CHAPTER VIII.

A TACIT BARGAIN.

Meanwhile Mr. Oswald Cray had dined at his rustic inn, the "Apple Tree," and was on his way to pay an evening visit at Dr. Davenal's. In passing along New Street he encountered his half-brother, turning hastily out of his lodgings.

"Were you coming in, Oswald?" asked Marcus, as they shook hands. "I heard you were down."

"Not now," replied Oswald. "I am going on to Dr. Davenal's, and I go up again by the night train. My visit here today was to Lady Oswald. We are going to take a strip of her grounds for sheds, and she does not like it."

"Not like it!" echoed Mark. "It's worse than that. You should have seen the way she was in this afternoon. It won't hurt the grounds."

"Not at all. But she cannot be brought to see that it will not. In point of fact, the sound of it is worse than the reality will be. It does sound ill, I confess,--railway-sheds upon one's grounds! I was in hopes of being the first to break the news to her: so much lies in the telling of a thing; in the impression first imparted."

"She said this afternoon that it all lay with you. That you could spare her grounds if you would."

"I wish it did lie with me: I would do my best to find another spot and spare them. The company have fixed upon the site, Low has given his concurrence, and there's no more to be said or done. I am very sorry, but it has been no doing of mine. Will you go with me to the doctor's, Mark?"

Marcus hesitated, and then said he had rather not call that evening.

"Why?" asked Oswald.

"Well--the fact is,--I don't see why I may not tell you,--I have been asking the doctor this afternoon for Caroline. He did not give me a positive answer, one way or the other; and I don't think it will look well to press a visit upon them just now."

Oswald Cray's was not a demonstrative countenance: a self-controlled man's rarely is: but certainly it exhibited marked surprise now, and he gazed at his brother inquiringly.

"You are surely not thinking of marrying?"

"Yes, I am. Why should I not think of it?"

"But what have you to marry upon? What means?"

"Oh--I must get Dr. Davenal to increase my share. By a word he dropped this afternoon when we were talking of it, I fancy he would do it: would increase it to four hundred a-year. We might manage upon that."

Oswald Cray made no immediate reply. He, the self-reliant man, would have felt both pain and shame at the very thought of marrying upon the help of others.

"You are thinking it's not enough, Oswald?"

"It might be enough for prudent people. But I don't think it would be found enough by you and Caroline Davenal. Mark, I fancy--I shall not offend you?--fancy you are not of a prudent turn."

"I don't know that I am. But any man can be prudent when there's a necessity that he should be."

"It has not always proved so."

"I see you think me a spendthrift," said Mark good-humouredly.

"Not exactly that. I think you could not live upon as small an income as some can. Dr. Davenal gives you, I believe, two hundred a-year, and you have been with him six months: my opinion is, Mark, that at the twelvemonth's end you will find the two hundred has nothing like kept you. You will be looking about for another hundred to pay debts."

"Are you so particularly saving yourself?" retorted Mark.

"That is not the question, Mark; I am not going to be married," answered Oswald, with a smile. "But I do save."

"If the doctor will give me four hundred a-year to begin with, there's no need to wait."

"You have no furniture."

"That's easily ordered," said Mark.

"Very easily indeed," laughed Oswald. "But there'll be the paying for it."

"It won't take so much. We shall not set up in a grand way. We can pay by instalments."

"A bad beginning, Mark."

Mark rather winced. "Are you going to turn against me, Oswald? To throw cold water on it?"

Oswald Cray looked very grave as he answered. Mark was not his own brother, and he could not urge him too much; but a conviction seated itself in his heart, perhaps not for the first time, that Mark had inherited their father's imprudence.

"These considerations are for you, Mark; not for me. If I speak of them to you, I do so only in your true interest. We have never been brothers, therefore I do not presume to give a brother's counsel,--you would deem I had no right to do it. Only be prudent, for your own sake and Caroline's. Good evening, if you will go back."

Neal admitted Mr. Oswald Cray, and Neal's face lighted up with the most apparent genuine pleasure at doing it. Neal was the quintessence of courteous respect to his betters, but an additional respect would show itself in his manner to Mr. Oswald Cray, from the fact possibly that he had served in the Oswald family at Thorndyke, and Mr. Oswald Cray was so near a connection of it.

Dr. Davenal was then in the garden-parlour with Sara. The noisy boys were regaling themselves with good things in the dining-room, under the presidentship of Miss Bettina. A few moments, and the doctor and Mr. Oswald Cray were deep in the discussion of the proposition that had so moved them; the doctor being the first to speak of it. Sara sat near the window, doing some light work. A fair picture she looked, in her evening dress; her cheeks somewhat flushed, her neck so fair and white, the gold chain lying on it; her pretty arms partially hidden by their white lace. Dr. Davenal stood in a musing attitude on the other side of the window, and Mr. Oswald Cray sat between them, a little back, his elbow on the centre table, his chin on his hand.

"Mark has just told me of it," he observed, in reply to Dr. Davenal. "I met him as I walked here. I was very much surprised."

"Not more surprised than I," returned the doctor.

"At least, surprised that he should have spoken to you so soon."

"What do you think of it?" asked the doctor, abruptly.

"Nay, sir, it is for you to think," was the reply of Oswald Cray, after a momentary pause.

"I know--in that sense. My opinion is, that it is exceedingly premature."

