Bessy Rane: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

Of course that was the chief thing. Dr. Rane looked down and kept silence, pondering various matters in his mind. He thought it had better be London. A friend of his, one Dr. Jones, who had been a fellow-student in their hospital days, was doing a large practice as a medical man in the neighbourhood of New York: he wanted assistance, and had proposed to Dr. Rane to go over and join him. Nothing in the world would Dr. Rane have liked better; and Bessy was willing to go where he went, even to quit her native land for good; but Dr. Jones did not offer this without an equivalent, and the terms he named, five hundred pounds, were quite beyond the reach of Oliver Rane. So he supposed it must be London. With the two hundred pounds that he hoped to get for the goodwill of his own practice in Dallory Ham--at this very moment he was trying to negociate with a gentleman for it in private---he should set up in London, or else purchase a small share in an established practice. Anything, anywhere, to get away, and to leave the nightmare of daily-dreaded discovery behind him!

"Once we are away from this place, Bessy, we shall get on. I feel sure of it. You won't long have to live like a hermit, from dread of the cost of entertaining company, or to look at every sixpence before you lay it out."

"I don't mind it, Oliver. You know how sorry I should be if you thought of giving up our home here for my sake."

"But I don't; it's for my own as well," he hastily added. "You can't realize what it is, Bessy, for a clever medical man--and I am that--to be beaten back for ever into obscurity; to find no field for his talents; to watch others of this generation rising into note and usefulness. I have not got on here! Madam has schemed to prevent it. Why she should have patronized Alexander; why she should patronize Seeley; not for their sakes, but to oppose me; I have never been able to imagine. Unless it was that my mother, when Fanny Gass, and Mr. North were intimate as brother and sister in early life."

"And madam despises the Gass family and ours equally. It was a black-letter day for us all when papa married her."

"That is no reason why she should have set her face against me. It has been a fatal blight on me: worse than you and the world think for, Bessy."

"I am sure you must have felt it so," murmured Bessy. "And she would have stopped our marriage if she could."

"Whoever succeeds me here will speedily make a good practice of it. You'll see. She has kept me from doing it. There's one blessed thing--her evil influence cannot follow us elsewhere."

"I should like to become rich and have a large house, and get poor papa to live with us," said Bessy hopefully. "Madam is worrying him into his grave with her cruel temper. Oh, Oliver, I should like him to come to us!"

"I'm sure I wouldn't object," replied Dr. Rane good-naturedly. "How they will keep up the expenses at Dallory Hall if this strike is prolonged, I cannot think. Serve madam right!"