The Shadow of Ashlydyat

But all were not so civil; and many found their way to her that day. Once a thought came across her to send them into the Bank: but she remembered Thomas Godolphin’s failing health, and the battle he had to fight on his own account. Besides, these claims were for personalities—debts owed by herself and George. In the afternoon, Pierce came in and said a lady wished to see her.

“Who is it?” asked Maria.

Pierce did not know. She was not a visitor of the house. She gave in her name as Mrs. Harding.

The applicant came in. Maria recognized her, when she threw back her veil, as the wife of Harding, the undertaker. Pierce closed the door, and they were left together.

“I have taken the liberty of calling, Mrs. George Godolphin, to ask if you will not pay our account,” began the applicant in a low, confidential tone. “Do pray let us have it, if you can, ma’am!”

Maria was surprised. There was nothing owing that she was aware of. There could be nothing. “What account are you speaking of?” she asked.

“The account for the interment of the child. Your little one who died last, ma’am.”

“But surely that is paid!”

“No, it is not,” replied Mrs. Harding. “The other accounts were paid, but that never has been. Mr. George Godolphin has promised it times and again: but he never paid it.”

Not paid! The burial of their child! Maria’s face flushed. Was it carelessness on George’s part, or had he been so long embarrassed for money that to part with it was a trouble to him? Maria could not help thinking that he might have spared some little remnant for just debts, while lavishing so much upon bill-discounters. She could not help feeling another thing—that it was George’s place to be meeting and battling with these unhappy claims, rather than hers.

“This must be paid, of course, Mrs. Harding,” she said. “I had no idea that it was not paid. When Mr. George Godolphin comes home, I will ask him to see about it instantly.”

“Ma’am, can’t you pay me now?” urged Mrs. Harding. “If it waits till the bankruptcy’s declared, it will have to go into it; and they say—they do say that there’ll be nothing for anybody. We can’t afford to lose it,” she added, speaking confidentially. “What with bad debts and long-standing accounts, we are on the eve of a crisis ourselves; though I should not like it to be known. This will help to stave it off, if you will let us have it.”

“I wish I could,” returned Maria. “I wish I had it to give to you. It ought to have been paid long ago.”

“A part of it was money paid out of our pocket,” said Mrs. Harding reproachfully. “Mrs. George Godolphin, you don’t know the boon it would be to us!”

“I would give it you, indeed I would, if I had it,” was all Maria could answer.

She could not say more if Mrs. Harding stopped until night. Mrs. Harding became at last convinced of that truth, and took her departure. Maria sat down with burning eyes; eyes into which the tears would not come.

What with one hint and another, she had grown tolerably conversant with the facts patent to the world. One whisper startled her more than any ether. It concerned Lord Averil’s bonds. What was amiss with them? That there was something, and something bad, appeared only too evident. In her terrible state of suspense, of uncertainty, she determined to inquire of Thomas Godolphin.

Writing a few words on a slip of paper, she sent it into the Bank parlour. It was a request that he would see her before he left. Thomas sent back a verbal message: “Very well.”

It was growing late in the evening before he came to her. What a day he had had! and he had taken no refreshment; nothing to sustain him. Maria thought of that, and spoke.

“Let me get you something,” she said. “Will you take some dinner here, instead of waiting to get to Ashlydyat?”

He shook his head in token of refusal. “It is not much dinner that I shall eat anywhere to-day, Maria. Did you wish to speak to me?”

“I want—to—ask–” she seemed to gasp for breath, and waited a moment for greater calmness. “Thomas,” she began again, going close to him, and speaking almost in a whisper, “what is it that is being said about Lord Averil’s bonds?”

Thomas Godolphin did not immediately reply. He may have been deliberating whether it would be well to tell her; perhaps whether it could be kept from her. Maria seemed to answer the thought.

“I must inevitably know it,” she said, striving not to tremble outwardly as well as inwardly. “Better that I hear it from you than from others.”

He thought she was right—the knowledge must inevitably come to her. “It may be better to tell you, Maria,” he said. “George used the bonds for his own purposes.”

A dread pause. Maria’s throat was working. “Then—it must have been he who took them from the strong-room!”

“It was.”

