think it would be well if discovery happened. There'd be an end to this uncertainty at any rate. What is Mark to do if the thing can't get settled?"

She asked the question in strange earnestness, and Sara was struck with the yearning beauty of the lifted face, of the wasting form. The violet eyes were larger than of yore, the cheeks were of a delicate crimson, and the hands were long and white and thin.

"But can it not get settled?" returned Sara.

"We have nothing to eat, you know. That is, there's bread, and suchlike; but I can't eat it. Mark will dine on bread and cheese, or a thick slice of bread and butter; and he really does not seem to mind; but I can't. O Sara! if I could but have a good dinner!"

Sara caught up her breath. What comfort could she give?

"Sometimes, when I am sick with hunger I lie and imagine the dinners we used to sit down to in Grosvenor Place. I _imagine_ it, you know; that they are before me now, and I am eating them. Turkey and bread sauce, or salmon and lobster sauce--it's nearly always substantial things I think of, I suppose because of my hunger--and I quite seem to taste them, to eat through a whole plateful Sara, it is true."

Sara Davenal had heard the doctor speak of some kinds of hunger as a disease, and could only suppose this must be one. "I wish--I wish I could help you," she murmured.

"You can't, I know. You have it not in your power, and Aunt Bettina won't; she's implacable. I did not send for you to ask it. But, Sara, there's Oswald Cray. If you would ask him perhaps he might do something for Mark."

The words startled her. "Ask Oswald Cray!"

"I think if he would listen to any one, it is you. I don't forget how fond he used to be of you in the days gone by. Indeed, I got to think--but I was wrong, I suppose, so let it pass. O Sara, you'll ask him for my sake! Don't abandon us quite. I think he might help Mark out of this difficulty. Perhaps he might see the company, and get them to be friendly with Mark; or perhaps he'd pay a few of Mark's pressing debts. It might not take much money?"

"But why cannot Mark ask him?"

"He won't. Mark would rather it came to the charcoal--not that anything of that sort would ever be in _his_ line--than apply to Oswald. There was some trouble between them about the money Oswald put into the mine, and Mark has kept away from him since. That is just why I have sent for you. Mark will not apply to Oswald; no, not if it were to save him from prison; and I don't feel well enough to go, and my bonnet's shabby. O Sara, when a recollection comes over me--and it is always coming--of the nice clothes I had, and how foolishly they were abandoned, I feel fit to go mad. Anyway, unless a change takes place, I shan't want clothes long. Sara, surely you will do for us so trifling a thing as this!"

To pursue the interview would be waste of time. When Sara Davenal quitted her cousin it was with a given promise to see Oswald Cray. Very much indeed did she shrink from it; as much as she had shrunk from those interviews with Mr. Alfred King: but she saw no other means to help them; and in truth she did not anticipate much would come of this.

Money seemed to be wanted everywhere. Miss Bettina complained sadly of shortness; the repaid money to Mr. Wheatley had crippled her: and Captain Davenal's letters to Sara dwelt on his embarrassments. They told her privately how "hard up" he was, and in his random meaningless way said he should have to run away to Australia and dig for gold, unless some dropped shortly from the clouds. Captain Davenal's wife, as it turned out, was only an heiress in prospective; but he appeared excessively fond of her, anxious to supply her with every luxury: and we all know that a married captain's pay, without other means, does not accord with luxuries in India.

_His wife!_ Over and over again Sara asked herself how it was possible Edward could have married her, how he could speak of her in the fond manner that he did, if there really existed that impediment. All the trouble and the care seemed to fall upon herself individually--upon her own hidden heart. So long as there existed a grain of doubt, she could not speak of this to Edward; and, besides, the letter might fall into the hands of his young wife.

Personally, Sara had not been annoyed by Catherine Wentworth. Occasionally through the winter and spring she had seen this young woman hovering outside waiting for Neal; twice she had come boldly to the house, knocked, and asked for him. Miss Bettina's keen eyes had seen her once. "Is it one of your nieces, Neal?" she graciously asked; "pray, invite her in." "Oh no, ma'am, she is no relative of mine," returned Neal, with pointed emphasis. Sara's breath had quickened at the colloquy, but it ended there. She was surprised at this immunity from personal annoyance, and wondered how long it would be hers.

