The Shadow of Ashlydyat

Reginald talked on, but Maria heard him not. An awful fear had been aroused within her. Entire as was her trust in her husband’s honour, improbable as the uncertain accusation was, the terrible fear that something or other might be wrong took possession of her, and turned her heart to sickness.

“I bought Meta a stuffed monkey out there,” continued Reginald, jerking his head to indicate some remote quarter of his travels. “I thought you’d not like me to bring home a live one for her—even if the skipper had allowed it to come in the ship. I came across a stuffed one cheap, and bought it.”

Maria roused herself to smile. “Have you brought it to Prior’s Ash?”

“Well—no,” confessed Reginald, coming down a tone or two. “The fact is, it went with the rest of my things. I’ll get her something better next voyage. And now I’m off, Maria, for Grace’s tea will be ready. Remember me to George Godolphin. I’ll come in and see him to-morrow.”

With a commotion, equal to that he had made in ascending, Reginald clattered down, and Maria saw him and his not too good sailor’s jacket go swaying up the street towards her sister’s. It was the only jacket of any sort Mr. Reginald possessed: and the only one he was likely to possess, until he could learn to keep himself and his clothes in better order.

Maria, with the new fear at her heart—which, strive as she might to thrust it indignantly from her, to ignore it, to reason herself out of it, would continue to be a fear, and a very horrible one—remained alone for the rest of the day. Just before bedtime, Margery came to her.

“I have been turning it over in my mind, ma’am, and have come to the conclusion that it might be as well if I do go to meet my sister. She’s always on the groan, it’s true: but maybe she is bad, and we might never have a chance of seeing each other again. So I think I’ll go.”

“Very well,” said Maria. “Harriet can attend to the child. What time in the morning must you be away, Margery?”

“By half-past six out of here,” answered Margery. “The train goes five minutes before seven. Could you let me have a little money, please, ma’am? I suppose I must give her a pound or two.”

Maria felt startled at the request. How was she to comply with it? “I have no money, Margery,” said she, her heart beating. “At least, I have very little. Too little to be of much use to you.”

“Then that stops it,” returned Margery with her abrupt freedom. “It’s of no good for me to think of going without money.”

“Have you none by you?” asked Maria. “It is a pity you must be away before the Bank opens in the morning.”

Before the Bank opens! Was it spoken in thoughtlessness? Or did she merely mean to indicate the hour of Thomas Godolphin’s arrival?

“What I have by me isn’t much,” said Margery. “A few shillings or so. It might take me there and bring me back again: but Selina will look glum if I don’t give her something.”

In Maria’s purse there remained the sovereign and seven shillings which George had seen there. She gave the sovereign to Margery, who could, if she chose, give it to her sister. Maria suggested that more could be sent to her by post-office order. Margery’s savings, what the Brays had spared of them, and a small legacy left her by her former mistress, Mrs. Godolphin, were in George’s hands. Would she ever see them? It was a question to be solved.

To her bed again to pass another night such as the last. As the last? Had this night been only as the last, it might have been more calmly borne. The coldness, the sleeplessness, the trouble and pain would have been there; but not the sharp agony, the awful dread she scarcely knew of what, arising from the incautious words of Reginald. It is only by comparison that we can form a true estimate of what is bad, what good. Maria Godolphin would have said the night before, that it was impossible for any to be worse than that: now she looked back upon it, and envied it by comparison. There had been the sense of the humiliation, the disgrace arising from an unfortunate commercial crisis in their affairs; but the worse dread which had come to her now was not so much as dreamt of. Shivering as one in mortal coldness, lay Maria, her brain alone burning, her mouth dry, her throat parched. When, oh when would the night be gone!

Far more unrefreshed did she arise this morning than on the previous one. The day was beautiful; the morning hot: but Maria seemed to shiver as with ague. Margery had gone on her journey, and Harriet, a maid who waited on Maria, attended to the child. Of course, with Margery away, Miss Meta ran riot in having her own will. She chose to breakfast with her mamma: and her mamma, who saw no particular objection, was not in spirits to oppose it.

She was seated at the table opposite Maria, revelling in coffee and good things, instead of plain bread and milk. A pretty picture, with her golden hair, her soft face, and her flushed cheeks. She wore a delicate pink frock and a white pinafore, the sleeves tied up with a light mauve-coloured ribbon, and her pretty little hands and arms were never still above the table. In the midst of her own enjoyment it appeared that she found leisure to observe that her mamma was taking nothing.

