Oswald Cray: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

It was a very obstinate side, as M. Le Bleu would express it, a very persistent, provoking lump, and that renowned practitioner--who was really a skilful man, for all his obscure English--had formed his own opinion upon it. It baffled him and his remedies persistently. Even those highly-regarded bêtes, the sangsues, had tried their best to subdue it--and tried in vain. Evidently the effective remedy was not sangsues. The lump had had its own way all these months. It had been growing larger and larger, giving by degrees more and more pain. Monsieur Le Bleu had once hinted his doubts of a "tumeur fibreuse," and Mark had politely retorted that he was an idiot to fancy such things. What the end of it all was to be--of the disease, of the semi-starvation, of the next to impossibility to go on in Honfleur, and the equal impossibility to get away from it, of Mark Cray's little difficulty with England and the shareholders of the old company--would take a wiser head than either Caroline's or Mark's to tell.

This day has been noticed because it was a sort of turning-point in this persistent malady: not a turning for better but for worse. Whether the walk up the hill injured her--for perhaps she had grown really unfit for it--or whether the disease itself made a sudden leap onwards, certain it was that poor Mrs. Cray never went up the Côte de Grâce again. She walked home with Mark very slowly, and fainted when she got in. Mark did not like her look, and ran off for Monsieur Le Bleu. It was only the fatigue, she said to them: but the next morning she did not rise from her bed.

Several weeks dragged themselves slowly on, Caroline growing worse and weaker. An idea arose to her--it may have almost been called a morbid fancy--that if her uncle Richard were alive and at hand, her cure would be certain and speedy. From him it was natural perhaps that her hopes should stray to other English doctors; not young men such as Mark, but men of note, of experience, of known skill; and a full persuasion took possession of her mind that she had only to go to London to be made well. It grew too strong for any sort of counter-argument or resistance; it became a mania: to remain in Honfleur was to die; to go to England and the English faculty would be cure and life.

Mark would have gratified the wish had it been in his power, but how was he to find the money? But for Barker, they could not have gone on at all. He sent a trifle to Mark from time to time, and they managed to get along with it. Once, when they were at a very low ebb Mark had written a pitiful account of their state to his brother Oswald, and a ten-pound note came back again. Ah what a contrast was this to the prosperity that might have been theirs at Hallingham!

Winter had come now. December was in; its first days were rapidly passing; and so intense had grown Caroline's yearning for home that Monsieur Le Bleu himself said to keep her would be to kill her. "It would only be the passage-money, Mark," she reiterated ten times in a day. "I should go straight to Aunt Bettina's. Angry as she was with us for leaving Hallingham, she'd not refuse to take me in. Mark, Mark! only the passage-money!"

And Mark, thus piteously appealed to, began to think he must do something desperate to get the passage-money. Perhaps he would, if he had only known what. But while Mark was thinking of it help arrived, in the shape of a hundred-franc note from Barker. Things were beginning to look up with him he wrote. Perhaps he meant this as an earnest of it.

"Divide it, Mark," she said, with feverish cheeks. "I know how badly you want it here: but I want it badly too. I want help, I want medical skill; divide it between us: fifty francs will take me over."

And so it was done. How willingly Mark would have given her the whole!--but that was impossible. How willingly he would have gone with her to take care of her on the voyage!--but that was impossible. Mark Cray might not show his face in London. He took her as far as he could, and that was to Havre. On the morning after the arrival of Barker's letter and its inclosure they were off: and so great an effect had the knowledge that she was really going wrought on Caroline, that she seemed to have recovered health and strength in a manner little short of miraculous.

She walked down to the Honfleur boat; she would walk; she was quite well enough to walk, she said. As they turned out of the house the postman was approaching it, selecting a letter from his bundle.

"Pour Madame," he said, giving it to Mark.