The shivering came on palpably now. “What will be the consequences?” she breathed.

“I do not know. I dread to think. Lord Averil may institute a prosecution.”

Their eyes met. Maria controlled her emotion, with the desperate energy of despair. “A—criminal—prosecution?”

“It is in his power to do it. He has not been near me to-day, and that looks unfavourable.”

“Does he know it yet—that it was George?”

“He must know it. In fact, I think it likely, he may have received official notice of it from town. The report has spread from thence—and that is how it has become known in Prior’s Ash.”

Maria moistened her dry lips, and swallowed down the lump in her throat ere she could speak. “Would it be safe for him to return here?”

“If he does return, it must be at the risk of consequences.”

“Thomas!—Thomas!” she gasped, the thought occurring to her with a sort of shock, “is he in hiding, do you think?”

“I think it likely that he is. He gave you no address, it seems: neither has he sent one to me.”

She drew back to the wall by the mantel-piece, and leaned against it. Every hour seemed to bring forth worse and worse. Thomas gazed with compassion on the haggardness that was seating itself on her sweet face. She was less able to cope with this misery than he. He laid his hand upon her shoulder, speaking in low tones.

“It is a fiery trial for both of us, Maria: one hard to encounter. God alone can help us to bear it. Be very sure that He will help!”

He went out, taking his way on foot to Ashlydyat. There was greater grief there, if possible, than at the Bank. The news touching the bonds, unhappily afloat in Prior’s Ash, had penetrated an hour ago to Ashlydyat.

Scarcely had he entered the presence of his sisters, when he was told that Lady Sarah Grame wanted him.

Thomas Godolphin proceeded to the room where she had been shown. She was not sitting, but pacing it to and fro; and she turned sharply round and met him as he entered, her face flushed with excitement.

“You were once to have been my son-in-law,” she said abruptly.

Thomas, astonished at the address, invited her to a seat, but made no immediate reply. She would not take the chair.

“I cannot sit,” she said. “Mr. Godolphin, you were to have been my son-in-law: you would have been so now had Ethel lived. Do you consider Ethel to be any link between us still?”

He was quite at a loss what to answer. He did not understand what she meant. Lady Sarah continued.

“If you do; if you retain any fond remembrance of Ethel; you will prove it now. I had seven hundred pounds in your Bank. I have been scraping and saving out of my poor yearly income nearly ever since Ethel went; and I had placed it there. Can you deny it?”

“Dear Lady Sarah, what is the matter?” he asked; for her excitement was something frightful. “I know you had it there. Why should I deny it?”

“Oh, that’s right. People have been saying the Bank was going to repudiate all claims. I want you to give it me. Now: privately.”

“It is impossible for me to do so, Lady Sarah–”

“I cannot lose it; I have been saving it up for my poor child,” she interrupted, in a most excited tone. “She will not have much when I am dead. Would you be so cruel as to rob the widow and the orphan?”

“Not willingly. Never willingly,” he answered in his pain. “I had thought, Lady Sarah, that though all the world misjudged me, you would not.”

“Could you not, you who were to have married Ethel, have given me a private hint of it when you found the Bank was going wrong? Others may afford to lose their money, but I cannot.”

“I did not know it was going wrong,” he said. “The blow has fallen upon me as unexpectedly as it has upon others.”

Lady Sarah Grame, giving vent to one of the fits of passionate excitement to which she had all her life been subject, suddenly flung herself upon her knees before Thomas Godolphin. She implored him to return the money, to avert “ruin” from Sarah Anne; she reproached him with selfishness, with dishonesty, all in a breath. Can you imagine what it was for Thomas Godolphin to meet this? Upright, gifted with lively conscientiousness, tenderly considerate in rendering strict justice to others, as he had been all his life, these unmerited reproaches were as iron entering his soul.

Which was the more to be pitied, himself or Maria? Thomas had called the calamity by its right name—a fiery trial. It was indeed such: to him and to her. You, who read, cannot picture it. How he got rid of Lady Sarah, he could scarcely tell: he believed it was by her passion spending itself out. She was completely beside herself that night, almost as one who verges on insanity, and Thomas found a moment to ask himself whether that uncontrolled woman could be the mother of gentle Ethel. Her loud voice and its reproaches penetrated to the household—an additional drop of bitterness in the cup of the master of Ashlydyat.

