The Shadow of Ashlydyat

What noise was that? A sort of commotion in the hall. She opened the dining-room door and glanced out. Thomas Godolphin had come, and was entering the Bank, leaning on his servant Bexley’s arm, there to go through his day’s work, looking more fit for his coffin. It was the turning of the scale.

“I will go to him!” murmured Maria to herself. “I will go to Lord Averil, and hear all there may be to hear. Let me do it! Let me do it!—for the sake of Thomas Godolphin!” And she prepared herself for the visit.

This proposed application to Lord Averil may appear but a very slight affair to the careless and thoughtless: one of those trifling annoyances which must occasionally beset our course through life. Why should Maria have shrunk from it with that shiveringly sensitive dread?—have set about it as a forced duty, with a burning cheek and failing heart? Consider what it was that she undertook, you who would regard it lightly; pause an instant and look at it in all its bearings. Her husband, George Godolphin, had robbed Lord Averil of sixteen thousand pounds. It is of no use to mince the matter. He had shown himself neither more nor less than a thief, a swindler. He, a man of the same social stamp as Lord Averil, moving in the same sphere of county society, had fallen from his pedestal by his own fraudulent act, to a level (in crime) with the very dregs of mankind. Perhaps no one in the whole world could ever feel it in the same humiliating degree as did his wife—unless it might be Thomas Godolphin. Both of them, unfortunately for them—yes, I say it advisedly—unfortunately for them in this bitter storm of shame—both of them were of that honourable, upright, ultra-refined nature, on which such a blow falls far more cruelly than death. Death! death! If it does come, it brings at least one recompense: the humiliation and the trouble, the bitter pain and the carking care are escaped from, left behind for ever in the cruel world. Oh! if these miserable ill-doers could but bear in their own person all the pain and the shame!—if George Godolphin could only have stood out on a pinnacle in the face of Prior’s Ash and expiated his folly alone! But it could not be. It never can or will be. As the sins of the people in the Israelitish camp were laid upon the innocent and unhappy scape-goat, so the sins which men commit in the present day are heaped upon unconscious and guileless heads. As the poor scape-goat wandered with his hidden burden into the remote wilderness, away from the haunts of man, so do these other heavily-laden ones stagger away with their unseen load, only striving to hide themselves from the eyes of men—anywhere—in patience and silence—praying to die.

Every humiliation which George Godolphin has brought upon himself,—every harsh word cast on him by the world,—every innate sense of guilt and shame which must accompany such conduct, was being expiated by his wife. Yes, it fell worst upon her: Thomas was but his brother; she was part and parcel of himself. But that God’s ways are not as our ways, we might feel tempted to ask why it should be that these terrible trials are so often brought upon the head of such women as Maria Godolphin—timid, good, gentle, sensitive—the least of all able to bear them. That such is frequently the case, is indisputable. In no way was Maria fitted to cope with this. Many might have felt less this very expedition to Lord Averil: to her it was as the very bitterest humiliation. She had hitherto met Lord Averil as an equal—she had entertained him at her house as such—she had stood before him always in her calm self-possession, with a clear face and a clear conscience; and now she must go to him a humble petitioner—bow before him in all her self-conscious disgrace—implore him to save her husband from the consequences of his criminal act; standing at the felon’s bar, and its sequel—transportation. She must virtually ask Lord Averil to put up quietly with the loss of the sixteen thousand pounds, and to make no sign.

With a cheek flushed with emotion,—with a heart sick unto faintness,—Maria Godolphin stepped out of her house in the full blaze of the midday sun. A gloomy day, showing her less conspicuously to the curious gazers of Prior’s Ash, had been more welcome to her. She had gone out so rarely since the crash came—but that once, in fact, when she went to her mother—that her appearance was the signal for a commotion. “There’s Mrs. George Godolphin!” and Prior’s Ash flocked to its doors and its windows, as if Mrs. George Godolphin had been some unknown curiosity in the animal world, never yet exhibited to the eyes of the public. Maria shielded her burning face from observation as well as she could with her small parasol, and passed on.

Lord Averil, she had found, was staying with Colonel Max, and her way led her past the Rectory of All Souls’, past the house of Lady Sarah Grame. Lady Sarah was at the window, and Maria bowed. The bow was not returned. It was not returned! Lady Sarah turned away with a haughty movement, a cold glance. It told cruelly upon Maria: had anything been wanted to prove to her the estimation in which she was now held by Prior’s Ash, that would have done it.

