CHAPTER VI.

NEAL'S CURIOSITY.

They sat around the dinner-table; Dr. Davenal, Miss Bettina, Sara, and Caroline. It was an unusually silent table. Dr. Davenal could not digest the demand of Mr. Cray for Caroline; Caroline was conscious and timid; Sara scented something not altogether comfortable in the air, and did not raise her eyes from her plate; and it was one of the unusually deaf days of Miss Bettina.

Neal moved about noiselessly. Being a treasure of a servant, of course he always did move noiselessly. Quite an artistic performance was Neal's waiting; in his own person he did the waiting of three; and so tranquilly assiduous was his mode of accomplishing it so perfect indeed were Neal's ways in the household, that Miss Bettina rarely let a day pass without sounding his praise.

Strange to say, the doctor did not like him. Why it was, or how it was, he could not tell, but he had never taken heartily to Neal. So strong was the feeling, that it may almost be said he hated Neal; and yet the man fulfilled all his duties so well that there was no fault to be found with him, no excuse invented for discharging him. The doctor's last indoor man had not been anything like so efficient a servant as Neal, was not half so fine a gentleman, had ten faults where Neal did not appear to have one. But the doctor had liked _him_, good rough honest old Giles, had kept him for many years, and only parted with him when he got too old to work. Then Neal presented himself. Neal had once lived with Lady Oswald; he had been groom of the chambers at Thorndyke in Sir John's time, and Lady Oswald kept him for a twelvemonth after Sir John's death, and nearly cried when she parted with him; but Neal refused point-blank to go out with the carriage, and Lady Oswald did not wish to keep on three men-servants. Neal found a place in London, and they lost sight of him for some years; but he made his appearance at Lady Oswald's again one day--having come down by the new railroad to see what change it had made in the old place, and to pay his respects to my lady. My lady was gratified by the attention, and inquired what he was doing. He had left his situation, he answered, and he had some thoughts of trying for one in the country; my lady was aware, no doubt, how close and smoky London was, and he found that it had told upon his health; if he could hear of a quiet place in the country he believed he might be induced to take it, however disadvantageous it might be to him in a pecuniary point of view. Did my lady happen to know of one? My lady did happen to know of one: Dr. Davenal's, who was then parting with old Giles. She thought it would be the very place for Neal; Neal the very man for the place; and in the propensity for managing other people's business, which was as strong upon Lady Oswald as it is upon many more of us, she ordered her carriage and drove to Dr. Davenal's, and never left him until he had promised Neal the situation.

In good truth, Dr. Davenal deemed that Neal would suit him very well, provided he could bring his notions down to the place; and that, as Lady Oswald said, Neal intended to do. But to be groom of the chambers to a nobleman who kept his score or so of servants (for that was understood in the town to have been Neal's situation), and to be sole indoor manservant to a doctor, keeping three maids only besides, and the coachman in the stables, would be a wide gulf of difference. Neal, however, accepted the place, and Dr. Davenal took him on the recommendation of Lady Oswald, without referring to the nobleman in town.

But even in the very preliminary interview when the engagement was made, Dr. Davenal felt a dislike steal over him for the man. Instinct would have prompted him to say, "You will not suit me;" reason overpowered it, and whispered, "He will prove an excellent servant;" and Dr. Davenal engaged him. That was just before Richard went out to Barbadoes, and ever since then the doctor had been saying to himself how full of prejudice was his dislike, considering the excellent servant that Neal proved to be. But he could not overget the prejudice.

Neal cleared the table when the dinner was over, and placed the dessert upon it. Dr. Davenal did not care for dessert; deemed it waste of time to sit at it; waste of eating to partake of it: but Miss Bettina, who favoured most of the customs and fashions of her girlhood, would as soon have thought of dispensing with her dinner. Dr. Davenal generally withdrew with the cloth; sometimes, if not busy, he stayed a few minutes to chat with his daughter and Caroline; but calls on his time and services were made after dinner as well as before it.

On this day he did not leave his place. He sat at the foot of the large table, Miss Davenal opposite him at its head, the young ladies between them, one on each side. Interrupted by Lady Oswald in the afternoon, he had not yet spoken to Caroline; and that he was preparing to do now.

He drew his chair near to her, and began in a low tone. Sara rose soon, and quitted the room; Miss Davenal was deaf; they were, so to say, alone.

"My dear, Mr. Cray is not the man I would have preferred to choose for you. Are you aware how very small is the income he derives from his partnership with me?"

Caroline caught up the glistening damask dessert napkin, and began pulling out the threads of its fringe. "His prospects are very fair, Uncle Richard."

"Fair enough, insomuch as that he may enjoy the whole of this practice in time. But that time may be long in coming, Caroline; twenty years hence, for all we know. I shall be but seventy then, and my father at seventy was as good a man as I am now."

Her fingers pulled nervously at the fringe, and she did not raise her eyes. "I hope you will live much longer than that, Uncle Richard."

