The Shadow of Ashlydyat

All was known. All was known to Thomas Godolphin. Not alone to him. Could Thomas have kept the terrible facts within his own breast, have shielded his brother’s reputation still, he would have done it: but that was impossible. In becoming known to Mr. Godolphin, it had become known to others. The discovery had been made jointly, by Thomas and by certain business gentlemen, when he was in London on the Saturday afternoon. Treachery upon treachery! The long course of deceit on George Godolphin’s part had come out. Falsified books; wrongly-rendered accounts; good securities replaced by false; false balance-sheets. Had Thomas Godolphin been less blindly trustful in George’s honour and integrity, it could never have been so effectually accomplished. George Godolphin was the acting manager: and Thomas, in his perfect trust, combined with his failing health, had left things latterly almost entirely in George’s hands. “What business had he so to leave them?” People were asking it now. Perhaps Thomas’s own conscience was asking the same. But why should he not have left things to him, considering that he placed in him the most implicit confidence? Surely, no unprejudiced man would say Thomas Godolphin had been guilty of imprudence. George was fully equal to the business confided to him, in point of power and capacity; and it could not certainly matter which of the brothers, equal partners, equal heads of the firm, took its practical management. It would seem not: and yet they were blaming Thomas Godolphin now.

Failures of this nature have been recorded before, where fraud has played its part. We have only to look to the records of our law courts—criminal, bankruptcy, and civil—for examples. To transcribe the precise means by which George Godolphin had contrived to bear on in a course of deceit, to elude the suspicion of the world in general, and the vigilance of his own house, would only be to recapitulate what has often been told in the public records: and told to so much more purpose than I could tell it. It is rather with what may be called the domestic phase of these tragedies that I would deal: the private, home details; the awful wreck of peace, of happiness, caused there. The world knows enough (rather too much, sometimes) of the public part of these affairs; but what does it know of the part behind the curtain?—the, if it may be so said, inner aspect?

I knew a gentleman, years ago, who was partner in a country banking-house: a sleeping partner; and the Bank failed. Failed through a long-continued course of treachery on the part of one connected with it—something like the treachery described to you as pur sued by Mr. George Godolphin. This gentleman (of whom I tell you) was to be held responsible for the losses, so the creditors and others decided: the real delinquent having disappeared, escaped beyond their reach. They lavished upon this gentleman harsh names; rogue, thief, swindler, and so on!—while, in point of fact, he was as innocent and unconscious of what had happened as they were. He gave up all he had; the bulk of his fortune had gone with the Bank; and he went out of hearing of his abusers for a while until things should become smoother; perhaps the bad man be caught. A short time, and he became ill; and a medical man was called in to him. Again, a short time, and he was dead: and the doctors said—I heard them say it—that his malady had been brought on by grief; that he had, in fact, died of a broken heart. He was a kindly gentleman; a good husband, a good father, a good neighbour; a single-hearted, honest man; the very soul of honour: but he was misjudged by those who ought to have known him better; and he died for it. I wonder what the real rogue felt when he heard of the death? They were relatives. There are many such cases in the world: where reproach and abuse are levelled at one whose heart is breaking.

There appeared to be little doubt that George Godolphin’s embarrassments had commenced years ago. It is more than probable that the money borrowed from Verrall during that short sojourn in Homburg had been its precursor. Once in the hands of the clever charlatan, the crafty, unscrupulous bill-discounter, who grew fat on the folly of others, his downward course was—perhaps not easy or swift, but at all events certain. If George Godolphin had but been a little more clear-sighted, the evil might never have come. Could he but have seen Verrall at the outset as he was: not the gentleman, the good-hearted man, as George credulously believed, but the low fellow who traded on the needs of others, the designing sharper, looking ever after his prey, George would have flung him off with no other feeling than contempt. George Godolphin was not born a rogue. George was by nature a gentleman, and honest and open; but, once in the clutches of Verrall, he was not able to escape.

