The Shadow of Ashlydyat

“When shall you be coming back again?” inquired Mr. Hastings.

“Within a week. Unless my father’s state should forbid it. I may be wishing to take a holiday at Christmas time, or thereabouts, so shall not stay away now. George is absent, too.”

“Staying at Broomhead?”

“No; he is not at Broomhead now.”

“Will you take charge of Maria? We want her home.”

“If you wish it, I will. But I should think they would all be returning very shortly. Christmas is intended to be spent here.”

“You may depend upon it, Christmas will not see Lady Godolphin at Prior’s Ash, unless the fever shall have departed to spend its Christmas in some other place,” cried the Rector.

“Well, I shall hear their plans when I get there.”

“Bring back Maria with you, Mr. Godolphin. Tell her it is my wish. Unless you find that there’s a prospect of her speedy return with Lady Godolphin. In that case, you may leave her.”

“Very well,” replied Thomas Godolphin.

He continued his way, and Mr. Hastings looked after him in the bright moonlight, till his form disappeared in the shadows cast by the roadside trees.

It was striking ten as Thomas Godolphin opened the iron gates at Lady Sarah Grame’s: the heavy clock-bell of All Souls’ came sounding upon his ear in the stillness of the night. The house, all except from one window, looked dark: even the hall-lamp was out, and he feared they might all have retired. From that window a dull light shone behind the blind: a stationary light it had been of late, to be seen by any nocturnal wayfarer all night long; for it came from the sick-chamber.

Elizabeth opened the door. “Oh, sir!” she exclaimed in the surprise of seeing him so late, “I think Miss Ethel has gone up to bed.”

Lady Sarah came hastening down the stairs as he stepped into the hall: she also was surprised at the late visit.

“I would not have disturbed you, but that I am about to leave for Broomhead,” he explained. “A telegraphic despatch has arrived from Lady Godolphin, calling me thither. I should like to see Ethel, if not inconvenient to her. I know not how long I may be away.”

“I sent Ethel to bed: her head ached,” said Lady Sarah. “It is not many minutes since she went up. Oh, Mr. Godolphin, this has been such a day of grief! heads and hearts alike aching.”

Thomas Godolphin entered the drawing-room, and Lady Sarah Grame called Ethel down, and then returned to her sick daughter’s room. Ethel came instantly. The fire in the drawing-room was still alight, and Elizabeth had been in to stir it up. Thomas Godolphin stood over it with Ethel, telling her of his coming journey and its cause. The red embers threw a glow upon her face: her brow looked heavy, her eyes swollen.

He saw the signs, and laid his hand fondly upon her head. “What has given you this headache, Ethel?”

The ready tears came into her eyes. “It does ache very much,” she answered.

“Has crying caused it?”

“Yes,” she replied. “It is of no use to deny it, for you would see it by my swollen eyelids. I have wept to-day until it seems that I can weep no longer, and it has made my eyes ache and my head dull and heavy.”

“But, my darling, you should not give way to this grief. It may render you seriously ill.”

“Oh, Thomas! how can I help it?” she returned, with emotion, as the tears dropped swiftly over her cheeks. “We begin to see that there is no chance of Sarah Anne’s recovery. Mr. Snow told mamma so to-day: and he sent up Mr. Hastings.”

“Ethel, will your grieving alter it?”

Ethel wept silently. There was full and entire confidence between her and Thomas Godolphin: she could speak out all her thoughts, her troubles to him, as she could have told them to a mother—if she had had a mother who loved her.

“If she were only a little more prepared to go, the pain would seem less,” breathed Ethel. “That is, we might feel more reconciled to losing her. But you know what she is, Thomas. When I have tried to talk a little bit about heaven, or to read a psalm to her, she would not listen: she said it made her dull, it gave her the horrors. How can she, who has never thought of God, be fit to meet Him?”

Ethel’s tears were deepening into sobs. Thomas Godolphin involuntarily thought of what Mr. Hastings had just said to him. His hand still rested on Ethel’s head.

“You are fit to meet Him?” he exclaimed involuntarily. “Ethel, whence can have arisen the difference between you? You are sisters; reared in the same home.”

“I do not know,” said Ethel simply. “I have always thought a great deal about heaven; I suppose it is that. A lady, whom we knew as children, used to buy us a good many story-books, and mine were always stories of heaven. It was that which first got me into the habit of thinking of it.”

“And why not Sarah Anne?”