“Mamma, why don’t you eat some breakfast?”

“I am not hungry, Meta.”

“There’s Uncle Thomas!” she resumed.

Uncle Thomas! At half-past eight? But Meta was right. That was Mr. Godolphin’s voice in the hall, speaking to Pierce. A gleam of something like sunshine darted into Maria’s heart. His early arrival seemed to whisper of a hope that the Bank would be reopened—though Maria could not have told whence she drew the deduction.

She heard him go into the Bank. But, ere many minutes elapsed, he had come out again, and was knocking at the door of the breakfast-room.

“Come in.”

He came in: and a grievous sinking fell upon Maria’s heart as she looked at him. In his pale, sad countenance, bearing too evidently the traces of acute mental suffering, she read a death-blow to her hopes. Rising, she held out her hand, without speaking.

“Uncle Thomas, I’m having breakfast here,” put in a little intruding voice. “I’m having coffee and egg.”

Thomas laid his hand for a moment on the child’s head as he passed her. He took a seat a little away from the table, facing Maria, who turned to him.

“Pierce tells me that George is not here.”

“He went to London on Saturday afternoon,” said Maria. “Did you not see him there?”

“No,” replied Thomas, speaking very gravely.

“He bade me tell you this morning that he had gone—in case he did not see you himself in town.”

“Why has he gone? For what purpose?”

“I do not know,” answered Maria. “That was all he said to me.”

Thomas had his earnest dark-grey eyes fixed upon her. Their expression did not tend to lessen the sickness at Maria’s heart. “What address has he left?”

“He gave me none,” replied Maria. “I inferred from what he seemed to intimate that he would be very soon home again. I can scarcely remember what it was he really did say, his departure was so hurried. I knew nothing of it until he had packed his trunk. He said he was going to town on business, and that I was to tell you so on Monday morning.”

“What trunk did he take?”

“The large one.”

“Then he must be thinking of staying some time.”

It was the thought which had several times occurred to Maria. “The trunk was addressed to the railway terminus in London, I remember,” she said. “He did not take it with him. It was sent up by the night train.”

“Then, in point of fact, you can give me no information about him: except this?”

“No,” she answered, feeling, she could hardly tell why, rather ashamed of having to make the confession. But it was no fault of hers. Thomas Godolphin rose to retire.

“I’m having breakfast with mamma, Uncle Thomas!” persisted the little busy tongue. “Margery’s gone for all day. Perhaps I shall have dinner with mamma.”

“Hush, Meta!” said Maria, speaking in a sadly subdued manner, as if the chatter, intruding upon their seriousness, were more than she could bear. “Thomas, is the Bank going on again? Will it be opened to-day?”

“It will never go on again,” was Thomas Godolphin’s answer: and Maria shrank from the lively pain of the tone in which the words were spoken.

There was a blank pause. Maria became conscious that Thomas had turned, and was looking gravely, it may be said searchingly, at her face.

“You have known nothing, I presume, Maria, of—of the state that affairs were getting into? You were not in George’s confidence?”

She returned the gaze with honest openness, something like wonder shining forth from her soft brown eyes. “I have known nothing,” she answered. “George never spoke to me upon business matters: he never would speak to me upon them.”

No; Thomas felt sure that he had not. He was turning again to leave the room, when Maria, her voice a timid one, a delicate blush rising to her cheeks, asked if she could have some money.

“I have none to give you, Maria.”

“I expect Mrs. Bond here for her ten-pound note. I don’t know what I shall do, unless I can have it to give her. George told me I could have it from you this morning.”

Thomas Godolphin did not understand. Maria explained. About her having taken care of the note, and that George had borrowed it on Saturday. Thomas shook his head. He was very sorry, he said, but he could do nothing in it.

“It is not like an ordinary debt,” Maria ventured to urge. “It was the woman’s own money, intrusted to me for safe keeping on the understanding that she should claim it whenever she pleased. I should be so much obliged to you to let me have it.”

“You do not understand me, Maria. It is no want of will on my part. I have not the money.”