"Well--yes, I confess it appears so to me. I told Mark so. There's one thing, Dr. Davenal--some men get on all the better for marrying early."

"True: and some all the better for waiting. I like those men who have the courage and patience to wait, bearing steadily on to the right moment and working for it. I married very early in life myself, but my circumstances justified it. Where circumstances do not justify it, a man should wait. I don't mean waiting on to an unreasonable time, until the sear and yellow leaf's advancing; nothing of that: but there's a medium in all things. I am sure you would not rush into an imprudent marriage: you'd wait your time."

A smile parted Oswald Cray's lips. "I am obliged to wait, sir."

"That is, prudence obliges you?"

"Yes; that's it."

"And I make no doubt your income is a good deal larger than the present one of Mark?"

"I believe it is."

Dr. Davenal stood in silence, twirling his watch chain. "Give me your advice," he said, turning to Mr. Oswald Cray.

"Dr. Davenal, may I tell you that I would prefer not to give it? By blood Mark is my half-brother; but you know the circumstances under which we were reared--that we are, in actual fact, little more than strangers; and I feel the greatest delicacy in interfering with him in anyway. I will do him any good that I can: but I will not give advice regarding him in so momentous a step as this?"

Dr. Davenal understood the feeling, it was a perfectly proper one. "Do you think he has much stability?--enough to steer him safely through life, clear of shoals and quicksands?"

Oswald Cray's opinion was that Mark possessed none. But he was not sure: he had had so little to do with him. "Indeed, I cannot speak with certainty," was his answer. "Mark is far more of a stranger to me than he is to you. Stability sometimes comes with years only; with time and experience."

"I cannot tell you how surprised I was," resumed the doctor, after a pause. "Had Mark come and proposed to marry Bettina, I could not have been more astonished. The fact is, I had somehow got upon the wrong scent."

"The wrong scent?" exclaimed Mr. Oswald Cray, looking up.

"I don't mind telling you, considering how different, as it has turned out, was the actual state of things," said Dr. Davenal, with a laugh. "I fancied you were inclined to like Caroline?"

Mr. Oswald Cray's deep-set blue eyes were opened wider than usual in his astonishment. "What caused you to fancy that?"

"Upon my word I don't know. Looking back, I think how foolish I must have been. But you see, that idea tended to obscure my view as to Mark."

Oswald Cray rose from his seat, and stood by Dr. Davenal, looking from the window.

"Had it been so, would you have objected to me?" he asked; and in his voice, jesting though it was, there rang a sound of deep meaning.

"No, I would not," replied Dr. Davenal. "I wish it had been so. Don't talk of it; it will put me out of conceit of Mark."

Mr. Oswald Cray laughed, and stole a glance at Sara. Her cheeks were crimson; her head was bent closer to her work than it need have been.

At that moment Dr. Davenal's carriage was heard coming up the side lane, Roger's head and shoulders just visible over the garden wall. Dr. Davenal gave the man a nod as he passed, as much as to say he should be out immediately, and retreated into the room. It had broken the thread of the discourse.

"You came down in answer to Lady Oswald's message?" he observed. "She said she had sent for you."

"Not in answer to the message. I came away before it reached London: at any rate before it reached me."

"Lady Oswald's in a fine way. I suppose nothing can be done?"

"Nothing at all. It is unfortunate that her grounds abut just on that part of the line."

"She will never stop in the house."

"You see, the worst is, that she has just entered upon the third term of her lease. She took it for seven, fourteen, or twenty-one years. I am not sure, however, that Mr. Low, under the circumstances, could oppose her depart"--

"Uncle Richard, the carriage is come round to the door. How are you, Mr. Oswald Cray?"

The interruption came from the boys. Both had rushed in without any regard to noise; or rather to the avoidance of it. Mr. Oswald Cray shook hands with them, and the doctor turned to shake hands with _him_.

"I have to see a patient or two tonight. A poor countrywoman's son is ill, and I promised her to go over this evening if possible. Perhaps you'll be here when I return. Bettina and the girls will give you some tea."

He hurried out; and the boys after him, clamorously enough. During their holidays, Dr. Davenal could rarely get into his carriage without those two dancing attendance round it, like a bodyguard of jumping savages. Mr. Oswald Cray turned to Sara, who had risen also, and stood before her.

"Just one moment, Sara, for a single question. Did _you_ fall into the misapprehension that I was growing attached to your cousin?"

Her manner grew shrinkingly timid; her eyelashes were never raised from her hot cheeks. It seemed that she would have spoken, for her lips parted; but there came no sound from them.

"Nay, but you must answer me," he rejoined, some agitation distinguishable in his tone. "Did you do me the injustice to suppose I had any thought of Caroline?"

"No. O no."

He drew a deep breath, as if the words relieved him, took her hand in his, and laid his other hand upon it, very seriously.

"It was well to ask: but I did not think you could so have mistaken me. Sara! I am not an imprudent man, as I fear Mark is; I could not, in justice to the woman whom I wish to make my wife, ask her to leave her home of comfort until I can surround her with one somewhat equivalent to it. I think--I hope--that another year may accomplish this. Meanwhile--you will not misunderstand me, or the motives of my silence?"

She lifted her eyes to his face to speak: they were swimming in tears: lifted them in her earnestness.

"I shall never misunderstand you, Oswald."

And Mr. Oswald Cray, for the first time in his life, bent his lips on hers to seal the tacit bargain.