“Sarah Anne would not read them. She liked stories of gaiety and excitement; balls, and things like that.”

Thomas smiled; the words were so simple and natural. “Had the fiat gone forth for you, instead of for her, Ethel, it would have brought you no dismay?”

“Only that I must leave all my dear ones behind me,” she answered, looking up at him, a bright smile shining through her tears. “I should know that God would not take me, unless it were for the best. Oh, Thomas! if we could only save her!”

“Child, you contradict yourself. If what God does must be for the best—and it is—that thought should reconcile you to parting with Sarah Anne.”

“Y—es,” hesitated Ethel. “Only I fear she has never thought of it herself, or in any way prepared for it.”

“Do you know that I have to find fault with you?” resumed Thomas Godolphin, after a pause. “You have not been true to me, Ethel.”

She turned her eyes upon him in surprise.

“Did you not promise me—did you not promise Mr. Snow, not to enter your sister’s chamber while the fever was upon her? I hear that you were in it often: her head nurse.”

A hot colour flushed into Ethel’s face. “Forgive me, Thomas,” she whispered; “I could not help myself. Sarah Anne—it was on the third morning of her illness, when I was getting up—suddenly began to cry out for me very much, and mamma came to my bedroom and desired me to go to her. I said that Mr. Snow had forbidden me, and that I had promised you. It made mamma angry. She asked if I could be so selfish as to regard a promise before Sarah Anne’s life; that she might die if I thwarted her: and she took me by the arm and pulled me in. I would have told you, Thomas, that I had broken my word; I wished to tell you; but mamma forbade me to do so.”

Thomas Godolphin stood looking at her. There was nothing to answer: he had known, in his deep and trusting love, that the fault had not lain with Ethel. She mistook his silence, thinking he was vexed.

“You know, Thomas, so long as I am here in mamma’s home, her child, it is to her that I owe obedience,” she gently pleaded. “As soon as I shall be your wife, I shall owe it and give it implicitly to you.”

“You are right, my darling.”

“And it has produced no ill consequences,” she resumed. “I did not catch the fever. Had I found myself growing in the least ill, I should have sent for you and told you the truth.”

“Ethel?” he impulsively cried—very impulsively for calm Thomas Godolphin; “had you caught the fever, I should never have forgiven those who led you into danger. I could not lose you.”

“Hark!” said Ethel. “Mamma is calling.”

Lady Sarah had been calling to Mr. Godolphin. Thinking she was not heard, she now came downstairs and entered the room, wringing her hands; her eyes were overflowing, her sharp thin nose was redder than usual. “Oh dear! I don’t know what we shall do with her!” she uttered. “She is so ill, and it makes her so fretful. Mr. Godolphin, nothing will satisfy her now but she must see you.”

“See me!” repeated he.

“She will, she says. I told her you were departing for Scotland, and she burst out crying, and said if she were to die she should never see you again. Do you mind going in? You are not afraid?”

“No, I am not afraid,” said Thomas Godolphin. “Infection cannot have remained all this time. And if it had, I should not fear it.”

Lady Sarah Grame led the way upstairs. Thomas followed her. Ethel stole in afterwards. Sarah Anne lay in bed, her thin face, drawn and white, raised upon the pillow; her hollow eyes were strained forward with a fixed look. Ill as he had been led to suppose her, he was scarcely prepared to see her like this; and it shocked him. A cadaverous face, looking ripe for the tomb.

“Why have you never come to see me?” she asked in her hollow voice, as he approached and leaned over her. “You’d never have come till I died. You only care for Ethel.”

“I would have come to see you had I known you wished it,” he answered. “But you do not look strong enough to receive visitors.”

“They might cure me, if they would,” she continued, panting for breath. “I want to go away somewhere, and that Snow won’t let me. If it were Ethel, he would take care to cure her.”

“He will let you go as soon as you are equal to it, I am sure,” said Thomas Godolphin.

“Why should the fever have come to me at all?—Why couldn’t it have gone to Ethel instead? She’s strong. She would have got well in no time. It’s not fair–”

“My dear child, my dear, dear child, you must not excite yourself,” implored Lady Sarah, abruptly interrupting her.

“I shall speak,” cried Sarah Anne, with a touch, feeble though it was, of her old peevish vehemence. “Nobody’s thought of but Ethel. If you had had your way,” looking hard at Mr. Godolphin, “she wouldn’t have been allowed to come near me; no, not if I had died.”