Bit by bit, step by step, gradually, imperceptibly, George found himself caught. He awoke to the fact that he could neither stir upwards nor downwards. He could not extricate himself; he could not go on without exposure; Verrall, or Verrall’s agents, those working in concert with him, though not ostensibly, stopped the supplies, and George was in a fix. Then began the frauds upon the Bank. Slightly at first. It was only a choice between that and exposure. Between that and ruin, it may be said, for George’s liabilities were so great, that, if brought to a climax, they must then have caused the Bank to stop, involving Thomas in ruin as well as himself. In his sanguine temperament, too, he was always hoping that some lucky turn would redeem the bad and bring all right again. It was Verrall who urged him on. It was Verrall who, with Machiavellian craft, made the wrong appear right; it was Verrall who had filled his pockets at the expense of George’s. That Verrall had been the arch-tempter, and George the arch-dupe, was clear as the sun at noonday to those who were behind the scenes. Unfortunately but very few were behind the scenes—they might be counted by units—and Verrall and Co. could still blazon it before the world.

The wonder was, where the money had gone to. It very often is the wonder in these cases. A wonder too often never solved. An awful amount of money had gone in some way; the mystery was, in what way. George Godolphin had kept up a large establishment; had been personally extravagant, privately as well as publicly; but that did not serve to account for half the money missing; not for a quarter of it; nay, scarcely for a tithe. Had it been to save himself from hanging, George himself could not have told how or where it had gone. When the awful sum total came to be added up, to stare him in the face, he looked at it in blank amazement. And he had no good to show for it; none; the money had melted, and he could not tell how.

Of course it had gone to the discounters. The tide of discounting once set in, it was something like the nails in the horseshoe, doubling, and doubling, and doubling. The money went, and there was nothing to show for it. Little marvel that George Godolphin stood aghast at the sum total, when the amount was raked up—or, as nearly the amount as could be guessed at. When George could no longer furnish legitimate funds on his own account, the Bank was laid under contribution to supply them, and George had to enter upon a system of ingenuity to conceal the outgoings. When those contributions had been levied to the very utmost extent compatible with the avoidance of sudden and immediate discovery, and George was at his wits’ end for money, which he must have, then Verrall whispered a way which George at first revolted from, but which resulted in taking the deeds of Lord Averil. Had the crash not come as it did, other deeds might have been taken. It is impossible to say. Such a course once entered on is always downhill. Like unto some other downward courses, the only safety lies in not yielding to the first temptation.

Strange to say, George Godolphin could not see the rogue’s part played by Verrall: or at best he saw it but very imperfectly. And yet, not strange; for there are many of these cases in the world. George had been on intimate terms of friendship with Verrall; had been lié, it may be said, with him and Lady Godolphin’s Folly. Mrs. Verrall was pretty. Charlotte had her attractions. Altogether, George believed yet in Verrall. Let the dagger’s point only be concealed with flowers, and men will rush blindly on to it.

Thomas Godolphin sat, some books before him, pondering the one weighty question—where could all the money have gone to? Until the present moment, this morning when he had the books before him, and his thoughts were more practically directed to business details, he had been pondering another weighty question—where had George’s integrity gone to? Whither had flown his pride in his fair name, the honour of the Godolphins? From the Saturday afternoon when the dreadful truth came to light, Thomas had had little else in his thoughts. It was his companion through the Sunday, through the night journey afterwards down to Prior’s Ash. He was more fit for bed than to take that journey: but he must face the exasperated men from whom George had flown.

He was facing them now. People had been coming in since nine o’clock with their reproaches, and Thomas Godolphin bore them patiently and answered them meekly: the tones of his voice low, subdued, as if they came from the sadness of a stricken heart. He felt their wrongs keenly. Could he have paid these injured men by cutting himself to pieces, and satisfied them with the “pound of flesh,” he would have done so, oh how willingly! He would have sacrificed his life and his happiness (his happiness!) and done it cheerfully, if by that means they could have been paid their due.

“It’s nothing but a downright swindle. I’ll say it, sir, to your face, and I can’t help saying it. Here I bring the two thousand pounds in my hand, and I say to Mr. George Godolphin, ‘Will it be safe?’ ‘Yes,’ he answers me, ‘it will be safe.’ And now the Bank has shut up, and where’s my money?”

The speaker was Barnaby, the corn-dealer. What was Thomas Godolphin to answer?

“You told me, sir, on Saturday, that the Bank would open again to-day for business; that customers would be paid in full.”