But we must go back to Maria, for it is with her this evening that we have most to do. Between seven and eight o’clock Miss Meta arrived, attended by Charlotte Pain. Meta was in the height of glee. She was laden with toys and sweetmeats; she carried a doll as big as herself: she had been out in the carriage; she had had a ride on Mrs. Pain’s brown horse, held on by that lady; she had swung “above the tops of the trees;” and, more than all, a message had come from the keeper of the dogs in the pit-hole, to say that they were never, never coming out again.

Charlotte had been generously kind to the child; that was evident; and Maria thanked her with her eyes and heart. As to saying much in words, that was beyond Maria to-night.

“Where’s Margery?” asked Meta, in a hurry to show off her treasures.

Margery had not returned. And there was no other train now from the direction in which she had gone. It was supposed that she had missed it, and would be home in the morning. Meta drew a long face; she wanted Margery to admire the doll.

“You can go and show it to Harriet, dear,” said Maria. “She is in the nursery.” And Meta flew away, with the doll and as many other encumbrances as she could carry.

“Have those bankruptcy men been here?” asked Charlotte, glancing round the room.

“No. I have seen nothing of them.”

“Well now, there’s time yet, and do for goodness’ sake let me save some few trifles for you; and don’t fret yourself into fiddle-strings,” heartily returned Charlotte. “I am quite sure you must have some treasures that it would be grief to part with. I have been thinking all day long how foolishly scrupulous you are.”

Maria was silent for a minute. “They look into everything, you say?” she asked.

“Look into everything!” echoed Charlotte. “I should think they do! That would be little. They take everything.”

Maria left the room and came back with a parcel in her hand. It was a very small trunk—dolls’ trunks they are sometimes called—covered with red morocco leather, with a miniature lock.

“I would save this,” she said in a whisper, “if you would be so kind as to take care of it for me. I should not like them to look into it. It cannot be any fraud,” she added, in a sort of apology for what she was doing. “The things inside would not sell for sixpence, so I do not think even Mr. Godolphin would be angry with me.”

Charlotte nodded, took up her dress, and contrived to thrust the trunk into a huge pocket under her crinoline. There was another on the other side. “I put them on on purpose,” she said, alluding to the pockets. “I thought you might think better of it by this evening. But this is nothing, Mrs. George Godolphin. You may as well give me something else. They’ll be in to-morrow morning for certain.”

Maria replied that she had nothing else to give, and Charlotte rose, saying she should come or send for Meta again on the morrow. As she went out, and proceeded up Crosse Street on her way home, she tossed her head with a laugh.

“I thought she’d come to! As if she wouldn’t like to save her jewels, as other people do! She’s only rather more sly over it—saying what she has given me would not fetch sixpence! You may tell that to the geese, Mrs. George Godolphin! I should like to see what’s inside. I think I will.”

And Charlotte put her wish into action. Upon reaching Lady Godolphin’s Folly, she flung off her bonnet and mantle, gathered together all the small keys in the house, and had little difficulty in opening the simple lock. The contents were exposed to view. A lock of hair of each of her children who had died, wrapped in separate pieces of paper, with the age of the child and the date of its death written respectively outside. A golden lock of Meta’s; a fair curl of George’s; half a dozen of his letters to her, written in the short time that intervened between their engagement and their marriage, and a sort of memorandum of their engagement. “I was this day engaged to George Godolphin. I pray God to render me worthy of him! to be to him a loving and dutiful wife.”

Charlotte’s eyes opened to their utmost width, but there was nothing else to see; nothing except the printed paper with which the trunk was lined. “Is she a fool, that Maria Godolphin?” ejaculated Charlotte. Certainly that was not the class of things Mrs. Pain would have saved from bankruptcy. And she solaced her feelings by reading Mr. George’s love-letters.

No, Maria was not a fool. Better that she had come under that denomination just now, for she would have felt her position less keenly. Charlotte perhaps might have found it difficult to believe that Maria Godolphin was one of those who are sensitively intellectual, to a degree that Mistress Charlotte herself could form little notion of.