Her mood changed to tears. Lady Sarah whispered to him to leave the room: it would not do, this excitement. Thomas wondered why he had been brought to it. “I will come and see you again when you are better,” he soothingly whispered.

“No you won’t,” sobbed Sarah Anne. “You are going to Scotland, and I shall be dead when you come back. I don’t want to die. Why do they frighten me with their prayers? Good-bye, Thomas Godolphin.”

The last words were called after him; when he had taken his leave of her and was quitting the room. Lady Sarah attended him to the threshold: her eyes full, her hands lifted. “You may see that there’s no hope of her!” she wailed.

Thomas did not think there was the slightest hope. To his eye—though it was not so practised an eye in sickness as Mr. Snow’s, or even as that of the Rector of All Souls’—it appeared that in a very few days, perhaps hours, hope for Sarah Anne Grame would be over for ever.

Ethel waited for him in the hall, and was leading the way back to the drawing-room; but he told her he could not stay longer, and opened the front door. She ran past him into the garden, putting her hand into his as he came out.

“I wish you were not going away,” she sadly said, her spirits, that night very unequal, causing her to see things with a gloomy eye.

“I wish you were going with me!” replied Thomas Godolphin. “Do not weep, Ethel. I shall soon be back again.”

“Everything seems to make me weep to-night. You may not be back until—until the worst is over. Oh! if she might but be saved!”

He held her face close to him, gazing down at it in the moonlight. And then he took from it his farewell kiss. “God bless you, my darling, for ever and for ever!”

“May He bless you, Thomas!” she answered, with streaming eyes: and, for the first time in her life, his kiss was returned. Then they parted. He watched Ethel indoors, and went back to Prior’s Ash.

CHAPTER XII.

DEAD

“Thomas, my son, I must go home. I don’t want to die away from Ashlydyat!”

A dull pain shot across Thomas Godolphin’s heart at the words. Did he think of the old superstitious tradition—that evil was to fall upon the Godolphins when their chief should die, and not at Ashlydyat? At Ashlydyat his father could not die; he had put that out of his power when he let it to strangers: in its neighbourhood, he might.

“The better plan, sir, will be for you to return to the Folly, as you seem to wish it,” said Thomas. “You will soon be strong enough to undertake the journey.”

The decaying knight was sitting on a sofa in his bedroom. His second fainting-fit had lasted some hours—if that, indeed, was the right name to give to it—and he had recovered, only to be more and more weak. He had grown pretty well after the first attack—when Margery had found him in his chamber on the floor, the day Lady Godolphin had gone to pay her visit to Selina. The next time, he was on the lawn before the house, talking to Charlotte Pain, when he suddenly fell to the ground. He did not recover his consciousness until evening; and nearly the first wish he expressed was a desire to see his son Thomas. “Telegraph for him,” he said to Lady Godolphin.

“But you are not seriously ill, Sir George,” she had answered.

“No; but I should like him here. Telegraph to him to start by first train.”

And Lady Godolphin did so, accordingly, sending the message that angered Miss Godolphin. But, in this case, Lady Godolphin did not deserve so much blame as Janet cast on her: for she did debate the point with herself whether she should say Sir George was ill, or not. Believing that these two fainting-fits had proceeded from want of strength only, that they were but the effect of his long previous illness, and would lead to no bad result, she determined not to speak of it. Hence the imperfect message.

Neither did Thomas Godolphin see much cause for fear when he arrived at Broomhead. Sir George did not look better than when he had left Prior’s Ash, but neither did he look much worse. On this, the second day, he had been well enough to converse with Thomas upon business affairs: and, that over, he suddenly broke out with the above wish. Thomas mentioned it when he joined Lady Godolphin afterwards. It did not meet with her approbation.

“You should have opposed it,” said she to him in a firm, hard tone.

“But why so, madam?” asked Thomas. “If my father’s wish is to return to Prior’s Ash, he should return.”

“Not while the fever lingers there. Were he to take it—and die—you would never forgive yourself.”

Thomas had no fear of the fever on his own score, and did not fear it for his father. He intimated as much. “It is not the fever that will hurt him, Lady Godolphin.”

“You have no right to say that. Lady Sarah Grame, a month ago, might have said she did not fear it for Sarah Anne. And now Sarah Anne is dying!”

“Or dead,” put in Charlotte Pain, who was leaning listlessly against the window frame devoured with ennui.

“Shall you be afraid to go back to Prior’s Ash?” he asked of Maria Hastings.

