CHAPTER LXI.

THE BARGAIN SEALED.

Mark Cray sat in his wife's sick-room. Mark Cray found it (between ourselves) rather tiresome to sit in his wife's sick-room: and Mark was very apt to doze asleep at his post. Mark was asleep now. He was dreaming a charming dream of greatness--in which some grand scheme of Barker's had succeeded, and he and that gentleman were sailing about the atmosphere in a triumphal car of gold, looking down with complacency on the poor toiling mortals in the world below--when Dorcas came in with a whisper, and aroused him. Mr. Oswald Cray was in the dining-parlour waiting to see him, she said: and Mark, after a stare at the girl, descended, pushing back his clustering hair, which had disarranged itself in his sleep.

Oswald was standing near the fire. He turned to Mark and spoke in a quiet tone.

"I have a question to ask you, Mark. It relates to the past. Who----"

"Oh, never mind the past," interrupted Mark, with a half-testy, half-careless sort of manner. "I'm sure there's enough worry in the present without going back to that of the past. I wish that horrid mine had been sunk a thousand fathoms deep before I had had anything to do with it. I daresay I shall pay you back some time!"

"It is not about the mine I wish to speak to you, or of payment either," calmly rejoined Oswald. "But, Mark, I want the truth from you--the truth, mind--upon another subject. It was you, was it not, who gave the chloroform to Lady Oswald?"

Mark made no reply, either truthful or otherwise. The question was so exceedingly unlike any he had expected that he only stared.

"It was supposed, I know, at the time to have been administered by Dr. Davenal. But I have reason to believe that it was administered by yourself during his temporary absence from the chamber, and against his sanction. Was it so, Mark?"

"I suppose you heard this from the doctor himself at the time?" was Mark Cray's remark. "I remember you were worriting over it."

"I beg you to answer my question, Mark. What you say shall go no further."

"Well, yes, it was so," said Mark; "though I'm sure I can't think why you want to bring up the thing now. I did give her the chloroform, but I gave it for the best. As I was to perform the operation I thought I had a right to exercise my own judgment, which was opposed to the doctor's. I was very sorry for the result, but I did it for the best."

"I wish you had told me the truth at the time, Mark. You suffered me to believe that the chloroform was given by Dr. Davenal."

"And what difference did it make to you which of us gave it?" was Mark Cray's reply, not an unnatural one. "You may guess that it was a thing I did not care to speak of. So long as it was assumed we gave the chloroform conjointly, in accordance with ordinary practice and our best judgment, nobody could say a word; but if it had been disclosed that I gave it by myself, on my own responsibility and against the doctor's opinion, I should have had the whole town carping at me."

Oswald had nothing further to say. He could not tell the bitter truth--that this miserable misapprehension had wrecked his hopes of happiness, had been making an ice-bolt of his heart in the intervening years.

Mark escaped, and returned to his wife's room, there to endeavour to drop into his golden dreams again, from which he seemed to have been aroused for no earthly use whatever. And Oswald stayed on in the hope of seeing Sara.

Not only in the dining-parlour of Miss Davenal's house was there a conference being held at that hour, but also in the drawing-room above: and but for the all-absorbing nature of his own thoughts Oswald Cray had not failed to hear the sounds. Captain Davenal had got Neal there, before his aunt. And Mr. Neal was slipping out of all accusations as smoothly as an eel.

The group was noticeable. Miss Davenal in her chair, upright and angry, only partially understanding the cause of the commotion; Captain Davenal standing, open and impetuous, talking very fast; Neal full of repose and self-possession, all his wits in full play; and Sara sitting apart in silence, her cheek bent upon her hand. Captain Davenal charged Neal with treachery, general and particular. Neal had his plausible answer ready to meet it all.

The interview was drawing to an end, and little satisfaction had been derived from it. Poor Miss Davenal's ears were in a mazed condition: desks, letters, inventions to Sara touching a Mrs. Wentworth, and a hundred other charges, jumbling hopelessly upon them, nothing being clear. Neal denied everything.

"You did tell Miss Sara Davenal that the young woman was my wife," cried Captain Davenal, indignantly.

