Oswald Cray: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

Mark Cray saw the traveller on board the boat, watched it move off, turn, and go steaming down the port And then he made the best of his way home, the hundred-franc note in his pocket seeming to be a very fairy of good fortune.

They had come to Honfleur the latter end of April; this was the beginning of June; and poor Mark had not found a single patient yet. Mr. Barker had been there to receive them on their arrival. How Barker contrived to live, or whence his funds came, Mark did not know, but he always seemed flourishing. There are some men who always do seem flourishing, whatever may be their ups and downs. Barker was in Paris now, apparently in high feather, his letters to Mark boasting that he was getting into "something good."

Mark ran all the way home; his lodgings were not far, near the ascent of the Mont Joli. Could scenery have supplied the place of meat and drink, then Mark Cray and his wife might have lived as epicures, for nothing could well be more grandly beautiful than the prospect seen from their windows. But, alas! something besides the eyes requires to be ministered to in this world of wants.

It was a small house with a garden before the door, and was tenanted by a widow lady and her servant. Mark and his wife occupied a small sitting-room in it and a bedchamber above; opening from the sitting-room was a little place about four feet square, which served for kitchen, and was let to them with the rooms. They waited on themselves; it is rare indeed that attendance is furnished with lodgings in France. But madame's servant was complaisant, and lighted their fire and did many other little things.

Caroline was in the bedroom, dressing, when Mark returned;--dressing in that listless, spiritless manner which argues badly for the hope and heart. It was a pity their expectations in regard to Honfleur had been so inordinately raised, for the disappointment was keen, and Caroline perhaps had not strength to do battle with it. She had pictured Honfleur (taking the impression from Barker's letters and Mark's sanguine assumptions) as a very haven of refuge; a panacea for their past woes, a place where the English patients, if not quite as plentiful as blackberries, would at least be sufficient to furnish them with funds to live in comfort. But it had altogether proved a fallacy. The English patients held aloof. In fact, there were no English patients, so far as they could make out. Nobody got ill; or, if they did get ill, they did not come to Mark Cray to be cured. Tribulation in the shape of petty embarrassment was coming upon them, and Caroline began to hate the place. She was weary, sick, sad; half dead with disappointment and ennui.

Unfortunately, there was becoming a reason to suspect that something was radically wrong with Caroline. Not that she thought it yet; still less Mark. Dr. Davenal had surmised that her constitution was unsound.

During the time of their sojourn at Chelsea, where Mr. Dick Davenal came so suddenly upon them, and Mark was accustomed to go out to take the air adorned with blue spectacles and a moustache, Caroline, in undressing herself one night, found--or fancied that she found--a small lump in her side, below the ribs. She thought nothing whatever about it, it was so very small; in fact, it slipped from her memory. Some time afterwards, however, she accidentally touched her side and felt the same lump there again. This was of course sufficient to assure her that it was not fancy, but still she attached no importance to it, and said nothing. But the lump did not go away; it seemed like a little kernel that could be moved bout with the finger; and in the week following their arrival at Honfleur she first spoke of it to Mark. Mark did not pay much attention to it; that is, he did not think there was any cause to pay attention to it; it might proceed from cold, he said, or perhaps she had given herself a knock; he supposed it would go away again. But the lump did not go away, and Caroline had been complaining of it lately.

On this past night--or rather morning--when Mark was at the hotel with the patient to whom he was called, Caroline had been recreating her imagination with speculations upon what the lump was, and what it was likely to come to. Whether this caused her to be more sensitive to the lump than she had been before, or whether the lump was really beginning to make itself more troublesome, certain it was that her fears in regard to it were at length aroused, and she waited impatiently for the return of her husband.

"Mark, this lump gets larger and larger. I am certain of it."

It was her greeting to Mark when he entered and came up to the chamber. She turned her spiritless eyes upon him, and Mark might have noted the sad listlessness of the tone, but that it had become habitual. He made no reply. He was beginning himself to think that the lump got larger.