“I told you but what I believed,” rose the quiet voice of Thomas Godolphin in answer. “Mr. Barnaby, believe me this blow has come upon no one more unexpectedly than it has upon me.”

“Well, sir, I don’t know what may be your mode of carrying on business, but I should be ashamed to conduct mine so as to let ruin come slap upon me, and not have seen it coming.”

Again, what was Thomas Godolphin to answer? Generous to the end, he would not say, “My brother has played us both alike false.” “If I find that any care or caution of mine could have averted this, Mr. Barnaby, I shall carry remorse to my grave,” was all he replied.

“What sort of a dividend will there be?” went on the dealer.

“I really cannot tell you yet, Mr. Barnaby. I have no idea. We must have time to go through the books.”

“Where is Mr. George Godolphin?” resumed the applicant; and it was a very natural question. “Mr. Hurde says he is away, but it is strange that he should be away at such a time as this. I should like to ask him a question or two.”

“He is in London,” replied Thomas Godolphin.

“But what’s he gone to London for now? And when is he coming back?”

More puzzling questions. Thomas had to bear the pain of many such that day. He did not say, “My brother is gone, we know not why; in point of fact he has run away.” He spoke aloud the faint hopes that rose within his own breast—that some train, ere the day was over, would bring him back to Prior’s Ash.

“Don’t you care, Mr. Godolphin,” came the next wailing plaint, “for the ruin that the loss of this money will bring upon me? I have a wife and children, sir.”

“I do care,” Thomas answered, his throat husky and a mist before his eyes. “For every pang that this calamity will inflict on others, it inflicts two on me.”

Mr. Hurde, who was busy with more books in his own department, in conjunction with some clerks, came in to ask a question, his pen behind his ear; and Mr. Barnaby, seeing no good to be derived by remaining, went out. Little respite had Thomas Godolphin. The next to come in was the Rector of All Souls’.

“What is to become of me?” was his saluting question, spoken in his clear, decisive tone. “How am I to refund this money to my wards, the Chisholms?”

Thomas Godolphin had no satisfactory reply to make. He missed the friendly hand held out hitherto in greeting. Mr. Hastings did not take a chair, but stood up near the table, firm, stern, and uncompromising.

“I hear George is off,” he continued.

“He has gone to London, Maria informs me,” replied Thomas Godolphin.

“Mr. Godolphin, can you sit there and tell me that you had no suspicion of the way things were turning? That this ruin has come on, and you ignorant of it?”

“I had no suspicion; none whatever. None can be more utterly surprised than I. There are moments when a feeling comes over me that it cannot be true.”

“Could you live in intimate association with your brother, and not see that he was turning out a rogue and a vagabond?” went on the Rector in his keenest and most cynical tone.

“I knew nothing, I suspected nothing,” was the quiet reply of Thomas.

“How dared he take that money from me the other night, when he knew that he was on the verge of ruin?” asked Mr. Hastings. “He took it from me; he never entered it in the books; he applied it, there’s no doubt, to his own infamous purposes. When a suspicion was whispered to me afterwards, that the Bank was wrong, I came here to him. I candidly spoke of what I had heard, and asked him to return me the money, as a friend, a relative. Did he return it? No: his answer was a false, plausible assurance that the money and the Bank were alike safe. What does he call it? Robbery? It is worse: it is deceit; fraud; vile swindling. In the old days, many a man has swung for less, Mr. Godolphin.”

Thomas Godolphin could not gainsay it.

“Nine thousand and forty-five pounds!” continued the Rector. “How am I to make it good? How am I to find money only for the education of Chisholm’s children? He confided them and their money to me; and how have I repaid the trust?”

Every word he spoke was as a dagger entering the heart of Thomas Godolphin. He could only sit still, and bear. Had the malady that was carrying him to the grave never before shown itself, the days of anguish he had now entered upon would have been sufficient to induce it.

“If I find that Maria knew of this, that she was in league with her husband to deceive me, I shall feel inclined to discard her from my affections from henceforth,” resumed the indignant Rector. “It was an unlucky day when I gave my consent to her marrying George Godolphin. I never in my heart liked his addressing her. It must have been instinct warned me against it.”