"I beg your pardon, sir," said Neal, respectfully. "I said I felt quite sure she was not; that there must be some mistake. Miss Sara perhaps will remember that such was my opinion."

"At any rate, you said the young woman made the charge," persisted Captain Davenal, irritated at the assured coolness.

"I did, sir. I understood the young woman to make it. She----"

"But she never did make it," interrupted Captain Davenal.

Neal shrugged his shoulders in submissive superciliousness, meant for Mrs. Wentworth. "It may suit the young woman's purpose to say so now, sir. I fear she is not very strict in her adherence to truth; but she certainly did make it at the time. However, sir, I am quite willing to take the blame upon myself, to allow that I misunderstood her."

"Why, you have not the face to tell me that you have gone on believing it?"

"O dear no, sir. I was very soon afterwards convinced that the thing was a mistake altogether."

"And pray, why had you not the honesty to say so to Miss Sara Davenal?"

"I'm sure I should have been happy to say so, sir, had I possessed the least idea that it would have been welcome. But after the first blush, the matter appeared to be so very absurd that I never supposed Miss Sara would give to it a second thought. If my silence has caused any uneasiness, I can only say how deeply I regret it."

"Who _is_ the young woman?" helplessly cried Miss Bettina. "And pray, Neal, how came it, if you had anything of the sort to say, that you did not say it to me? I am the proper person to hear these things; a young lady is not."

Neal advanced a step to his mistress and spoke in his low clear tone. "It was not my intention to speak to Miss Sara Davenal at all, ma'am, or to you either; I should not have thought of doing such a thing; but I could not help myself when Miss Sara questioned me upon the point."

All that was reasonable and feasible, and Miss Davenal nodded her head in approbation; but her nephew the captain got in a passion, and insisted that he should be discharged there and then.

Neal was quite ready to go, he said, civilly courteous, if his mistress saw fit to inflict upon him so severe a step. He was unconscious of having done anything to merit it. Perhaps she would be pleased to particularise his offence.

"He is a villain, aunt," broke forth the captain intemperately, before Miss Bettina could speak. "I believe he has been one ever since my father took him into the house. He has opened letters and unlocked desks, and altogether played the part of deceit. He _shall_ go."

Neal interrupted, humbly begging the captain's pardon. He could most truthfully assure his mistress that he had done nothing of the sort; he had never opened a letter in the house, except his own; had never touched a desk, but to dust it. If Captain Davenal could mention any other distinct charge, he should be glad, as it would allow him an opportunity of refutation. No. His conscience acquitted him. He should quit the house, if he did have to quit it, with a clear character, and he thought his mistress would acknowledge that he deserved one. In the one little point concerning Mrs. Wentworth he might have been in error: first, in too readily giving ear to what she said; next, in not having spoken to Miss Sara to set the doubt at rest in her mind. They were mistakes certainly, and he greatly regretted them.

"Neal," said the captain, too hot-headed to maintain his dignity, "I'd a hundred times rather be an open villain than a sneak. Why, you know you have been nothing but a spy from the very moment you entered the house. Aunt Bettina, listen! Before the regiment went away I got into a little trouble, upon which I found it necessary to consult my father, and I went----"

"A little what?" asked Miss Bettina.

"Trouble. A little difficulty."

"Oh, ah, yes," said Miss Bettina. "You were always getting into it."

"Not such as that," thought the captain. "Well, I had to go down to Hallingham," he continued aloud, as he bent to her. "I did not care that any of you should know it, and I got down one night unexpected by my father. I was with him in his study for some time, and went back so as to be at duty the next morning. Would you believe"--pointing his finger at Neal--"that yon honest fellow was a spy upon the interview?"

Mr. Neal was a little taken by surprise, and Sara looked up astonished. But the man was not one to lose his impassability.

"He was at the window, looking and listening: not, I believe, that he could see and hear very much. And he afterwards went abroad and told of the interview: told that his master had a secret visitor at night. You little thought, Mr. Neal, that the visitor was myself, or that I should ever bring it home to you."

Neal, all unconscious innocence, gazed straight forward into Captain Davenal's face. "I have not the least idea what it is that you are speaking of, sir. My recollection does not serve me upon the point."

