Mark Cray

“ Mark Cray, as he walked home with his wife afterwards, remarked that it was "slow." But nobody dreamt of anything like fear for the doctor, save his daughter and the Reverend Mr. Stephenson.
"I can never be sufficiently grateful to you, sir," murmured the clergyman, as he was leaving. "Neither can my brother. You have done for us what I believe no other man living would have done. May Heaven reward you, and restore you to health and strength!" ”

“ But Dr. Davenal did not satisfy him: not that he had any particular motive for observing reticence on the point. "It is of no consequence. I must have been mistaken," was all he said.
"You will not forbid her to me, sir?" pleaded Mr. Cray.
A spasm of pain passed across the face of Dr. Davenal; the words had called up bitter recollections.
"So long as I live I shall never forbid a marriage to any over whom I hold control," he said, in a tone of subdued anguish; and Mark Cray knew where the sting had pointed, and wished in his good-nature he had not put the question. ”

“ Mark, an utter tyro in mines and all that concerns them, including companies, saw only with Barker's eyes. When Mr. Barker assured the entranced shareholders that one hundred pounds put into the Great Wheal Bang would multiply tenfold and tenfold, he spoke only the sanguine belief of his heart. When Mark Cray declared to his brother Oswald that a thousand pounds embarked in it by him would make him a rich man for life, he asserted the honest truth according to his conviction. ”

“ The English Monsieur had no money. It was a double letter: sixteen sous."
"Ah, no change," said Monsieur Le Bleu, with a delicacy that many might have envied, as he turned his eyes from Mark Cray's downcast face. "It's a general complaint. I never knew the small change so scarce as it is: one can get nothing but gold. Hold, I'll take the letter from you, facteur, and monsieur can repay me when he gets change."
The surgeon handed the sixteen sous to the postman, and gave the letter to Mark. Mark spoke some obscure words about repaying him on the morrow, and broke the seal. ”

“ Mark Cray rose from his seat. The word "risk" offended his pride, and he could only wonder that any one could be idiot enough to use it in connection with the Great Wheal Bang Mine. But Mark had no need to solicit now the taking of shares: half London was ready to snap them up: and he was too great a man to permit his time to be wasted unnecessarily.
"Consider over it, if you please, until tomorrow morning, Mr. Gilham," he said, as he moved away. "You can see the secretary if you come in before ten. After that the shares will not be disposable." ”

“ 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. ”

“ To a mind less matter-of-fact than Mark Cray's that star might have seemed as a ray of hope; an earnest that skies do not remain gloomy for ever.
Mark turned in at his little garden, and was about to ring gingerly at the house door; as one, not upon the most cordial terms with a frowning landlady, likes to ring ”

“ Mr. Barker advanced to the stairs, and leaned over the balustrades. "Williams," he called out to an attendant official below, "you can open the doors. The gentlemen may come up."
It was curious to note the difference in the two men. Barker was as cool as a cucumber; self-possessed as ever he had been in his life; ready to make the best of everything, and quite equal to the emergency. Mark Cray, on the contrary, seemed to have parted alike with his wits and his nerves. Not more completely did he lose his presence of mind in that long past evening which had been so fatal to Lady Oswald. ”

“ That was all he had earned, this ten francs and the three for the tooth, besides the present made him at the hotel.
How were they to get along? How had they got along? They, poor sufferers, looking to the past, could hardly tell. Barker, who was in Paris still, full of wild hopes as usual, had sent Mark once a hundred-franc note in a letter and a promise of more; a little had come to Caroline from Barbadoes, for she had told of her woes; and so they existed somehow. Mark Cray was by no means one to sit down tamely and starve; any hopeless scheme rather than that ”

“ Davenal had been hoping, it may almost be said secretly plotting--but the plotting was very innocent--to get Lady Oswald to favour Mark Cray sufficiently to allow of his paying these daily visits. Since then Lady Oswald had, of her own accord, become excessively attached to Mark. That is, attached in one sense of the word. It was not the genuine esteem founded on long intimacy, the love, it may be almost said, that draws one friend to another; it was that artificial liking which suddenly arises, and has its result in praising and patronising; artificial because so shallow. ”

“ Miss Bettina stared hopelessly. "Oswald Cray got you out of the mine! What are you talking of?"
"Out of the carriage, aunt; not out of the mine. That's in Wales."
"Do you suppose I thought it was in London?" retorted offended Miss Bettina. "You'll be obligingly informing me where London is next. Where is Mark Cray?"
"No one seems to know. His wife does not; except that he said to her he might have to go down to Wales this evening, and she was not to mention it. She is in great uncertainty and distress."
"What's she in?"
"Uncertainty, distress," repeated Sara. "She is as frightened as a child. ”

“ Then, after awhile, the carriage came up, bringing the help from Hallingham. Mark Cray saw Dr. Davenal with the greatest pleasure, and he took him at once towards Lady Oswald.
"Are many hurt?" inquired the doctor.
"Astonishingly few," was the reply; "and the hurts are of a very minor character, I fancy. A broken arm is about the worst."
"And what of Lady Oswald?"
"I don't think she's hurt at all: she's suffering from the shock. A little exhausted; but that's natural."
"To a woman of her age such a shock is no light thing, Mark. However, we must do the best we can for everybody." ”

“ If half the boys have friends who prefer play to work for them, I'm only glad the other half set a better example. Dicky, boy, you'll enjoy your Midsummer holidays all the more keenly for having none at Easter."
The doctor caught hold of the boy and wound his arm affectionately round him as they proceeded across the hall to the breakfast-room. Miss Davenal greeted Sara with one of her severest aspects, but before she could begin her lecture, Mark Cray had burst in upon them. ”