Maria’s colour was gradually receding from her face, leaving in its place something that looked like terror. She would have wished to pour forth question after question—Has all our money gone? Are we quite ruined? Has George done anything very wrong?—but she did not. In her refined sensitiveness she had not the courage to put such questions to Thomas Godolphin: perhaps she had not the courage yet to encounter the probable answers.

Thomas left the room, saying no more. He would not pain her by speaking of the utter ruin which had come upon them, the disgraceful ruin; of the awful trouble looming upon them, in which she must be a sufferer equally with himself; perhaps she the greatest sufferer. Time enough for it. Maria sat down in her place again, a dull mist before her eyes, sorrow in her heart.

“Mamma, I’ve eaten my egg. I want some of that.”

Meta’s finger was stretched towards the ham at the foot of the table. Maria rose mechanically to cut her some. There was no saying this morning, “That is not good for Meta.” Her heart was utterly bowed down beyond resistance, or thought of it. She placed some ham on a plate, cut it into small pieces, and laid it before that eager young lady.

“Mamma, I should like some buttered roll.”

The roll was supplied also. What would not Maria have supplied, if asked for? All these commonplace trifles appeared so pitiably insignificant beside the dreadful trouble come upon them.

“A little more sugar, please, mamma.”

Before any answer could be given to this latter demand, either in word or action, a tremendous summons at the hall-door resounded through the house. Maria shrank from its sound. A fear, she knew not of what, had taken up its abode within her, some strange, undefined dread, connected with her husband.

Her poor heart need not have beaten so; her breath need not have been held, her ears strained to listen. Pierce threw open the dining-room door, and there rushed in a lady, all demonstrative sympathy and eagerness. A lady in a handsome light Cashmere shawl, which spread itself over her dress and nearly covered it, and a straw hat, with an upright scarlet plume.

It was Charlotte Pain. She seized Maria’s hand and impulsively asked what she could do for her. “I knew it would be so!” she volubly exclaimed—“that you’d be looking like a ghost. That’s the worst of you, Mrs. George Godolphin! You let any trifle worry you. The moment I got the letters in this morning, and found how badly things were turning out for your husband, I said to myself, ‘There’ll be Mrs. George in the dumps!’ And I flung this shawl on to cover my toilette, for I was not en grande tenue, and came off to cheer you, and see if I could be of any use.”

Charlotte flung her shawl off as she spoke, ignoring ceremony. She had taken the chair vacated by Thomas Godolphin, and with a dexterous movement of the hands, the shawl fell behind her, disclosing the “toilette.” A washed-out muslin skirt of no particular colour, tumbled, and a little torn; and some strange-looking thing above it, neither jacket nor body, of a bright yellow, the whole dirty and stained.

“You are very kind,” answered Maria, with a shrinking spirit and a voice that faltered. Two points in Mrs. Pain’s words had struck upon her ominously. The mention of the letters, and the hint conveyed in the expression, things turning out “badly” for George. “Have you heard from him?” she continued.

“Heard from him!—how could I?” returned Charlotte. “London letters don’t come in this morning. What should he have to write to me about, either? I have heard from another quarter, and I have heard the rumours in Prior’s Ash.”

“Will you tell me what you have heard?” rejoined Maria.

“Well,” said Charlotte in a friendly tone, as she leaned towards her, “I suppose the docket will be struck to-day—if it is not struck already. The Philistines are down on the house, and mean to declare it bankrupt.”

Maria sat in blank dismay. She understood very little of the details of these business matters. Charlotte was quite at home in such things. “What will be the proceedings?” Maria asked, after a pause. “What do they do?”

“Oh, there’s a world of bother,” returned Charlotte. “It will drive quiet Thomas Godolphin crazy. The books have all to be gone through, and accounts of moneys rendered. The worst is, they’ll come here and note down every individual thing in the house, and then put a man in to see that nothing’s moved. That agreeable item in the business I dare say you may expect this morning.”

Let us give Charlotte her due. She had really come in a sympathizing, friendly spirit to Maria Godolphin, and in no other. It may be, that Charlotte rather despised her for being so simple and childish in the ways of the world, but that was only the more reason why she should help her if she could. Every word of information that Mrs. Pain was giving was as a dagger thrust in Maria’s heart. Charlotte had no suspicion of this. Had a similar calamity happened to herself, she would have discussed it freely with all the world: possessing no extreme sensibility of feeling, she did not understand it in another. For Maria to talk of the misfortune, let its aspect be ever so bad, seemed to Charlotte perfectly natural.