“Not at all,” replied Maria. “I should not mind if I were going to-day, as far as the fever is concerned.”

“That is well,” he said. “Because I have orders to convey you back with me.”

Charlotte Pain lifted her head with a start. The news aroused her. Maria, on the contrary, thought he was speaking in jest.

“No, indeed I am not,” said Thomas Godolphin. “Mr. Hastings made a request to me, madam, that I should take charge of his daughter when I returned,” continued he to Lady Godolphin. “He wants her at home, he says.”

“Mr. Hastings is very polite!” ironically replied my lady. “Maria will go back when I choose to spare her.”

“I hope you will allow her to return with me—unless you shall soon be returning yourself,” said Thomas Godolphin.

“It is not I that shall be returning to Prior’s Ash yet,” said my lady. “The sickly old place must give proof of renewed health first. You will not see either me or Sir George there on this side Christmas.”

“Then I think, Lady Godolphin, you must offer no objection to my taking charge of Maria,” said Thomas courteously, but firmly, leaving the discussion of Sir George’s return to another opportunity. “I passed my word to Mr. Hastings.”

Charlotte Pain, all animation now, approached Lady Godolphin. She was thoroughly sick and tired of Broomhead: since George Godol phin’s departure, she had been projecting how she could get away from it. Here was a solution to her difficulty.

“Dear Lady Godolphin, you must allow me to depart with Mr. Godolphin—whatever you may do with Maria Hastings,” she exclaimed. “I said nothing to you—for I really did not see how I was to get back, knowing you would not permit me to travel so far alone—but Mrs. Verrall is very urgent for my return. And now that she is suffering from this burn, as Mr. Godolphin has brought us news, it is the more incumbent upon me to be at home.”

Which was a nice little fib of Miss Charlotte’s. Her sister had never once hinted that she wished her home again; but a fib or two more or less was nothing to Charlotte.

“You are tired of Broomhead,” said Lady Godolphin.

Charlotte’s colour never varied, her eye never drooped, as she protested that she should not tire of Broomhead were she its inmate for a twelvemonth; that it was quite a paradise upon earth. Maria kept her head bent while Charlotte said it, half afraid lest unscrupulous Charlotte should call upon her to bear testimony to her truth. Only that very morning she had protested to Maria that the ennui of the place was killing her.

“I don’t know,” said Lady Godolphin shrewdly. “Unless I am wrong, Charlotte, you have been anxious to leave. What was it that Mr. George hinted at—about escorting you young ladies home—and I stopped him ere it was half spoken? Prior’s Ash would talk if I sent you home under his convoy.”

“Mr. Godolphin is not George,” rejoined Charlotte.

“No, he is not,” replied my lady significantly.

The subject of departure was settled amicably; both the young ladies were to return to Prior’s Ash under the charge of Mr. Godolphin. There are some men, single men though they be, and not men in years, whom society is content to recognize as entirely fit escorts. Thomas Godolphin was one of them. Had my lady despatched the young ladies home under Mr. George’s wing, she might never have heard the last of it from Prior’s Ash: but the most inveterate scandalmonger in it would not have questioned the trustworthiness of his elder brother. My lady was also brought to give her consent to her own departure for it by Christmas, provided Mr. Snow would assure her that the place was “safe.”

In a day or two Thomas Godolphin spoke to his father of his marriage arrangements. He had received a letter from Janet, written the morning after his departure, in which she agreed to the proposal that Ethel should be her temporary guest. This removed all barrier to the immediate union.

“Then you marry directly, if Sarah Anne lives?”

“Directly. In January, at the latest.”

“God bless you both!” cried the old knight. “She’ll be a wife in a thousand, Thomas.”

Thomas thought she would. He did not say it.

“It’s the best plan; it’s the best plan,” continued Sir George in a dreamy tone, gazing into the fire. “No use to turn the girls out of their home. It will not be for long; not for long. Thomas”—turning his haggard, but still fine blue eye upon his son—“I wish I had never left Ashlydyat!”

Thomas was silent. None had more bitterly regretted the departure from it than he.

“I wish I could go back to it to die!”

“My dear father, I hope that you will yet live many years to bless us. If you can get through this winter—and I see no reason whatever why you should not, with care—you may regain your strength and be as well again as any of us.”

Sir George shook his head. “It will not be, Thomas; I shall not long keep you out of Ashlydyat. Mind!” he added, turning upon Thomas with surprising energy, “I will go back before Christmas to Prior’s Ash. The last Christmas that I see shall be spent with my children.”