“ He is a good man, and I dare say he is making money. Those civil engineers get on well."
"I said Mark Cray, Aunt Bett," repeated the doctor.
"Mark! He won't do. He is only a boy. He has got neither house nor money."
"Just what I say," said the doctor. "I tell her they must wait."
"Mad! to be sure they must be mad, both of them," complaisantly acquiesced Miss Davenal.
"Wait, I said, Bettina," roared the doctor.
"You need not rave at me, Richard. ”

“ Perhaps the only person within the circle of Mark Cray's acquaintance not bitten by the Wheal Bang fever was Miss Davenal. Even Oswald Cray was to succumb at last. He would not become a shareholder; he was too cautious a man to enter upon possible future liabilities, the extent of which no human being could foretell: but he did feel inclined to put a thousand pounds into Mark's hands, and tell him to do the best with it. It may almost be said that Oswald was worried into doing this. Mark would not let him rest. ”

“ Dick did not ask.
If ever an unfortunate company had come to grief more completely than other unfortunate companies, it was surely that noted one, the Great Wheal Bang. Sympathising friends--Barker's and Mark's--were wont to assure those gentlemen that they had "managed wretchedly:" and if we may dare to assume that the reproach was levelled at the fact of having secured nothing for themselves, it was a right one. On the day that Mark Cray went up to the offices for the last time he had but a trifling sum of money about him: Caroline had even less in her own purse ”

“ 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. ”

“ They assumed he was out of the country, most probably with Barker, and perhaps their home search was, through that very assumption, less minute than it might have been. A run from danger is always more formidable than a faced one; and if Mark Cray had only faced those shareholders he would no doubt have found their bite less hurtful than their bark. That they were loud and threatening and angry, was true; but Mark would have done well to meet the worst, and get it over. The luxurious house in Grosvenor Place had been long ago abandoned by Mark and his wife ”

“ In the few confidential words he had just exchanged with Barker on going out the latter had said: "We must get all the money we can, for we shall want it. Water, no matter how slight the irruption, plays the very deuce with the costs of a mine." And Mark Cray, to avert, or help to avert, or to conceal the calamity, was quite ready to sacrifice his own good faith and the money of his brother.
CHAPTER XLII. IN THE TEMPLE GARDENS.
You have heard and read of those false promises that keep faith to the eye and break it to the spirit, bringing a flood-tide of anguish in their train. ”

“ Davenal had behaved generously. He increased Mark Cray's share to four hundred a-year, and he gave them a cheque for three hundred pounds for furniture. "You must be content to have things at the beginning in a plain way, if you must be in a hurry," he said to them; "when you get on you can add costly furniture by degrees." Miss Bettina would not give anything. Not a penny-piece. "No," she said to Caroline; "you are flying in the face of wiser heads than yours, and I will not encourage it. If you don't mind, you'll come to grief." ”

“ All Mark's embarrassment, his evasion, his crusty unwillingness to speak frankly, Oswald set down to an anxiety to screen Dr. Davenal from the reproach of imprudence. One more remark he did make. It arose to his mind as he was about to depart, and he spoke it on the spur of the thought.
"I understand you fancy that Dr. Davenal absented himself from Hallingham to avoid attending the coroner's inquest."
"Where on earth did you hear that?" shouted Mark, with a stare of surprise.
"Your wife mentioned it to me just now."
Mark Cray waxed wroth. "What idiots women are! The very best of them! ”

“ I have enjoined Mark Cray to pay three hundred pounds yearly to Sara for five years, out of the proceeds of the practice. He can well afford to do it: and if you will give her a home, this had better be invested for her, Bettina. ”

“ I should think so," returned Miss Bettina. "If ever a man made that, it was Mark Cray when he threw up Hallingham. But what's she come for? And why did she go to you instead of to me?"
But Sara had drawn near to Oswald. She had heard the explanation aright, and the words "fatal complaint" frightened her. "Do you know what it is?" she asked. "Is she very ill?"
"She is so ill, if her looks may be trusted, that I should think she cannot live long," he answered. "I came down to you at once. Something must be done with her; we cannot let her go back to Watton's. ”

“ When it comes to starving with a man, there's not much choice. So the decision was made, and Mark Cray was going out immediately to Barbadoes, and was to take charge of Leopold Davenal.
Once before you saw Miss Davenal waiting in that Abbey for the return of a bridegroom and bride from their wedding-tour. She was so waiting in like manner now. Oswald Cray and his wife had stopped at Thorndyke for a day or two on their return, as they were now about to stop at Hallingham, on their way to their new home in London. ”

“ He is in just at meals, and not always to them."
Oswald smiled still. "You had lived in a doctor's house, Mrs. Cray, and knew the routine of it."
"My uncle's house was not like this. Who can compare the great Dr. Davenal at the top of the tree, waiting at home for his patients to come to him, to poor Mark Cray at the bottom, just beginning to climb it? It's not the same thing, Mr. Oswald Cray. Mark has to be out, here and there and everywhere. At the Infirmary, dancing attendance on interminable rows of beds one hour ”

“ Davenal condemned him he alone could tell; but--was it his, the doctor's place, to hold him forth to the condemnation of the world? No; he, the merciful man, thought it could not be. One strong point on the side of this mercy was--that the proclaiming the facts could be productive of no good result; they could not recall the mistaken act; they could not bring the unfortunate lady back to life. It might be said that it should be made known as a warning to others not to trust Mark Cray ”