It is upon these highly-endowed natures that sorrow tells. And the sorrow must be borne in silence. In the midst of her great misery, so great as to be almost irrepressible, Maria contrived to maintain a calm exterior to the world, even to Charlotte and her outspoken sympathy. The first tears that had been wrung from her she shed that night over Meta. When the child came to her for her good-night kiss, and to say her prayers, Maria was utterly unhinged. She clasped the little thing to her heart and burst into a storm of sobs.

Meta was frightened.

Mamma! mamma! What was the matter with mamma?

Maria was unable to answer. The sobs were choking her. Was the child’s inheritance to be that of shame? Maria had grieved bitterly when her other children died: she was now feeling that it might have been a mercy had this dear one also been taken. She covered the little face with kisses as she held it against her beating heart. Presently she grew calm enough to speak.

“Mamma’s not well this evening, darling.”

Once more, as on the previous nights, Maria had to drag herself up to her weary bed. As she fell upon her knees by the bedside, she seemed to pray almost against faith and hope. “Father! all things are possible to Thee. Be with me in Thy mercy this night, and help me to pass through it!”

She saw not how she could pass through it. “Oh! when will the night be gone?” broke incessantly from her bruised heart. Bitterly cold, as before, was she; a chilly, trembling sensation was in every limb; but her head and brain seemed burning, her lips were dry, and that painful nervous affection, the result of excessive anguish, was attacking her throat. Maria had never yet experienced that, and thought she was about to be visited by some strange malady. It was a dreadful night of pain, of apprehension, of cold; inwardly and outwardly she trembled as she lay through it. One terrible word kept beating its sound on the room’s stillness—transportation. Was her husband in danger of it? Just before daylight she dropped asleep, and for half an hour slept heavily; but with the full dawn of day she was awake again. Not for the first minute was she conscious of reality; but, the next, the full tide of recollection had burst upon her. With a low cry of despair, she leaped from her bed, and began pacing the carpet, all but unable to support the surging waves of mental anguish which rose up one by one and threatened to overmaster her reason. Insanity, had it come on, might have been then more of a relief than a calamity to Maria Godolphin.

“How shall I live through the day? how shall I live through the day?” were the words that broke from her lips. And she fell down by the bedside, and lifted her hands and her heart on high, and wailed out a cry to God to help her to get through it. Of her own strength, she truly believed that she could not.

She would certainly have need of some help, if she were to bear it patiently. At seven o’clock, a peal of muffled bells burst over the town, deafening her ears. Some mauvais sujets, discontented sufferers, had gone to the belfry of St. Mark’s Church, and set them ringing for the calamity which had overtaken Prior’s Ash, in the stoppage of the House of Godolphin.

CHAPTER XXIII.

“AS FINE AS A QUEEN!”

“Is Mrs. George Godolphin within?”

The inquiry came from Grace Akeman. She put it in a sharp, angry tone, something like the sharp, angry peal she had just rung at the hall-bell. Pierce answered in the affirmative, and showed her in.

The house seemed gloomy and still, as one in a state of bankruptcy does seem. Mrs. Akeman thought so as she crossed the hall. The days had gone on to the Thursday, the bankruptcy had been declared, and those pleasant visitors, foretold by Charlotte Pain, had entered on their duties at the Bank and at Ashlydyat. Fearfully ill looked Maria: dark circles had formed under her eyes, her face had lost its bloom, and an expression as of some ever-present dread had seated itself upon her features. When Pierce opened the door to usher in her sister, she started palpably.

Things, with regard to George Godolphin, remained as they were. He had not made his appearance at Prior’s Ash, and Thomas did not know where to write to him. Maria did. She had heard from him on the Tuesday morning. His letter was written apparently in the gayest of spirits. The contrast that was presented between his state of mind (if the tone of the letter might be trusted) and Maria’s was something marvellous. A curiosity in metaphysics, as pertaining to the spiritual organization of humanity. He sent gay messages to Meta, he sent teasing ones to Margery, he never so much as hinted to Maria that he had a knowledge of anything being wrong. He should soon be home, he said; but meanwhile Maria was to write him word all news, and address the letter under cover to Mr. Verrall. But she was not to give that address to any one. George Godolphin knew he could rely upon the good faith of his wife. He wrote also to his brother: a letter which Thomas burnt as soon as read. Probably it was intended for his eye alone. But he expressed no wish to hear from Thomas; neither did he say how a letter might reach him. He may have felt himself in the light of a guilty schoolboy, who knows he merits a lecture, and would escape from it as long as possible. Maria’s suspense was almost unbearable—and Lord Averil had given no sign of what his intentions might be.