“Yes, indeed, I think you should come back to us,” warmly acquiesced Thomas.

“Therefore, if you find, when Christmas is close upon us, that I am not amongst you, that you hear no tidings of my coming amongst you, you come off at once and fetch me. Do you hear, Thomas? I enjoin it upon you now with a father’s authority; do not forget it, or disobey it. My lady fears the fever, and would keep me here: but I must be at Prior’s Ash.”

“I will certainly obey you, my father,” replied Thomas Godolphin.

Telegraphic despatches seemed to be the order of the day with Thomas Godolphin. They were all sitting together that evening, Sir George having come downstairs, when a servant called Thomas out of the room. A telegraphic message had arrived for him at the station, and a man had brought it over. A conviction of what it contained flashed over Thomas Godolphin’s heart as he opened it—the death of Sarah Anne Grame.

From Lady Sarah it proved to be. Not a much more satisfactory message than had been Lady Godolphin’s; for if hers had not been explanatory, this was incoherent.

“The breath has just gone out of my dear child’s body. I will write by next post. She died at four o’clock. How shall we all bear it?”

Thomas returned to the room; his mind full. In the midst of his sorrow and regret for Sarah Anne, his compassion for Lady Sarah—and he did feel all that with true sympathy—intruded the thought of his own marriage. It must be postponed now.

“What did Andrew want with you?” asked Sir George, when he entered.

“A telegraphic message had come for me from Prior’s Ash.”

“A business message?”

“No, sir. It is from Lady Sarah.”

By the tone of his voice, by the falling of his countenance, they could read instinctively what had occurred. But they kept silence, all,—waiting for him to speak further.

“Poor Sarah Anne is gone. She died at four o’clock.”

“This will delay your plans, Thomas,” observed Sir George, after some minutes had been given to expressions of regret.

“It will, sir.”

The knight leaned over to his son, and spoke in a whisper, meant for his ear alone: “I shall not be very long after her. I feel that I shall not. You may yet take Ethel home at once to Ashlydyat.”

Very early indeed did they start in the morning, long before daybreak. Prior’s Ash they would reach, all things being well, at nine at night. Margery was sent to attend them, a very dragon of a guardian, as particular as Miss Godolphin herself—had a guardian been necessary.

A somewhat weary day; a long one, at any rate; but at last their train steamed into the station at Prior’s Ash. It was striking nine. Mr. Hastings was waiting for Maria, and Mrs. Verrall’s carriage for Charlotte Pain. A few minutes were spent in collecting the luggage.

“Shall I give you a seat as far as the bank, Mr. Godolphin?” inquired Charlotte, who must pass it on her way to Ashlydyat.

“Thank you, no. I shall just go up for a minute’s call upon Lady Sarah Grame.”

Mr. Hastings, who had been placing Maria in a fly, heard the words. He turned hastily, caught Thomas Godolphin’s hand, and drew him aside.

“Are you aware of what has occurred?”

“Alas, yes!” replied Thomas. “Lady Sarah telegraphed to me last night.”

The Rector pressed his hand, and returned to his daughter. Thomas Godolphin struck into a by-path, a short cut from the station, which would take him to Grame House.

Six days ago, exactly, since he had been there before. The house looked precisely as it had looked then, all in darkness, excepting the faint light that burned from Sarah Anne’s chamber. It burnt there still. Then it was lighting the living; now–

Thomas Godolphin rang the bell gently.—Does any one like to do otherwise at a house in which death is an inmate? Elizabeth, as usual, opened the door, and burst into tears when she saw who it was. “I said it would bring you back, sir!” she exclaimed.

“Does Lady Sarah bear it pretty well?” he asked, as she showed him into the drawing-room.

“No, sir, not over well,” sobbed the girl. “I’ll tell my lady that you are here.”

He stood over the fire, as he had done the other night: it was low now, as it had been then. Strangely still seemed the house: he could almost have told that one was lying dead in it. He listened, waiting for Ethel’s step, hoping she would be the first to come to him.

Elizabeth returned. “My lady says would you be so good as to walk up to her, sir?”

Thomas Godolphin followed her upstairs. She made for the room to which he had been taken the former night—Sarah Anne’s chamber. In point of fact, the chamber of Lady Sarah, until it was given up to Sarah Anne for her illness. Elizabeth, with soft and stealthy tread, crossed the corridor to the door, and opened it.