"O yes, it does," said Captain Davenal. "A subtle nature such as yours cannot forget so easily. Happily he to whom you carried the tale of the evening was a trustworthy man: he kept his own counsel, and told you Dr. Davenal's visitors were no business of his or of yours. I speak of Mr. Oswald Cray."

"Mr. Oswald Cray!" repeated Neal, plunging into reflection. "On my honour, sir, I have not the least idea of what it is you mean. A visitor at night to my late master in his study? Stay, I do remember something of it. I--yes--I was outside, taking a mouthful of fresh air preparatory to retiring to rest, and I saw some one--a stranger I took him to be--come stealthily in at the gate, and he was afterwards shut in with my master. I'm sure sir, I beg your pardon, even at this distance of time, if I was mistaken. I feared he might be a suspicious character, and I think I did go to the window, anxious for my master's personal safety. I could not have supposed it was you, sir."

Was it possible to take Neal at a disadvantage? It did not seem so.

"And it was anxiety for your master's personal safety that caused you afterwards to recount this to Mr. Oswald Cray? Eh?"

"Does Mr. Oswald Cray say I recounted it to him, sir?" inquired Neal, probably not feeling sure of his ground just here.

"That's my business," said Captain Davenal, while Sara looked round at Neal. "You _did_ recount it to him."

"All I can say, sir, is, that if I did, I must have had some good motive in it. I cannot charge my memory after this lapse of time. Were I in any anxiety touching my master, Mr. Oswald Cray was probably the gentleman I should carry it to, seeing he was a friend of the family. I have--I think--some faint remembrance that I did speak to Mr. Oswald Cray of that mysterious visitor," slowly added Neal, looking fixedly up in the air, as if he were tying to descry the sun through a fog. "It's very likely that I did, sir, not being at ease myself upon the point."

Captain Davenal was losing patience. It seemed impossible to bring anything home to Neal with any sort of satisfaction. At the close of the captain's interview with Oswald Cray, the latter had mentioned-- but not in any ill-feeling to Neal--that that functionary had spoken to him of the night interview at Dr. Davenal's; had said he was outside the window at the time. Oswald had not said more; he deemed it well not to do so; but Captain Davenal had become at once convinced that it was but one of Neal's prying tricks. He turned to Miss Davenal.

"Aunt Bettina, this is waste of time. In nearly the last interview I ever had with my father he told me he had doubts of Neal. He feared the man was carrying on a game of deceit. I _know_ he has been doing it all along. Will you discharge him?"

"I can't understand it at all," returned Miss Bettina.

"_I_'ll enlighten you one of these days, when you are not very deaf, and we can have a quiet half-hour together. Sara, what do you say?"

Sara rose from her seat, her cheek flushing, her voice firm. "Neal must leave, Aunt Bettina," she said, bending down to the deaf ear. "Edward is quite right."

Miss Bettina looked at them all in succession. Had she believed the accusations she would have discharged Neal on the spot, but she doubted them. She had thought there was not so faithful a servant in the world. And he looked so immaculate as he stood there!

"I don't go out of the house this night until he has left it, Aunt Bettina," resumed the captain.

"This night!" echoed Miss Bettina, catching the words. "I can't let Neal go without warning, leaving us without a servant. Who is to wait upon us?"

"You shall have my servant, aunt; one I have brought home with me----"

"No," said Miss Bettina, resolute in the cause of justice. "Neal, I will not part with you in that hasty manner. I cannot judge yet between you and Captain Davenal. That you must leave is obvious; but you shall have the proper month's warning."

Neal stepped up, all suavity. "I beg your pardon, ma'am; you are very kind, but I could not think of remaining a day to cause unpleasantness in the family. I had better go at once. I have my feelings, ma'am, although I am but a dependant. My conscience tells me that I have served you faithfully."

"I think you have, Neal."

"I have indeed, ma'am, and I hope it will be remembered in my character."

"Don't send to me for one," impetuously broke out Captain Davenal. "And now, Neal, the sooner you are out of the house the better. I shall keep my word: to see you away from it ere I quit it myself."

