MARK'S NEW PLANS.
In the dining-room at the Abbey, in her black robes, sat Mrs. Cray at
the head of her table, her elbow resting on it, and a pouting
expression on her pretty face. Mark was at the foot, gobbling down his
dinner with what haste he could. He had been detained so long beyond
the dinner hour that Mrs. Cray in despair had eaten hers; and when
Mark at length entered he found a cold face and a cold cutlet. Mrs.
Cray was beginning to tire of the irregularity.
"I can't help it, Carine," he said, looking at her in a pause of his
eating. "My work has been nearly doubled, you know, since the doctor
died."
"But it's very tiresome, Mark!"
"It is. I am nearly sick of it."
"It is not _doubled_, your work."
"Well, no; one speaks at random. Some of the doctor's older patients
have left me: they think, I suppose, I am not sufficiently
experienced. But I have a great deal to do just now; more, in fact,
than I can attend to properly."
Mark resumed his gobbling, and his wife watched him, her lips a little
relaxing. Caroline Cray was one of those who must have all things go
smoothly; she could not bear to be put out, even is trifles.
"Mr. Wheatley has been here, Mark," she presently said.
"What did he want?"
"Well, he wanted to see you. Something about the selling of my uncle's
house."
"He is losing no time," observed Mark, acrimony in his tone. "I wonder
he didn't begin about it yesterday when we were there, hearing the
will read. But what have I do with it?"
"He wants us to take the house--to buy it, I think."
"I daresay he does," retorted Mark, after a pause of surprise.
"Where's the money to come from?"
"There's that money of mine. He said it would be a good investment."
"Did he! I wonder what business it is of his! Carine, my dear, you and
I are quite capable of managing our own affairs, without being
dictated to."
"Of course we are!" answered Carine, rather firing at the absent Mr.
Wheatley, as this new view was presented to her.
Mark said no more just then. He finished his dinner, and had the
things taken away. Then, instead of sitting down to his wine, his
usual custom, he stood up on the hearth-rug, as though he were
cold--or restless. Mark Cray had been reared to extravagance in a
petted home, and looked for his wine daily, as surely as any old
alderman looks for it. Oswald Cray, reared without a home, and to
schoolboy fare, adhered still, in a general way, to the water to which
he had been trained. Oswald's plan was the most profitable, so far as
the pocket was concerned, and the health too.
"I say, Carine, I want to go to London for a day."
"To London?" echoed Carine, turning her chair to the fire, and facing
Mark.
"There's the grandest opening: there's the grandest opening for a
fortune to be made there. And--Carine--I think I shall quit
Hallingham." Mrs. Cray's violet eyes extended themselves in the
extreme of wonder. She sat staring at him.
"Caroline, I _hate_ the profession, and how I came ever to be such a
fool as to go into it I cannot understand," said Mark, throwing
himself on a chair as he plunged into confidence. "So long as the
doctor lived I could not well say anything about it; I did not see my
way clear to do so. But things have altered now, and I think I shall
give up the medical life."
"But--good gracious, Mark!--I can't understand," exclaimed Caroline,
in her bewilderment. "If you give up your profession, you give up our
means of living. We can't starve."
"Starve!" laughed Mark. "Can't you trust me better than that? Look
here, Caroline; let us come to figures. I don't suppose I should clear
at first above eight hundred a-year, or so, by the practice----"
"O, Mark!"
"Well, say a thousand for argument's sake. Let us assume that I net it
clear. It's a nice income, no doubt, but I shall make three times
that, if I go into the thing in London."
Caroline, half doubting, half eager, all bewildered, sat waiting to
hear more.
"There's a splendid opportunity offered me if I give up the medical
profession and embark altogether in a new line of life. I--you have
heard me speak of my old chum Barker, have you not?" he broke off to
ask.
"Barker?" she repeated. "Yes, I think I remember the name. He got into
some dreadful trouble, did he not, and was sent to prison?"
"Sent to prison! how you speak of things! All that's over and done
with. His friends were wretched screws, doing him out of money that
ought to have come to him, and the consequence was that Barker got
into the Queen's Bench. Half the gentlemen of England have been there
some time in their lives," added Mark, loftily, as if he were just
then deeming the thing an honour. "Well, Caroline, that was over long
ago, and Barker has now the most magnificent prospect before him that
one can well imagine; he will be making his thousands and thousands
a-year."
"How is he going to make it?" asked Caroline.
"And he has offered me a share in it," continued Mark, too eager to
attend to irreverent questions. "He is one who knows how to stand by
an old friend. _Thousands_ a-year, it will be."
"But, Mark, I ask you how he is going to make it?"
"It is connected with mines and pumping, and all that sort of thing,"
lucidly explained Mark.
"Mines and pumping!"
"Caroline, dear, you cannot be expected to understand these things.
_Enormous_ fortunes are being made at them," continued Mark, in a
rapture. "Some of the mines yield fifty thousand pounds profit the
first year of working. I declare when I first heard of Barker's
prospects I was fit to eat my fingers off, feeling that I was tied
down to be a paltry pitiful country surgeon. Folks go ahead nowadays,
Caroline. And, as Barker has generously come forward with the offer
that I should join him, I think I ought to accept it in justice to
you. My share the first year would be about three thousand, he
computes."