“I am convinced that Maria has known nothing,” said Thomas Godolphin, “She–”

Mr. Godolphin stopped. Angry sounds had arisen outside, and presently the door was violently opened, and quite a crowd of clamorous people entered, ready to abuse Thomas Godolphin, George not being there to receive it. There was no question but that that day’s work took weeks from his short remaining span of life. Could a man’s heart break summarily, Thomas Godolphin’s would have broken then. Many men would have retaliated: he felt their griefs, their wrongs, as keenly as they did. They told him of their ruin, of the desolation, the misery it would bring to them, to their wives and families; some spoke in a respectful tone of quiet plaint, some were loud, unreasonable, insulting. They demanded what dividend there would be: some asked in a covert tone to have their bit of money returned in full; some gave vent to most unorthodox language touching George Godolphin; they openly expressed their opinion that Thomas was conniving at his absence; they hinted that he was as culpable as the other.

None of them appeared to glance at the great fact—that Thomas Godolphin was the greatest sufferer of all. If they had lost part of their means, he had lost all his. Did they remember that this terrible misfortune, which they were blaming him for, would leave him a beggar upon the face of the earth? He, a gentleman born to wealth, to Ashlydyat, to a position of standing in the county, to honour, to respect? It had all been rent away by the blow, to leave him homeless and penniless, sick with an incurable malady. Had they only reflected, they might have found that Thomas Godolphin deserved their condolence rather than their abuse.

But they were in no mood to reflect, or to spare him in their angry feelings; they gave vent to all the soreness within them—and perhaps it was excusable.

The Rector of All Souls’ had had his say, and strode forth. Making his way to the dining-room, he knocked sharply with his stick on the door, and then entered. Maria rose and came forward: something very like terror on her face. The knock had frightened her: it had conjured up visions of the visitors suggested by Mrs. Charlotte Pain.

“Where is George Godolphin?”

“He is in London, papa,” she answered, her heart sinking at the stern tone, the abrupt greeting.

“When do you expect him home?”

“I do not know. He did not tell me when he went; except that he should be home soon. Will you not sit down, papa?”

“No. When I brought that money here the other night, the nine thousand and forty-five pounds,” he continued, touching her arm to command her full attention, “could you not have opened your lips to tell me that it would be safer in my own house than in this?”

Maria was seized with inward trembling. She could not bear to be spoken to in that stern tone by her father. “Papa, I could not tell you. I did not know it.”

“Do you mean to tell me that you knew nothing—nothing—of the state of your husband’s affairs? of the ruin that was impending?”

“I knew nothing,” she answered. “Until the Bank closed on Saturday, I was in total ignorance that anything was wrong. I never had the remotest suspicion of it.”

“Then, I think, Maria, you ought to have had it. Rumour says that you owe a great deal of money in the town for your personal necessities, housekeeping and the like.”

“There is a good deal owing, I fear,” she answered. “George has not given me money to pay regularly of late, as he used to do.”

“And did that not serve to open your eyes?”

“No,” she faintly said. “I never gave a thought to anything being wrong.”

She spoke meekly, softly, just as Thomas Godolphin had spoken. The Rector looked at her pale, sad face, and perhaps a sensation of pity for his daughter came over him, however bitterly he may have felt towards her husband.

“Well, it is a terrible thing for us all,” he said in a more kindly voice, as he turned to move away.

“Will you not wait, and sit down, papa?”

“I have not the time now. Good day, Maria.”

As he went out, there stood, gathered close against the wall, waiting to go in, Mrs. Bond. Her face was rather red this morning, and a perfume—certainly not of plain waters—might be detected in her vicinity. That snuffy black gown of hers went down in a reverence as he passed. The Rector of All Souls’ strode on. Care was too great at his heart to allow of his paying attention to extraneous things, even though they appeared in the shape of attractive Mrs. Bond.

Maria Godolphin, her face buried on the sofa cushions, was giving way to the full tide of unhappy thought induced by her father’s words, when she became aware that she was not alone. A sound, half a groan, half a sob, coming from the door, aroused her. There stood a lady, in a crushed bonnet and unwholesome stuff gown that had once been black, with a red face, and a perfume of strong waters around her.