It was a coincidence rather remarkable that Oswald Cray should be at the door when Sara returned home from the visit to Caroline. About once in three months he made a call of politeness on Miss Davenal. Sara met him turning away: Miss Davenal was out, and he had left his card. He would have passed her after shaking hands--his visit was not to her--but Sara detained him, her cheeks in a glow at having to do it.

"It is very strange," she exclaimed. "I was but now thinking how I could best get to see you. Do you mind coming in with me for five minutes?"

He returned with her, perhaps all too willingly. A great many of us are tempted to stray from the strict line of duty marked out in our own minds. Sara led the way to the drawing-room, and told him where she had been, and what Caroline said. The declining sun--for the afternoon was drawing towards its close--fell on Oswald as he sat listening to her. It was the same noble face that she had so loved to look upon--calm, still, _good_; but somehow all its youth seemed to have passed away. The eyes had a look of habitual sadness; some silver threads mingled with the dark chestnut hair. She simply repeated Mrs. Cray's words, almost as a child repeats a lesson; throwing no persuasive tone, no pleading of her own into it, for she felt that she had no right to do so.

"Did Mark Cray wish you to ask me this?" he inquired, as she ceased the tale.

"Not Mark; only Caroline. By what she said, I fancy Mark Cray feels--feels ashamed to ask you anything."

"And he well may," answered Oswald, the old look of pride unpleasingly crossing his face. "I could have borne almost anything from Mark better than deliberate deceit. I cannot, no I cannot forgive it."

Neither spoke for a few moments. Sara had untied her bonnet-strings, and sat with her face a little bent, the eyes raised straight to him in their simple trust. He had one glove off; it was a black one; and he was gently swaying it as his elbow rested on the arm of the chair.

"I cannot quite understand what it is that Mrs. Cray would ask me. She cannot seriously expect that I should pay Mark's debts. His personal debts alone would take, I imagine, a far deeper purse than mine. I am but making my way upwards, and Mark has taken care to put me back to an extent I shall not readily recover. Pay Marcus Cray's debts! It is not within my power, any more than it would be within my will."

Sara was silent, save for a glance. It said how foolish she herself had thought the demand.

"I very much fear that Mark Cray is one of those men who want others to 'pay their debts' throughout life," he resumed. "There are such. Were he free tomorrow he would be embarrassed again in a year. To assist such men is no charity."

"Do you think anything can be done to clear him of the company?"

"Not while he keeps aloof. Mark himself must know it to be impossible, or ought to know it. The only chance for these affairs to be wound up is for him and Barker to come forward."

"Yes, I thought so," she answered. "But--Caroline tells me--they are near upon starving!"

"More shame to Mark!" exclaimed Oswald. "I cannot _describe_ to you how this affair has pained me. Mark is my father's son, and his disgrace seems to be reflected upon me. His hiding himself is the worst part of it all. While he does so he is only prolonging the trouble and the ill. Believe me, it would not be a kindness to help Mark. Let him come forward as a man and a gentleman ought; that would be the best help to him."

Sara felt that he was right; but she felt also that Mark would _not_ come forward; and what was to be the ending?

"They are living in only one room; it is at--."

"Don't tell it me?" impulsively interrupted Oswald, something like anger in his tone. "I would not for the world be made cognisant of Marcus Cray's hiding-place. People have come to me for it times and again; and I am thankful to assure them in all truth that I know it not."

He rose, as if wishing to put an end to the subject, and held out his hand to Sara.

"At least you will forgive me for presuming to trouble you so far," she murmured. "I could not help it: Caroline besought me very piteously."

His dark blue eyes, so earnestly bent on her, gave sufficient answer, even without the pressure of the hand, the tender tone of the low words.

"You should not speak of it in that light. If you knew how great a pleasure it is to me for you to ask me anything! I had almost said it is the only one left to me in my matter-of-fact working life. You and I have none too much of such: it seems to me that we both have to suffer for the wrong-doing of others."