Not for a moment did Oliver Rane think Mr. Alexander could long hold out against him, as he had secured, through his mother, the favour of Dallory Hall. Alas, a very short time showed him that this was a mistake; Dallory Hall turned round upon him, and was doing what it could to forward his rival. Mrs. Cumberland went to Mr. North, seeking an explanation. He could only avow the truth--his wife, who was both master and mistress, had set her face against Oliver, and was recommending Alexander. "John, you promised me," urged Mrs. Cumberland, "I know I did, and I'd keep to it if I could," was Mr. North's mournful answer; "but no one can hold out against her." "Why should she have taken this dislike to Oliver?" rejoined Mrs. Cumberland. "Heaven knows; a caprice, I suppose. She sets herself against people without reason: she has never taken to either Richard or Bessy; and only a little to Edmund. If I can do anything for Oliver under the rose, I'll do it. I have every desire to help him, Fanny, in remembrance of our friendship of the old days."
Mrs. Cumberland carried home news of her non-success to Oliver. As to madam, she simply ignored him, bestowing her patronage upon his rival. How bitterly the slight touched his heart, none but himself could tell. Mrs. Cumberland resented it; but ah, not as he did. A sense of wrong was ever weighing upon his spirit, and he thought Fate was against him. One puzzle remained on his mind unsolved--what he could have done to offend Mrs. North.
Mr. Alexander obtained a fair practice: Dr. Rane barely sufficient to keep himself. His wants and those of the old servant Phillis were few. Perhaps the entire fault did not lie with madam. Alexander had a more open manner and address than Dr. Rane, and they go a long way with people; he was also an older man, and a married man, and was supposed to have had more experience. A sense of injury rankled ever in Oliver Rane's heart; of injury inflicted by Alexander. Meanwhile he became engaged to Bessy Rane. During an absence from home of madam's, the doctor grew intimate at the Hall, and an attachment sprang up between him and Bessy. When madam returned, his visits had to cease, but he saw Bessy at Mrs. Gass's and elsewhere.
I think that is all the retrospect that need be gone into. It brings us down to the present time, the period of the anonymous letter and Edmund North's death. Exactly two years ago this same month, May, the rival doctors had appeared in Dallory Ham; and now one of them was about to leave it.
One incident must be told, bearing on something that has been related, and then the chapter shall close.
The summer of the past year had been a very hot one. A labouring man, working on Mr. North's grounds, suddenly fell; and died on the spot. Mr. Alexander, summoned hastily, thought it must have been sunstroke. "That is what my father died of," remarked Captain Bohun, who stood with the rest. Mr. North turned to him: "Do you say your father died of sunstroke, Arthur?" "Yes, sir, that is what he died of. Did you not know it?" was the ready reply. "You are sure of that?" continued Mr. North. "Quite sure, sir," repeated Arthur, turning his dreamy blue eyes full upon his stepfather, in all their proud truthfulness.
Mr. North knew that he spoke in the sincerity of belief. Arthur Bohun possessed in an eminent degree the pride of his father's race. That innate, self-conscious sense of superiority that is a sort of safeguard to those who possess it: the noblesse oblige feeling that keeps them from wrong-doing. It is true, Arthur Bohun held an exalted view of his birth and family: in so far as that his pride in it equalled that of any man living or dead. He was truthful, generous, honourable; the very opposite in all respects to his mother. Her pride was an assumed pride; a despicable, false, contemptible pride, offensive to those with whom she came into contact. Arthur's was one that you admired in spite of yourself. Of a tarnish to his honour, he could almost have died; to bring disgrace on his own name or on his family, would have caused him to bury his head for ever. Sensitively regardful of other people's feelings, courteous in manner to all, he yet unmistakably held his own in the world. His father had been just the same; and in his day was called "Proud Bohun."
To have asserted that Major Bohun died of sunstroke, had any doubt of the fact lain on his mind, would have been simply impossible to Arthur Bohun. Therefore, Mr. North saw that, whatever the mystery might be, regarding the real cause of Major Bohun's death, Arthur was not cognizant of it.