"So long as I live, Caroline, and retain my health and strength, so long shall I pursue my practice and take its largest share of profits. Mr. Cray understood that perfectly when I admitted him to a small share as a partner. I did it for his sake, to give him a standing. I had no intention of taking a partner: I wished only for an assistant; but out of regard to his prospects, to give him a footing, I say, I let him have a trifling share, suffered it to be known in Hallingham that he was made a partner of by Dr. Davenal. He has but two hundred a-year from me."

"It does not cost much to live," said Caroline. "We need not keep many servants."

Dr. Davenal paused, feeling that she was hopelessly inexperienced. "My dear, what do you suppose it costs us to live as we do?--here, in this house?"

"Ever so much," was Caroline's lucid answer.

"It costs me something like twelve hundred a-year, Caroline, and I have no house-rent to pay."

She did not answer. Miss Davenal's sharp eyes caught sight of Caroline's damaging fingers, and she called out to know what she was doing with the dessert napkin. Caroline laid it on the table beside her plate.

"I cannot afford to increase Mr. Cray's salary very much," continued Dr. Davenal. "To reduce my own style of living I do not feel inclined, and Edward draws largely upon me. Extravagant chaps are those young officers!" added the doctor, falling into abstraction. "There's not one of them, as I believe, Makes his pay suffice."

He paused. Caroline took up a biscuit and began crumbling it on her plate.

"The very utmost that I could afford to give him would be four hundred per annum," resumed Dr. Davenal "and I believe that I shall inconvenience myself to do this. But that's not it. There"----

"Oh, Uncle Richard, it is ample. Four hundred a-year! We could not spend it."

He shook his head at the impulsive interruption; at its unconscious ignorance. "Caroline, I was going to say that the mere income is not all the question. If you marry Mr. Cray, he can make no settlement upon you; more than that, he has no home, no furniture. I think he has been precipitate; inconsiderately so, few men would ask a young lady to be their wife until they had a house to take her to; or money in hand to procure one."

Caroline's eyes filled with tears. She had hard work to keep them from dropping.

"Carine," he said caressingly, "is it quite _irrevocable_, this attachment?"

The tears went down on the crumbled biscuit. She murmured some words which the doctor but imperfectly caught; only just sufficiently so to gather that it _was_ irrevocable--or that at any rate the young lady thought so. He sighed.

"Listen to me, child. I should never attempt to oppose your inclinations; I should not think of forbidding any marriage that you had set your heart upon. If you have fixed on Mr. Cray, or he on you--it comes to the same--I will not set my will against it. But one thing I must urge upon you both--to wait."

"Do you dislike Mr. Cray, Uncle Richard?"

"Dislike him! no, child. Have I not made him my partner? I like him personally very much. I don't know whether he has much stability," continued the doctor, in a musing tone, as though he were debating the question with himself. "But let that pass. My objection to him for you, Caroline, is chiefly on a pecuniary score."

"I am sure we shall have enough," she answered, in a lower tone.

"If I give my consent, Carry, I shall give it under protest; and make a bargain with you at the same time."

Caroline lifted her eyes. His voice had turned to a jesting one.

"What protest?---what bargain?" she asked.

"That I give the consent in opposition to my better judgment. The bargain is, that when you find you have married imprudently and cannot make both ends meet, you don't turn round and blame me."

She bent her eyes with a smile and shook her head in answer, and began twisting the chain that lay upon her fair neck, the bracelets on her pretty arms. She wore the same rich dress that she had worn in the afternoon, as did Sara; but the high bodies had been exchanged for low ones, the custom for dinner at Dr. Davenal's.

"I will not withhold my consent. But," he added, his tone changing to the utmost seriousness, "I shall recommend you both to wait. To wait at least a year or two. You are very young, only twenty."

"I am twenty-one, Uncle Richard," she cried out. "It is Sara who is only twenty."

He smiled at the eagerness. One year seems so much to the young.

"Twenty-one, then: since last week, I believe. And Mark is three or four years older. You can well afford to wait. A year or two's time may make a wonderful difference in the position of affairs. Your share of that disputed property may have come to you, rendering a settlement upon you feasible; and Mark, if he chooses to be saving, may have got chairs and tables together. Perhaps I may increase his share at once to help him do it."

"Would you be so kind as enlighten me as to the topic of your conversation with Caroline, Dr. Davenal?"

The interruption come from Miss Bettina. Deaf as she was, it was impossible for her not to perceive that some subject of unusual moment was being discussed, and nothing annoyed her more than to fancy she was purposely kept in the dark. For the last five minutes she had sat ominously upright in her chair. Very upright she always did sit, at all times and seasons; but in moments of displeasure this stiff uprightness was unpleasantly perceptible. Dr. Davenal rose from his seat and walked towards her, bending his face a little. He had a dislike to talk to her on her very deaf days: it made him hoarse for hours afterwards.

"Caroline wants to be married, Bettina?"

Miss Bettina did catch the right words this time, but she doubted it. She had not yet learnt to look upon Caroline as aught but a child. Could the world have gone round in accordance with the ideas of Miss Bettina, nobody with any regard to propriety would have married in it until the age of thirty was past. Her cold grey eyes and her mouth gradually opened as she looked from her brother to her niece, from her niece to her brother.

