Oswald Cray: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

Will it be forgiven to Oswald Cray if in that brief confused moment he believed the worst--believed all that Neal said to him? His mind was in a chaos of perplexity, almost, it may be said, of terror. Nothing was clear. He could not analyse, he could not reason: Neal's words, and the doings of the night which the man was describing, seemed to dance before his mind in confused forms, ever changing, as do the bits of coloured glass in a kaleidoscope. Neal continued to speak, but he did not hear him distinctly now; the words reached his senses certainly, but more as if he were in a mazy dream. He heard the man reiterate that, wherever it was his master had gone to that night, remaining away until the Wednesday it was connected with the death of Lady Oswald; he heard him say that, whatever the mystery and the guilt, Miss Sara Davenal had been made the confidant of it by her father, he, Neal, supposed front some imperative motive which he did not pretend to understand. Oswald heard like one in a dream, the words partially glancing off his mind even as they were spoken, only to be recalled afterwards with redoubled force.

In the midst of it he suddenly looked at his watch, suspecting--as he found--that he had barely time to catch the train.

And he went out in a sort of blind confusion, his brain echoing the words of Dr. Davenal, only too accurately remembered and repeated by Neal. "Murder? Yes, the world would look upon it as such. I felt certain that Lady Oswald was one to whom chloroform, if administered, would prove fatal."

[CHAPTER XXIV.]

DR. DAVENAL'S "FOLLY."

It was startling news to go forth to Hallingham--one of the nine days' wonders read of in social history. Lady Oswald had bequeathed her fortune to her physician, Dr. Davenal! Such things had been known before in the world's experiences, but Hallingham made as much of the fact as if that were the first time it had ever been enacted.

Upon none did the news fall with more complete astonishment than upon the doctor himself. Lady Oswald had more than once in the past few months mysteriously hinted to him that he would be rewarded some time for his care and attention to her; and it must be supposed that she had these hints in her mind when she said to Mr. Oswald Cray that "he" (the named inheritor of her money) knew that he would be rewarded. Upon Dr. Davenal the hints had never made any impression. Of a nature the very reverse of covetous, simple-minded, single-hearted, it never so much as crossed his imagination that she would be leaving her money to him. He would have been the first to repudiate it; to point out to her the injustice of the act.

It is surely not necessary to premise that you, my intelligent and enlightened readers, cannot have fallen into the mistake made by Neal, or drawn that respected domestic's very absurd, though perhaps to a fanciful and prejudiced mind not unnatural deduction, that the night-visit to Dr. Davenal had reference to Lady Oswald's death. Being in the secret of who really did administer that fatal dose of chloroform to Lady Oswald, you will not connect it with Dr. Davenal's trouble. A heavy secret, involving disgrace, much misery, perhaps ruin, had indeed fallen that night on Dr. Davenal, but it was entirely unconnected with the death of Lady Oswald. The words which Neal had heard--and he heard them correctly--would have borne to his mind a very different interpretation had he been enabled to hear the whole--what had preceded them and what followed them. But he did not.

Yes, this unhappy secret, this great misfortune, had nothing to do with Lady Oswald. Far from Dr. Davenal's having caused her to inhale an extra dose of chloroform as an experiment, on the strength that it might prove fatal, and so enable him to drop at once into that very desirable legacy named in her will, and which supposition, I am sure you will agree with me in thinking, belongs rather to the world of idealic wonders than of real life, the doctor had not the faintest suspicion that he should inherit a shilling. When the news was conveyed to him he could not believe it to be true,--did not believe it for some little time.

It was Mr. Wedderburn who carried it to him. When the lawyer's business was over at Lady Oswald's, he proceeded to Dr. Davenal's, and found him just come home from the consultation, to attend which he had hurried away before the reading of the will. Mr. Wedderburn told him the news.