Neal bowed; he could but be ever the respectful servant: and retired. Miss Davenal was bewildered. What with parting with Neal, what with being left with nobody to replace him, she could not gather her senses. Captain Davenal sat down. First of all promising her that the servant he spoke of should be in the house before night, to remain with her until she was suited with one, he next began to enlarge upon Neal's delinquencies, and try to make her comprehend them.

Sara silently left the room. It was altogether a painful subject, and she did not care to hear more of it now. She went down into the dining-parlour, her movements slow and quiet; since Mrs. Cray's increased danger noise had been avoided in the house as much as possible. Some one was standing up by the mantelpiece, his back towards her; in the dusk of the room--for evening was drawing on--Sara took it to be Mark; and yet she thought she had heard Mark's step in his wife's chamber now, as she came downstairs. This gentleman was taller, too! He turned suddenly round, and the fire threw its light on the face of Oswald Cray.

She stood a moment in surprise, and then went up to him, holding out her hand as to any ordinary visitor, and saying a word of apology that he should have been left there unannounced. A strange expression, an expression of deprecation, almost of humility, sat on his features, and he did not touch the offered hand.

"I waited to see you," he said. "I came here to see Mark, who has been with me."

He stopped suddenly. His manner, his looks, were altogether strange. Sara thought something must have happened.

"What is the matter?" she asked. "You look as if you had some great care upon you."

"And so I have. That care that arises from shame and repentance; from finding that we have been upon the mistaken road of wrong; been treading it for years."

She sat down, quietly, timidly, looking to him for an elucidation, half-frightened at his emotion.

"I wish to have an explanation with you, Sara. I want--if it be possible--forgiveness. And I don't know how to enter upon the one or to sue for the other."

She had rarely seen him otherwise than calmly self-possessed. Generally, especially of late years, he was cold almost to a fault. And now he was as one blazing with an inward fire: his lips were scarlet, his brow was flushed, his voice quite hoarse with emotion.

"In the years gone by, I--I--threw you up, Sara. While I loved you better than anything on earth, knowing that you were the only one upon it who could ever awaken the passion within me, did I live to centuries, I voluntarily resigned you. That night in the Abbey graveyard at Hallingham, when we accidentally met--you have not forgotten it--I told you that I could not marry you; that you were not fit to be my wife----Hush! it was equivalent to it Sara, how can I stand now before you and confess that I was altogether under an error; that in my pride, my blindness, I had taken up a false view of things, and was acting upon it? Can you see my shame, my repentance, as I say it to you?"

"I don't understand you," she gasped, utterly bewildered.

"Will you so far pardon me--will you so far trust me after all that has occurred--as to give me this one single word of explanation? To whom did you attribute the cause of my acting in the way I did? Whose ill-conduct was it, as you supposed, that had raised the barrier between us?"

She hesitated, not perhaps caring to reply.

"I have had an interview today with Captain Davenal," he resumed, in a low tone. "He has given me the details of the unhappy business he was drawn into--the forged bills: I am, so far, in his entire confidence. Will that help you to answer me?"

"It was that," she said.

"That alone?"

"That alone. There was nothing else."

"Well, Sara, can you believe me when I tell you that I never heard of that business until today?--That Captain Davenal had nothing whatever to do with my course of action?"

Indeed she looked as though she could not believe him. What else then? she asked. Who had? Under what impression had he acted?

"Ah, there lies my shame! Sara, I dared--I dared to attribute ill-conduct to another," he cried with emotion. "In my pride and folly, in my mind's delusion, I presumed to set myself up for a judge over one who in goodness might have crushed me to nothing. I shall _never_ get over the remorse during life."

"You--did not--attribute ill-conduct of any sort to me?" she said with white lips.

"To _you!_ To you whom I have ever believed to be one of the best and truest women upon earth!--whom I have regarded through it all with an amount of respect unutterable! No, no. But the question serves me right."

She laid her hands one over the other as she sat, striving to keep her feelings under control. Praise from him was all too sweet yet.