"But, Mark, do you mean to say that Mr. Barker has offered you three
thousand a-year for nothing? I don't comprehend it at all."
"Not for nothing. I should give my services, and I should have to
advance a certain sum at the onset. Talk about an investment for your
money, Caroline, what investment would be equal to this?"
The words startled her for the moment. "I promised poor Uncle Richard
that the money should be settled upon me, Mark. He said he urged it as
much for your sake as mine."
"Of course," said Mark, with acquiescent suavity. "Where there's
nothing better to do with money it always ought to be so settled. But
only look at this opening! Were your uncle Richard in life, he would
be the first to advise the investment of the money in it. Such chances
don't happen every day. Caroline, I can't and I won't humdrum on here,
buried alive and worked to death, when I may take my place in the
London world, a wealthy man, looked up to by society. In your
interest, I will not."
"Are the mines in London?" asked Caroline.
"Good gracious, no! But the office is, where all the money
transactions are carried on."
"And it is quite a sure thing, Mark?"
"It's as sure as the Bank of England. It wants a little capital to set
it going, that's all. And that capital can be supplied by your money,
Caroline, if you will agree to it. Hundreds of people would jump at
the chance."
An utter tyro in business matters, in the ways of a needy world,
imbued with unbounded faith in her husband, Caroline Cray took all in
with eager and credulous ears. Little more than a child, she could be
as easily persuaded as one, and she became as anxious to realise the
good luck as Mark.
"Yes, I should think it is what my uncle would advise were he alive,"
she said. "And where should we live, Mark?"
"We'd live at the West End, Carine; somewhere about Hyde Park. You
should have your open and close carriages, and your saddle-horses and
servants--everything as it ought to be. No end of good things may be
enjoyed with three thousand a-year."
"Would it stop at three thousand, Mark?" she questioned, with
sparkling eyes.
"I don't expect it would stop at twenty," coolly asserted Mark. "How
far it would really go on to, I'm afraid to guess. In saying three
thousand, I have taken quite the minimum of the first year's profits."
"O Mark! don't let it escape you. Write tonight and secure it. How do
you know but Barker may be giving it to somebody else?"
She was growing more eager than he. In her inexperience, she knew
nothing of those miserable calamities--failure, deceit, fruition
deferred. Not that her husband was purposely deceiving her; he fully
believed in the good luck he spoke of. Mark Cray's was one of those
sanguine roving natures which see an immediate fortune in every new
scheme brought to them--if it be only wild enough.
"How long have you known of this, Mark!"
"Oh, a month or two. But, as you see, I would not stir in it. I should
like to run up to town for a day to meet Barker; and, on my return,
we'd set about the arrangements for leaving. There will be no more
lonely dinners for you, Carine, once we are away from here. I shall
not have to be beating about, all hours and weathers, from one
patient's door to another, or dancing attendance on that precious
Infirmary, knowing that you are sitting at home waiting for me, and
the meal getting cold."
"O Mark, how delightful it will be! And perhaps you would never have
risen into note, as my uncle did."
"No, I never should. Dr. Davenal's heart was in his profession,
mine--"
Mark Cray stopped abruptly. The avowal upon his lips had been, "mine
recoils from it."
It was even so. He did literally recoil from his chosen profession.
Unstable in all his ways, Mark had become heartily sick of the routine
of a surgeon's life. And since the affair of Lady Oswald a conviction
had been gradually taking possession of him that he was entirely
unfitted for it; nay, that he was incompetent To betray his
incompetency, would be to lose caste for ever in the medical world of
Hallingham.
Mark Cray rose from his chair again, and stood on the rug as before,
pushing back his hair from his brow incessantly in the restlessness
that was upon him. He was always restless when he thought of that past
night; or of the certainty that he might at any time be called upon to
perform again what he had failed in then. It was not altogether his
skill he doubted, for Mark Cray was a vain and self-sufficient man;
but he felt that the very-present consciousness of having broken down
before would induce a nervousness that might cause him to break down
again. Had it been practicable, Mark Cray would have taken flight from
Hallingham and the medical world that very hour, and hid himself away
from it for ever.
"It has become _hateful_ to me, Carine!"
The words burst from him in the fulness of his thoughts. Both had been
silent for some minutes, and they sounded quite startling in their
vehemence. Mrs. Cray looked up at him.
"What do you mean, Mark? What has? The getting your meals so
irregularly?"
"Yes;" said Mark, evasively. He did not choose to say that it was his
profession which had become hateful to him, lest Mrs. Cray might
inquire too closely why.