Maria rose from the sofa, her heart sinking. How should she meet this woman? how find an excuse for the money which she had not to give? “Good morning, Mrs. Bond.”

Mrs. Bond took a few steps forward, and held on by the table. Not that she was past the power of keeping herself upright; her face must be redder than it was, by some degrees, ere she lost that; but she had a knack of holding on to things.

“I have come for my ten-pound note, if you please, ma’am.”

Few can imagine what this moment was to Maria Godolphin; for few are endowed with the sensitiveness of temperament, the refined consideration for the feelings of others, the acute sense of justice, which characterized her. Maria would willingly have given a hundred pounds to have had ten then. How she made the revelation, she scarcely knew—that she had not the money that morning to give.

Mrs. Bond’s face turned rather defiant. “You told me to come down for it, ma’am.”

“I thought I could have given it to you. I am very sorry. I must trouble you to come when Mr. George Godolphin shall have returned home.”

“Is he going to return?” asked Mrs. Bond in a quick, hard tone. “Folks is saying that he isn’t.”

Maria’s heart beat painfully at the words. Was he going to return? She could only say aloud that she hoped he would very soon be home.

“But I want my money,” resumed Mrs. Bond, standing her ground. “I must have it, ma’am, if you please.”

“I have not got it,” said Maria. “The very instant I have it, it shall be returned to you.”

“I’d make bold to ask, ma’am, what right you had to spend it? Warn’t there enough money in the Bank of other folks’s as you might have took, without taking mine—which you had promised to keep faithful for me?” reiterated Mrs. Bond, warming with her subject. “I warn’t a deposit in the Bank, as them folks was, and I’d no right to have my money took. I want to pay my rent to-day, and to get in a bit o’ food. The house is bare of everything. There’s the parrot screeching out for seed.”

It is of no use to pursue the interview. Mrs. Bond grew bolder and more abusive. But for having partaken rather freely of that cordial which was giving out its scent upon the atmosphere, she had never so spoken to her clergyman’s daughter. Maria received it meekly, her heart aching: she felt very much as did Thomas Godolphin—that she had earned the reproaches. But endurance has its limits: she began to feel really ill; and she saw, besides, that Mrs. Bond appeared to have no intention of departing. Escaping out of the room in the midst of a fiery speech, she encountered Pierce, who was crossing the hall.

“Go into the dining-room, Pierce,” she whispered, “and try to get rid of Mrs. Bond. She is not quite herself this morning, and—and—she talks too much. But be kind and civil to her, Pierce: let there be no disturbance.”

Her pale face, as she spoke, was lifted to the butler almost pleadingly. He thought how wan and ill his mistress looked. “I’ll manage it, ma’am,” he said, turning to the dining-room.

By what process Pierce did manage it, was best known to himself. There was certainly no disturbance. A little talking, and Maria thought she heard the sound of something liquid being poured into a glass near the sideboard, as she stood out of view behind the turning at the back of the hall. Then Pierce and Mrs. Bond issued forth, the best friends imaginable, the latter talking amiably.

Maria came out of her hiding-place, but only to encounter some one who had pushed in at the hall-door as Mrs. Bond left it. A little man in a white neckcloth. He advanced to Mrs. George Godolphin.

“Can I speak a word to you, ma’am, if you please?” he asked, taking off his hat.

She could only answer in the affirmative, and she led the way to the dining-room. She wondered who he was: his face seemed familiar to her. The first words he spoke told her, and she remembered him as the head assistant at the linendraper’s where she chiefly dealt. He had been sent to press for payment of the account. She could only tell him as she had told Mrs. Bond—that she was unable to pay it.

“Mr. Jones would be so very much obliged to you, ma’am,” he civilly urged. “It has been standing now some little time, and he hopes you will stretch a point to pay him. If you could only give me part of it, he would be glad.”

“I have not got it to give,” said Maria, telling the truth in her unhappiness. She could only be candid: she was unable to fence with them, to use subterfuge, as others might have done. She spoke the truth, and she spoke it meekly. When Mr. George Godolphin came home, she hoped she should pay them, she said. The messenger took the answer, losing none of his respectful manner, and departed.