Mary Oswald married Mr. Cray, and he brought her home to Hallingham
Abbey, and her friends never saw her after; that is, they never would
recognise her. Many a Tuesday, on which day the family from Thorndyke
would drive into Hallingham in their carriage and four--as was the
habit with some of the county people--did they pass her without
notice. They would be in the large close carriage, the old baronet
and my lady, and their daughter Frances--who had no home now but
theirs--opposite to them, and they would see Mrs. Cray at the Abbey
windows, alone or with her husband, as the case might be, for their
road took them past it, and all the greeting they gave her was a stony
stare. Time went on, and there appeared a baby at her side, a pretty
little fellow in long petticoats, held in his nurse's arms. That baby
was named Oswald Oswald, and was the Mr. Oswald Cray whom you have
seen: but the stare from the baronet's carriage was not less stony
than before.
A twelvemonth more, when Oswald could just begin to run about in his
pretty white frocks, and get his sturdy legs into grief, his hands
into mischief, another child was born, and died. Poor Mrs. Cray died
herself a few weeks afterwards. People said she had grown weak,
fretting after Thorndyke, after her father and mother, lamenting their
hardness, regretting her own disobedience; but people are prone to
talk, and often say things for which there's not a shadow of
foundation. She died without having seen her friends--unreconciled;
and when Mr. Cray wrote to Sir Oswald a very proper letter, not
familiar, but giving the details of her death, no answer was accorded
him. Mrs. Cray, as Mary Oswald, had possessed a small income
independent of her father, and this on her death passed to her little
son. It was just one hundred and six pounds per year, and she made it
her dying request that he should use the surname of Oswald in addition
to that of Cray--should be known henceforth as Master Oswald Cray.
And it was so; and when the boy first entered a noted public school
for gentlemen's sons, far away from Hallingham, and the boys saw him
sign his exercises and copies "O. Oswald Cray," they asked him what
the "O" was for. For his Christian name, he answered. Was not Oswald
his Christian name? they wanted to know. Yes, his Christian and his
surname both, he said--Oswald Oswald. It was his grandpapa's Christian
and surname, Sir Oswald Oswald. Oh! was _he_ his grandfather asked the
boys. Yes; but--Oswald added in his innate love of truth--he had never
been the better for him, Sir Oswald had never spoken to him in his
life; there was something unpleasant between him and his papa, he did
not know what. No; at that stage of the boy's age he was unconscious
what the breach was, or that his dead mother had made it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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