And, besides all this, had Mark been ever so successful in his
practice, the vista opened to him of unlimited wealth (and he really
so regarded it) might have turned a steadier head than his. His friend
Barker had been Mark's "chum" (you are indebted to Mark for the
epithet) at Guy's Hospital, and the intimacy had lasted longer than
such formed intimacies generally do last. Mr. Barker was of the same
stamp as Mark--hence, perhaps, the duration of the friendship; he had
practised as a surgeon for a year or two, and then found it "too
slow," and had tried his hand at something else. He had been trying
his hand at something else and something else ever since, and somehow
the things had dropped through one after the other with various
degrees of failure, one degree of which had been to land Mr. Barker
within the friendly walls of a debtor's prison. But he had come on his
legs again; such men generally do; and he was now in high feather as
the promoter of a grand mining company. It was this he had invited
Mark to embark in; he wrote him the most glowing accounts of the
fabulous sums of money to be realised at it; he believed in them
himself; he was, I have said, exactly the same sort of man as Mark.
One little drawback had recently presented itself to Barker: a want of
ready money. Mark, in his eagerness, offered the sum coming to his
wife from the Chancery suit; they were expecting it to be paid over
daily; and Mr. Barker was in raptures, and painted his pictures of the
future in colours gorgeous as those of a Claude Lorraine. Caroline
might have felt a little startled had she known Mark had already
promised the money without so much as consulting her. But Mark had
chosen to take his own time to consult her, and Mark was doing it now.
Perhaps he had felt it might be more decent to let poor Dr. Davenal be
put under the ground before he spoke of applying the money in a way so
diametrically opposed to his last wishes.
He drew a letter from his pocket, one received that morning, and read
out its glowing promises. Mr. Barker was evidently fervent in his
belief of the future. Caroline listened as in a joyous dream. The
imaginary scene then dancing before her eyes of their future greatness
rivalled any of the scenes of fairyland.
"You see," said Mark, "Barker----who's that?"
The entrance of a visitor into the hall had caused the interruption.
Caroline bent her ear to listen.
"It is Aunt Bettina!" she exclaimed. "I am sure it is her voice, Mark.
Whatever brings her here tonight?"
Mark crunched the letter into his pocket again. "Mind, Caroline, not a
word of this to her!" he exclaimed, laying his hand on his wife as she
was rising. "It is not quite ready to be talked of yet." Miss Davenal
entered at once upon the subject which had brought her--their quitting
the Abbey for the other house. Mark understood she had come, as it
were, officially; to fix time and place and means; and he had no
resource but to tell her that he did not intend to enter upon it; did
not intend to embark Caroline's money in any such purpose; did not, in
fact, intend to remain in Hallingham.
There ensued a battle: it was nothing else. What with Miss Davenal's
indignation and what with Miss Davenal's deafness, the wordy war that
supervened could be called little else. Caroline sat pretty quiet at
first, taking her husband's side now and then.
"You tell me you are going to leave Hallingham, and you won't tell me
where you are going, or what you are going to do, Mark Cray!"
reiterated Miss Davenal.
"I'll tell you more about it when I know more myself."
"But you can tell me what it is; you can tell me where it is. Is it at
one of the London hospitals?"
"It is in London," was Mark's answer, allowing the hospital to be
assumed.
"Then Mark Cray you are very wicked. And you"--turning to
Caroline--"are foolish to uphold him in it. How can you think of
giving up such a practice as this?"
"I am tired of Hallingham," avowed Mark with blunt truth, for he was
getting vexed.
"You are--what?" cried Miss Davenal, not catching the words.
"Sick and tired of Hallingham. And I don't care who knows it."
Miss Davenal looked at him with some curiosity. "Is he gone out of his
senses, Caroline?"
"I am tired of Hallingham, too, aunt," said Caroline, audaciously. "I
want to live in London."
"And the long and the short of it is, that we mean to live in London,
Miss Bettina," avowed Mark. "There. I don't care that my talents
should be buried in a poking country place any longer."
She looked from one to the other of them; she could not take it in.
Sharp anger was rendering her ears somewhat more open than usual.
"Buried!--a poking country place! And what of the twelve or fifteen
hundred a-year practice that you would lightly throw away, Mark Cray?"
"Oh, I shall do better than that in London. I have got a post offered
me worth double that."
She paused a few moments. "And what; are you to give for it?"
"Never mind that," said Mark.
"Yes, never mind that," rejoined Miss Bettina in a tone of bitter
sarcasm. "When it comes to details, you can take refuge in 'never
mind.' Do you suppose such posts are given away for nothing, Mark
Cray? Who has been befooling you?"
"But it will not be given for nothing," cried Caroline, betrayed to
the injudicious avowal by the partizanship of her husband. "The money
that is coining to me will be devoted to it."
This was the climax. Miss Bettina Davenal was very wroth; wroth
however, more in sorrow than in anger. In vain she strove to sift the
affair to the bottom; Mark baffled her questions, baffled her
indignant curiosity, and--it must be confessed--his wife helped him.
She--Miss Bettina--turned away in the midst of the storm. She took up
her black gloves, the only article of attire that she had removed, and
drew them on her trembling hands. In the shaking of the hands alone
did Bettina Davenal ever betray emotion: those firm, white, rather
bony hands, usually so still and self-possessed.
"Marcus Cray, as surely as that you are standing now before me, you
will rue this work if you carry it out. When that day shall come, I
beg you--I beg _you_, Caroline--to remember that I warned you of it."
She passed out without another word, and stalked down the lighted
street, uncomfortably upright, Neal behind her with his ginger tread.