Oswald Cray: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

"At Hallingham. I went down at some peril, after leave had been refused me at headquarters, getting to Hallingham about eleven o'clock on a Sunday night. I stayed an hour or so with my father in his study, and then went back to the station again, for I had to be at my post on duty the following morning. No one at home knew of my visit. I tapped at my father's study window and he let me in. Before I left, I asked to see Sara. I knew quite well, though they did not, that I should not go down again, and I did not care to leave for years without saying a word to her, so my father fetched her down from her room. We did not tell her the particulars, only that I had been doing something wrong, was in danger, and that my visit to Hallingham must be kept quiet. My poor father! I remember his asking in a burst of feeling what he had done that all this trouble should fall upon him. Another great trouble had befallen him that night in the death of Lady Oswald."

"Yes?" said Oswald with a calm manner but a beating heart. His thoughts were in that long past night, and Neal's description of it.

"It was very dreadful," resumed Captain Davenal, alluding to the matter of Lady Oswald. "My father was sadly cut up. Mark Cray had killed her through administering the chloroform."

Oswald felt his heart stand still, his face flush with a burning heat. He moved nearer to Captain Davenal: but his voice was quiet still.

"Did you say Mark administered the chloroform?"

"It was Mark. Yes. My father said he had especially forbidden Mark Cray to give her chloroform. Mark in the course of the day had proposed doing it, but the doctor warned him that chloroform would not do for Lady Oswald. When all was ready, he (my father) had to carry Lady Oswald's maid from the chamber in a fainting-fit, and when he got back to it he found Mark had administered the chloroform, which he had taken with him to the house surreptitiously, and was commencing the operation. The doctor said he could not make out Mark Cray that night. He was beginning the operation in so unskilful, so unsurgeon-like a manner, that my father had to push him away as he would have pushed a child, and perform it himself. But they could not recover Lady Oswald."

Oswald made no remark. He felt as one stunned.

"It struck me as being a most shocking thing," continued Captain Davenal. "I remarked to my father that it seemed like murder, and he said Yes, he supposed the world would call it such."

"But why did not Dr. Davenal declare the truth--that it was Mark who had given the chloroform?" interrupted Oswald. "Why suffer himself to rest under the imputation?"

"What imputation? There was no imputation to lie under. All the world supposed the chloroform had been rightly and properly administered, according to the best judgment of both of them."