Oswald Cray: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

"Papa," she said, lifting her head, "I wish I might ask you something."

"Well--do so."

"If you would but trust me more entirely. When Edward came that night and you called me down, I learnt he was in some dangerous trouble; but I learnt no further. Since then nothing but fears have haunted me."

"And have they not haunted me?" echoed the doctor in a strange tone of pain. "The night stands out in my memory like a frightful dream. Think what it was. When I was lingering in that front room there, full of the trouble brought to me by the death of Lady Oswald, not yet cold, there came a tapping at the window, and I looked out and saw Edward. Edward, my son!--disguised, as may almost be said, for he did not care to be recognised in Hallingham; and in truth recognition might have been dangerous. 'Let me in quietly, father,' he said, 'I am in danger.' Sara, were I to live to be an old man, could not forget the effect those words had upon me. I was unnerved that evening: the recent death of Lady Oswald and--and--its unhappy circumstances were as vividly before me as though it was being enacted then, and I was unnerved to a degree not usual. He wore a cap on his head, and a plaid scarf very much up about his neck, in fact just as any gentleman might travel, but I had not been accustomed to see Edward so dressed. His voice, too, was hushed to a warning tone. 'Let me in quietly, father. I am in danger.' In the first confused moment I declare I thought of some threatened danger in the street--that some wild animal was running loose: strange ideas do occur to one in these sudden moments. I let him in, and he began hurriedly to tell me that he did not want his visit to be known, for he was absent from quarters without leave; nay, in defiance of leave, which had been denied to him as inconvenient to be granted in the hurried period of the regiment's departure. But he was compelled to see me, he continued, and--then--he told me all."

"Told you what, papa?" she whispered, when the doctor's moan of reminiscence had died away.

"Of the awful position into which his folly had plunged him. Of the crime that he had committed, and which, if not hushed up, bought up, one may say, would in a few days find him out. Sara, Sara! men have been hung for that same crime in days not so long gone by."

He, the unhappy father, stopped to wipe from his face the dews that had gathered there. It was an awful tale for a father to tell; it was more awful for him to have heard it. Sara shivered: she did not dare to interrupt by a single word.

"My gallant son, of whom I had been so proud! Youth's follies had been his in plenty; vanity, extravagance, expenditure, bringing debt in their train, which I had satisfied, more than once, over and above the handsome allowance I made him: But crime, never. Sara, when that night was over, I felt that I would rather die than live it over again, with its sudden lifting of the curtain to pain and shame."

"Papa, if----"

"Hush, child! Let me finish this part while I can speak. He confessed all in its fullest extent. The ice once broken he told the whole. Indeed, he had no choice but to tell it, for it was only by knowing it entirely that I could help him. Had he concealed the half of it he might as well have concealed all: and he might have stood at his country's bar to answer for his crime." Sara gave a great cry. Terrible as her vague doubts had been, pointing sometimes to the very darkest sin that is comprised in the decalogue, the one which Oswald Cray had even dared to whisper in her ear, it was so much worse to hear those doubts confirmed.