"Wants to be what, did you say?"

"To be married, Aunt Bett," cried out the doctor. "It's the fashion, it seems, with the young folks nowadays! You were not in so great a hurry when you were young?"

The doctor spoke in no covert spirit of joking--as a stranger might have supposed, Miss Davenal being Miss Davenal still. Bettina Davenal had had her romance in life. In her young days, when she was not much older than Caroline, a poor curate had sought to make her his wife. She was greatly attached to him, but he was very, very poor, and prudence said, "Wait until better times shall come for him." Miss Bettina's father and mother were alive then; the latter a great invalid, and that also weighed with her, for in her duty and affection she did not like to leave her home. Ay, cold and unsympathising as she appeared to be now, Bettina Davenal had once been a warm, loving girl, an affectionate daughter. And so, by her own fiat, she waited and waited, and in her thirtieth year that poor curate, never promoted to be a richer one, had died--had died of bad air, and hard work, and poor nourishment. His duties were cast in the midst of one of our worst metropolitan localities; and they were heavy, and his stipend was small. From that time Bettina Davenal's disposition had changed; she grew cold, formal, hard: repentance, it was suspected, was ever upon her, that she had not risked the prudence and saved his life. Her own fortune added to what he earned, would at least have kept him from the ills of poverty.

"Who wants to marry her?" questioned Miss Davenal, when she could take her condemning eyes away from Caroline.

"Mark Cray."

The words seemed to mollify Miss Davenal in a slight degree, and her head relaxed a very little from its uprightness. "She might do worse, Richard. He is a good man, and I dare say he is making money. Those civil engineers get on well."

"I said _Mark_ Cray, Aunt Bett," repeated the doctor.

"Mark! _He_ won't do. He is only a boy. He has got neither house nor money."

"Just what I say," said the doctor. "I tell her they must wait."

"Mad! to be sure they must be mad, both of them," complaisantly acquiesced Miss Davenal.

"Wait, I said, Bettina," roared the doctor.

"You need not rave at me, Richard. I am not as deaf as a post. Who says anything about 'fate?' Fate, indeed! don't talk of fate to me. Where's your common-sense gone?"

"Wait, I said, Aunt Bett! Wa-a-a-it! I tell them they must wait."

"No," said Aunt Bett. "Better break it off."

"I don't think they will," returned the doctor.

Miss Bettina turned her eyes on Caroline. That young lady, left to herself, had pretty nearly done for the damask napkin. She dreaded but one person in the world, and that was stern Aunt Bettina. Miss Bettina rose in her slow stately fashion, and turned Caroline's drooping face towards her.

"What in the world has put it into your head to think of Mark Cray?"

"I didn't think of him before he thought of me," was poor Caroline's excuse, which, as a matter of course, Miss Davenal did not catch.

"Has it ever occurred to you to reflect, Caroline, how very serious a step is that of settlement in life?"

"We shall get along, Aunt Bettina."

"I'll not get along," exclaimed Miss Bettina, her face darkening. "I attempt to say a little word to you for your good, for your own interest, and you tell me 'to get along!' How dare you, Caroline Davenal?"

"Oh, Aunt Bettina! I said we should get along."

"I don't know that you would get along if you married Mark Cray. I don't like Mark Cray. I did not think"----

"Why don't you like him, aunt?"

"I don't know," replied Miss Bettina. "He is too light and careless. I did not think it a wise step of your uncle's to take him into partnership; but it was not my province to interfere. The Crays brought it to nothing, you know. Lived like princes for a few years, and when affairs came to be looked into on Mr. Cray's death, the money was gone."

"That was not Mark's fault," returned Caroline, indignantly. "It ought to be no reason for your disliking _him_, Aunt Bettina."

"It gives one prejudices, you see. He may be bringing it to the same in his own case before his life's over."

"You might as well say the same of Oswald," resentfully spoke Caroline.

"No; Oswald's different. He is worth a thousand of Mark. Don't think of Mark, Caroline. You might do so much better: better in all ways."

"I don't care to do better," was the rebellious answer. And then, half-frightened at it, repenting of its insolence, poor Caroline burst into tears. She felt very indignant at the disparagement of Mark. Fortunately for her, Miss Davenal mistook the words.

"We don't care that you should do better! Of course we care. What are you thinking of, child? Your uncle studies your interests as much as he would study Sara's."

"More!" impulsively interrupted the doctor, who was pacing the room, his hands under his coat-tails. "I might feel less scrupulous in opposing Sara's inclination."

"You hear, Caroline! The doctor opposes this inclination of yours!"

Caroline cast a look to him, a sort of helpless appeal: not only that he would _not_ oppose it, but that he would set right Miss Davenal.

"I don't oppose it, Bettina: I don't go so far as that. I recommend them to wait. In a year or two"----

A loud knock at the hall-door startled Dr. Davenal. Knocks there were pretty frequent--loud ones too; but this was loud and long as a peal of thunder. And it startled somebody besides the doctor.