Charlotte leaned closer to Maria, and spoke in a whisper. “Is there anything you’d like to put away?”

“To put away?” repeated Maria, not awake to the drift of the argument.

“Because you had better give it to me at once. Spoons, or plate of any sort, or your own jewellery; any little things that you may want to save. I’ll carry them away under my shawl. Don’t you understand me?” she added, seeing the blank perplexity on Maria’s face. “If once those harpies of men come in, you can’t move or hide a single article, but you might put the whole house away now, if you could get it out.”

“But suppose it were known?” asked Maria.

“Then there’d be a row,” was Charlotte’s candid answer. “Who’s to know it? Look at that greedy little monkey?”

Meaning Miss Meta, who was filling her mouth quickly with the pieces of ham and the buttered roll, seemingly with great relish.

“Is it good, child?” said Charlotte.

For answer, Meta nodded her head, too busy to speak. Maria, as in civility bound, invited her visitor to take some breakfast.

“I don’t care if I do,” said Charlotte. “I was just going to breakfast when I came off to you. Look here, Mrs. George Godolphin, I’ll help myself; you go meanwhile and make up a few parcels for me. Just what you set most value by, you know.”

“I should be afraid,” answered Maria.

“What is there to be afraid of?” asked Charlotte, opening her eyes. “They’ll be safe enough at the Folly. That is Lady Godolphin’s: her private property. The bankruptcy can’t touch that; as it will this place and Ashlydyat. For the matter of that, I’d swear they were mine with all the pleasure in life, if they did get seen.”

“Ashlydyat!” broke from Maria’s lips.

“Ashlydyat will have to go of course, and everything in it. At the same time that those harpies walk in here, another set will walk into Ashlydyat. I should like to see Janet’s face when they arrive! You make haste, and put up all you can. There may be no time to lose.”

“I do not think it would be right,” debated Maria.

“Stuff and nonsense about ‘right!’ such things are done every day. I dare say you have many little valuables that you had rather keep than lose.”

“I have many that it would be a great grief to me to lose.”

“Well, go and put them together. I will take every care of them, and return them to you when the affair has blown over.”

Maria hesitated. To her honourable mind, there appeared to be something like fraud in attempting such a thing. “Will you allow me just to ask Thomas Godolphin if I may do it?” she said.

Charlotte Pain began to think that Maria must be an idiot. “Ask Thomas Godolphin! You would get an answer! Why, Mrs. George, you know what Thomas Godolphin is—with his strait-laced principles! He would cut himself in two, rather than save a button, if it was not legally his to save. I believe that if by the stroke of a pen he could make it appear that Ashlydyat could not be touched, he wouldn’t make the stroke. Were you to go with such a question to Thomas Godolphin, he’d order you, in his brother’s name, not to put aside as much as a ten-and-sixpenny ring. You must do it without the knowledge of Thomas Godolphin.”

“Then I think I would rather not do it,” said Maria. “Thank you all the same, Mrs. Pain.”

Mrs. Pain shrugged her shoulders with a movement of contempt, threw off her hat, and drew her chair to the breakfast-table. Maria poured out some coffee, and helped her to what she chose to take.

“Are you sure—the people you speak of will be in the house to-day?” asked Maria.

“I suppose they will.”

“I wish George would come back?” involuntarily broke from Maria’s lips.

“He’d be a great simpleton if he did,” said Charlotte. “He’s safer where he is.”

“Safer from what?” quickly asked Maria.

“From bother. I should not come if I were George. I should let them fight the battle out without me. Mrs. George Godolphin,” added Charlotte, meaning to be good-natured, “you had better reconsider your resolve and let me save you a few things. Not a stick or stone will be left to you. This will be a dreadful failure, and you won’t be spared. They’ll take every trinket you possess, leaving you nothing but your wedding-ring.”

Maria could not be persuaded. She seemed altogether in a fog, understanding little: but she felt that what Charlotte proposed would not be within the strict rules of right.

“They’ll poke their noses into drawers and boxes, into every hole and corner in the house; and from that time forth the things are not yours, but theirs,” persisted Charlotte, for her information.