"O do me justice so far, Sara! While I gave you up I knew that to my heart and judgment none were like unto you for goodness: I knew that if my obstinate pride, my spirit of self-sufficiency, did but allow me to marry you, you would be the greatest treasure man ever took to himself. Can you tolerate me while I dare openly to say these things?--can you believe that I am pouring them forth in my humiliation? I have loved you deeply and fervently; I shall love you always; but even that love has scarcely equalled my admiration and my respect."

"But who else, then, could have had any counteracting influence?" she returned, after a while.

"I dare not tell you."

"There was only Edward. I had no other brother. No one else could have done anything to bring shame upon----oh, surely you cannot mean papa!" she broke off, the improbable idea flashing over her.

"Don't ask me, Sara! In mercy to myself."

"Papa who was so good?" she reiterated, paying no heed to his words in her wonder. "He was so just, so kind, so honourable! I think if ever there was a good man on earth who tried to do as God would have him, it was papa. It is impossible you could suspect anything wrong in him!"

"My object in waiting to see you this evening was, first, to make my confession; secondly, to ask you to be more just, more merciful than I have been, and to forgive me," he rejoined in a low tone. "I must add another petition yet, Sara; that you would generously allow this one point to remain as it is between us."

"But I think you ought to tell me," she urged. "Did you indeed suspect papa?"

"Yes."

"But of what?"

"Ah, don't press me further, Sara, for I cannot tell you. A singular accident led me to doubt Dr. Davenal's conduct--honour--I hardly know what to call it--and there followed on this a chain of circumstances so apparently corroborative of the doubt that I thought I had no resource but to believe. I believed, and I acted upon the belief: I judged him harshly; I treated him coldly; I gave up you, my dearest hope and object in life; and this day only have my eyes been opened, and to my shame I learn that the whole thing, as regarded him, was a delusion. _Will_ you--will you generously let my confession rest here?"

"Papa would not have done as Edward did," she whispered.

"No, no, it was not anything of that nature. Money and money matters had nothing to do with it. It was an entirely different thing. I am so ashamed of myself that I cannot _bear_ to speak of this further. Surely I have said enough. It was a mistake, a misapprehension altogether: and the greatest act of kindness you can do me now is to let it rest here."

She sat gazing at him with questioning eyes, nearly lost in wonder.

"Yes, the impression under which I acted was a false one. There existed no cause whatever for my estranging myself from you. But for my own unpardonable credulity I need never have given you up: and the past years of anguish--and I know they have been full of anguish to both of us--ought not to have had place. I was misled by an unfortunate chain of events: and nothing remains to me but shame and repentance."

There ensued a silence. Sara was standing on the hearth-rug now, and he took his elbow from the mantelpiece, where it had been resting, and moved a step towards her.

"Can I ever hope for your forgiveness?"

"It seems to me that I have nothing to forgive," she answered, in a low voice. "If circumstances misled you, you could not be blamed for acting upon them, according to your belief."

"Sara!"--he laid his hand upon her shoulder, and his voice shook with the intensity of its emotion--"may I dare to hope that you will let me in my future life strive to atone for this?"

"How atone for it?" she faltered.

"Will you generously look over the past folly?--will you suffer it to be between us as it used to be?--will you be my wife at last?"

She trembled as she stood, the conscious light of love mantling in her cheek and in her drooping eye. Mr. Oswald Cray held her before him, waiting and watching for the answer, his lips parted with suspense.

"My brother's crime remains still," she whispered. "A memento of the past."

"Your brother's crime! Should you be punished for that?--for him? And what of _my_ brother?" he continued, the revelation of the day imparting to his tone a whole world of remorse, of self-condemning repentance. "What disgrace has not my brother brought to me? O Sara; should the ill wrought by these ties part us? It never ought to have done so. Let us stand alone, henceforth, you and I, independent of the world! Don't try me too greatly! don't punish me, as in justice you might!"

For a moment her eyes looked straight into his with a loving, earnest glance, and then dropped again. "I will be your wife, Oswald," she simply said. "I have never tried to forget you, for I knew I could not."

And as if relief from the tension of suspense were too great for entire silence, a faint sound of emotion broke from Oswald Cray. And he bent to take from her lips that kiss, left upon them so long ago in the garden-parlour of the old house at Hallingham.