Seeing it was her sister who entered, she turned to her with a sort of relief. “Oh, Grace!” she said, “I thought I was never going to see any of you again.”

Grace would not meet the offered hand. Never much given to ceremony, she often came in and went out without giving hers. But this time Grace had come in anger. She blamed Maria for what had occurred, almost as much as she blamed George. Not of the highly refined organization that Maria was, Grace possessed far keener penetration. Had her husband been going wrong, Grace would inevitably have discovered it; and she could not believe but that Maria must have suspected George Godolphin. In her angry feeling against George, whom she had never liked, Grace would have deemed it right that Maria should denounce him. Whether she had been wilfully blind, or really blind, Grace alike despised her for it. “I shall not spare her,” Grace said to her husband: and she did not mean to spare her, now she had come.

“I have intruded here to ask if you will go to the Rectory and see mamma,” Grace began. “She is not well, and cannot come to you.”

Grace’s manner was strangely cold and stern. And Maria did not like the word “intruded.” “I am glad to see you,” she replied in a gentle voice. “It is very dull here, now. No one has been near me, except Bessy Godolphin.”

“You cannot expect many visitors,” said Grace in her hard manner—very hard to-day.

“I do not think I could see them if they came,” was Maria’s answer. “I was not speaking of visitors. Is mamma ill?”

“Yes, she is; and little wonder,” replied Grace. “I almost wish I was not married, now this misfortune has fallen upon us: it would at any rate be another pair of hands at the Rectory, and I am more capable of work than mamma or Rose. But I am married; and of course my place must be my husband’s home.”

“What do you mean by another pair of hands, Grace?”

“There are going to be changes at the Rectory,” returned Grace, staring at the wall behind Maria, apparently to avoid looking at her. “One servant only is to be retained, and the two little Chisholm girls are coming there to be kept and educated. Mamma will have all the care upon her; she and Rose must both work and teach. Papa will keep the little boy at school, and have him home in the holidays, to make more trouble at the Rectory. They, papa and mamma, will have to pinch and screw; they must deprive themselves of every comfort; bare necessaries alone must be theirs; and, all that can be saved from their income will be put by towards paying the trust-money.”

“Is this decided?” asked Maria in a low tone.

“It is decided so far as papa can decide anything,” sharply rejoined Grace. “If the law is put in force against him, by his co-trustee, for the recovery of the money, he does not know what he would do. Possibly the living would have to be sequestered.”

Maria did not speak. What Grace was saying was all too true and terrible. Grace flung up her hand with a passionate movement.

“Had I been the one to bring this upon my father and mother, Maria, I should wish I had been out of the world before it had come to pass.”

“I did not bring it upon them, Grace,” was Maria’s scarcely-breathed answer.

“Yes, you did. Maria, I have come here to speak my mind, and I must speak it. I may seem hard, but I can’t help it. How could you, for shame, let papa pay in that money, the nine thousand pounds? If you and George Godolphin must have flaunted your state and your expense in the eyes of the world, and ruined people to do it, you might have spared your father and mother.”

“Grace, why do you blame me?”

Mrs. Akeman rose from her chair, and began pacing the room. She did not speak in a loud tone; not so much in an angry one, as in a clear, sharp, decisive one. It was just the tone used by the Rector of All Souls’ when in his cynical moods.

“He has been a respected man all his life; he has kept up his position–”

“Of whom do you speak?” interrupted Maria, really not sure whether she was applying the words satirically to George Godolphin.

“Of whom do I speak!” retorted Grace. “Of your father and mine. I say he has been respected all his life; has maintained his position as a clergyman and a gentleman, has reared his children suitably, has exercised moderate hospitality at the Rectory, and yet was putting something by that we might have a few pounds each, at his death, to help us on in the world. Not one of his children but wants helping on: except the grand wife of Mr. George Godolphin.”