Mrs. Henry Wood
Bessy Rane
A Novel
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4057664589309
Table of Contents
PART THE FIRST.
CHAPTER I.
THE ANONYMOUS LETTER.
It was an intensely dark night. What with the mist that hung around from below, and the unusual gloom above, Dr. Rane began to think he might have done well to bring a lantern with him, to guide his steps up Ham Lane, when he should turn into it. He would not be able to spare time to pick his way there. A gentleman--so news had been brought to him--was lying in sudden extremity, and his services as a medical man were being waited for.
Straight down, on the road before him, at only half-a-mile distance, lay the village of Dallory; so called after the Dallory family, who had been of importance in the neighbourhood in the years gone by. This little off-shoot was styled Dallory Ham. The latter name had given rise to disputes amidst antiquarians. Some maintained that the word Ham was only a contraction of hamlet, and that the correct name would be Dallory Hamlet: others asserted that the appellation arose from the circumstance that the public green, or common, was in the shape of a ham. As both sides brought logic and irresistible proof to bear on their respective opinions, contention never flagged. At no very remote period the Ham had been a grassy waste, given over to stray donkeys, geese, and gipsies. They were done away with now that houses encircled it; pretty villas of moderate dimensions, some cottages and a few shops: the high-road ran, as it always had done, straight through the middle of it. Dallory Ham had grown to think itself of importance, especially since the time when two doctors had established themselves in it: Dr. Rane and Mr. Alexander. Both lived in what might be called the neck of the Ham, which was nearest to Dallory proper.
Standing with your face towards Dallory (in the direction the doctor was hastening), his house was on the right-hand side. He had only now turned out of it. Dallory Hall, to which place Dr. Rane had been summoned, stood a little beyond the entrance to the Ham, lying back on the right in its grounds, and completely hidden by trees. It was inhabited by Mr. North.
Oliver Rane had come forth in haste and commotion. He could not understand the message, excepting the one broad fact that Edmund North, Mr. North's eldest son, was supposed to be dying. The servant, who brought it, did not seem to understand it either. He spoke of an anonymous letter that had been received by Mr. North, of disturbance thereupon, of a subsequent encounter--a sharp, brief quarrel--between Edmund North and Mr. Alexander, the surgeon; and of some sort of fit in which Edmund North was now lying senseless.
Dr. Rane was a gentlemanly man of middle height and slender frame, his age about thirty. The face in its small regular features might have been held to possess a dash of effeminacy, but for the resolute character of the firm mouth and the pointed chin. His eyes--rather too close together--whiskers and hair, were of a reddish brown, the latter worn brushed aside from the forehead; his teeth were white and even: altogether a good-looking man; but one of rather too silent manners, of too inscrutable a countenance to be very pleasing.
"An anonymous letter!" Dr. Rane had repeated to himself, with a sort of groan, hastening from his house as one greatly startled, and pursued his course down the Ham. Glancing across at Mr. Alexander's house, he felt a momentary temptation to go over and learn particulars--if, haply, the surgeon should be at home. The messenger had said that Mr. Alexander flung out of Dallory Hall in a passion, right in the middle of the quarrel; hence the summons for Dr. Rane. For Mr. Alexander, not Dr. Rane, was the Hall's medical attendant: this was the first time the latter had been so called upon.
They had come to Dallory within a day of each other, these two doctors, in consequence of the sudden death of its old practitioner; each hoping to secure the practice for himself. It was Mr. Alexander who chiefly gained it. Both were clever men; and it might have been at least an even race between them, but for the fact that Mrs. North, of Dallory Hall, set her face resolutely against Dr. Rane. The reason was inexplicable, since he had been led to believe that he should have the countenance of Mr. and Mrs. North. She did her best in a covert way to prevent his obtaining practice, pushing his rival--whom she really despised, and did not care a tittle for--into favour. Her object might not be to drive Oliver Rane from the spot, but it certainly seemed to look like it. So Mr. Alexander had obtained the lion's share of the practice in the best families, Dr. Rane but little; as to the poor, they were divided between them pretty equally. Both acted as general practitioners, and Mr. Alexander dispensed his own medicines. The rivals were outwardly cordial with each other; but Dr. Rane, no doubt, felt an inward smart at his want of success.
The temptation to dash over to Mr. Alexander's passed with the thought; there was no time for it. Dr. Rane pursued his course until he came to Ham Lane, an opening on the right, into which he turned, for it was a nearer way to the Hall. A narrow lane, green and lovely in early summer, with wild flowers nestling on its banks, dog-roses and honeysuckles clustering in its hedges. Here was the need of the lantern. But Dr. Rane sped on without regard to inadvertent steps that might land him in the ditch. Some excitement appeared to be upon him, far beyond any that might arise from the simple fact of being called out to a gentleman in a fit; yet he was by temperament very self-possessed, one of the calmest-mannered men living. A stile in the hedge on the left, which he found as if by instinct, took him at once into the grounds of Dallory Hall; whence there came wafting to him the scent of hyacinths, daffodils, and other spring flowers in delicious sweetness, spite of the density of the night-air. Not that Dr. Rane derived much advantage from the sweetness; nothing could seem delicious to him just then.
It was more open here, as compared with the lane, and not so intensely dark. Three minutes of the same heedless pace in and out of the winding walks, when he turned a point, and the old stone mansion was before him. A long, grey, sensible-looking house, of only two stories high, suggesting spacious rooms within. Lights shone from some of the windows and through the fan-light over the entrance-door. One of the gardeners crossed Dr. Rane's path.
"Is that you, Williams? Do you know how young Mr. North is?"
"I've not been told, sir. There's something wrong with him, we hear."
"Is this blight?" called back the doctor, alluding to the curiously dark mist.
"Not it, sir. It's nothing but the vapour rising from the day's heat. It have been hot for the first day o' May."
The door yielded to Dr. Rane's hand, and he went into the hall it was of fair size, and paved with stone. On the left were the drawing-rooms, on the right the dining-room, and also a room that was called Mr. North's parlour; a handsome staircase of stone wound up at the back. All the doors were closed; and as Dr. Rane stood for a moment in hesitation, a young lady in grey silk came swiftly and silently down the stairs. Her figure was small and slight, her face fair, pale, gentle, with the meekest look in her dove-like grey eyes. Her smooth, fine hair, of an exceedingly light brown, was worn in curls all round the head,