“I cannot help it,” sighed Maria. “I wish George was here!” “At any rate, you’ll do one thing,” said Charlotte. “You’ll let me carry off the child for the day. It will not be a pleasant sight for her, young as she is, to witness a lot of great hulking men going through the rooms, marking down the furniture. I’ll take her back with me.”

Maria made no immediate reply. She did not particularly like the companionship of Mrs. Pain for Meta. Charlotte saw her hesitation.

“Are you thinking she will be a trouble? Nothing of the sort. I shall be glad to have her for the day, and it is as well to spare her such sights. I am sure her papa would say so.”

Maria thought he would, and she thought how kind Mrs. Pain was. Charlotte turned to Meta.

“Will Meta come and spend the day at Lady Godolphin’s Folly?—and have a high swing made between the trees, and go out in the carriage in the afternoon, and buy sugar-plums?”

Meta looked dubious, and honoured Mrs. Pain with a full stare in the face. Notwithstanding the swing and the sugar-plums—both very great attractions indeed to Meta—certain reminiscences of her last visit to the Folly were intruding themselves.

“Are the dogs there?” asked she.

Charlotte gave a most decided shake of the head. “The dogs are gone,” she said. “They were naughty dogs to Meta, and they have been shut up in the pit-hole, and can never come out again.”

“Never, never?” inquired Meta, her wide-open eyes as earnest as her tone.

“Never,” said Charlotte. “The great big pit-hole lid’s fastened down with a strong brass chain: a chain as thick as Meta’s arm. It is all right,” added Charlotte in an aside whisper to Maria, while pretending to reach over the breakfast-table for an egg-spoon. “She shan’t as much as hear the dogs. I’ll have them shut up in the stable. We’ll have such a beautiful swing, Meta!”

Meta finished the remainder of her breakfast and slid off her chair. Reassured upon the subject of the dogs, she was eager to be off at once to the pleasures of the swing. Maria rang the bell for Harriet, and gave orders that she should be dressed.

“Let her come in this frock,” said Charlotte. “There’s no knowing what damage it may undergo before the day’s out.”

Meta was taken away by Harriet. Charlotte finished her breakfast, and Maria sat burying her load of care, even from the eyes of friendly Charlotte. “Do you like my Garibaldi shirt?” suddenly asked the latter.

“Like what?” questioned Maria, not catching the name.

“This,” replied Charlotte, indicating the yellow article by a touch. “They are new things just come up: Garibaldi shirts they are called. Mrs. Verrall sent me three down from London: a yellow, a scarlet, and a blue. They are all the rage, she says. Do you admire it?”

But for Maria’s innate politeness, and perhaps for the sadness beating at her heart, she would have answered that she did not admire it at all: that it looked a shapeless, untidy thing. Charlotte continued, without waiting for a reply.

“You don’t see it to advantage. It is soiled, and has lost a button or two. Those dogs make horrid work of my things, with their roughness and their dirty paws. Look at this great rent in my gown which I have pinned up! Pluto did that this morning. He is getting fearfully savage, now he’s old.”

“You must not allow them to frighten Meta,” said Maria somewhat anxiously. “She should not see them.”

“I have told you she shall not. Can’t you trust me? The dogs–”

Charlotte paused. Meta came running in, ready; in her large straw hat with its flapping brim, and her cool brown-holland outdoor dress. Charlotte rose, drew her shawl about her shoulders, and carried her hat to the glass, to settle it on. Then she took Meta by the hand, said good morning, and sailed out; the effect of her visit having been partly to frighten, partly to perplex, Maria.

Maria sat on with her load of care, and her new apprehensions. These agreeable visitors that Charlotte warned her of—she wondered that Thomas had not mentioned it. Would they take all the clothes she had upstairs, leaving her only what she stood upright in? Would they take Meta’s? Would they take her husband’s out of his drawers and places? Would they take the keeper off her finger? It was studded with diamonds. Charlotte had said they would only leave her her wedding-ring. These thoughts were troubling and perplexing her; but only in a degree. Compared with that other terrible thought, they were as nothing—the uncertain fear, regarding her husband, which had been whispered to her by the careless sailor, Reginald Hastings.

CHAPTER XXII.

BEARING THE BRUNT

Thomas Godolphin sat in the Bank parlour, bearing the brunt of the shock. With his pain upon him, mental and bodily, he was facing all the trouble that George ought to have faced: the murmurs, the questions, the reproaches.