The distance from her own house to that of Colonel Max was about two miles. Rather a long walk for Maria at the present time, for she was not in a condition of health to endure fatigue. It was a square, moderate-sized, red-brick house, standing considerably back from the high-road; and as Maria turned into its avenue of approach, what with the walk, and what with the dread apprehension of the coming interview, the faintness at her heart had begun to show itself upon her face. The insult offered her (could it be called anything less?) by Lady Sarah Grame, had somehow seemed an earnest of what she might expect from Lord Averil. Lady Sarah had not a tenth of the grievance against the Bank that the viscount had.

No one ever approached the colonel’s house without having their ears saluted with the baying and snarling of his fox-hounds, whose kennels were close by. In happier days—days so recently past, that they might almost be counted as present—when Maria had gone to that house to dinner-parties, she had drawn closer to George in the carriage, and whispered how much she should dislike it if he kept a pack of fox-hounds near their dwelling-place. Never, never should she drive to that house in state again, her husband by her side. Oh! the contrast it presented—that time and this! Now she was approaching it like the criminal that the world thought her, shielding her face with her veil, hiding herself, so far as she might, from observation.

She reached the door, and paused ere she rang: her pulses were throbbing wildly, her heart beat as if it would burst its bounds. The nearer the interview, the more formidable did it appear, the less able herself to face it. The temptation came over her to go back. It assailed her very strongly, and she might have yielded to it, but for the thought of Thomas Godolphin.

She rang at the bell; a timid ring. One of those rings that seem to announce the humble applicant—and who was the wife of George Godolphin now, that she should proclaim herself with pomp and clatter? A man settling himself into his green livery coat opened the door.

“Is Lord Averil within?”

“No.”

The servant was a stranger, and did not know her. He may have thought it curious that a lady, who spoke in a low tone and scarcely raised her eyes through her veil, should come there alone to inquire after Lord Averil. He resumed, rather pertly:

“His lordship walked out an hour ago with the colonel. It’s quite unbeknown what time they may come in.”

In her shrinking dread of the interview, it almost seemed a relief. Strange to say, so fully absorbed had she been in the anticipated pain, that the contingency of his being out had not crossed her mind. The man stood with the door in his hand, half open, half closed; had he invited her to walk in and sit down, she might have done so, for the sake of the rest. But he did not.

Retracing her steps down the path, she branched off into a dark walk, overshadowed by trees, just within the entrance-gate, and sat down upon a bench. Now the reaction was coming; the disappointment: all that mental agony, all that weary way of fatigue, and not to see him! It must all be gone over again on the morrow.

She threw back her veil; she pressed her throbbing forehead against the trunk of the old oak tree: and in that same moment some one entered the gate on his way to the house, saw her, and turned round to approach her. It was Lord Averil.

Had the moment really come? Every drop of blood in her body seemed to rush to her heart, and send it on with a tumultuous bound; every sense of the mind seemed to leave her; every fear that the imagination can conjure up seemed to rise in menace. She rose to her feet and gazed at him, her sight partially leaving her, her face changing to a ghastly whiteness.

But when he hastened forward and caught her hands in the deepest respect and sympathy; when he bent over her, saying some confused words—confused to her ear—of surprise at seeing her, of pity for her apparent illness; when he addressed her with every token of the old kindness, the consideration of bygone days, then the revulsion of feeling overcame her, and Maria burst into a flood of distressing tears, and sobbed passionately.

“I am fatigued with the walk,” she said, with a lame attempt at apology, when her emotion was subsiding. “I came over to speak to you, Lord Averil. I—I have something to ask you.”

“But you should not have walked,” he answered in a kindly tone of remonstrance. “Why did you not drop me a note? I would have come to you.”

She felt as one about to faint. She had taken off her gloves, and her small white hands were unconsciously writhing themselves together in her lap, showing how great was her inward pain; her trembling lips, pale with agitation, refused to bring out their words connectedly.

“I want to ask you to be merciful to my husband. Not to prosecute him.”

The words were breathed in a whisper; the rushing tide of shame changed her face to crimson. Lord Averil did not for the moment answer, and the delay, the fear of failure, imparted to her somewhat of courage.

“For Thomas’s sake,” she said. “I ask it for Thomas’s sake.”

“My dear Mrs. Godolphin,” he was beginning, but she interrupted him, her tone changing to one of desperate energy.

“Oh, be merciful, be merciful! Be merciful to my husband, Lord Averil, for his brother’s sake. Nay—for George’s own sake; for my sake, for my poor child’s sake, Meta’s. He can never come back to Prior’s Ash, unless you will be merciful to him: he cannot come now, and Thomas has to go through all the worry and the misery, and it is killing him. Mr. Snow came to me this morning and said it was killing him; he said that George must return if he would save his brother’s life: and I spoke to Mr. Hurde, and he said there was nothing to prevent his returning, except the danger from Lord Averil. And then I made my mind up to come to you.”

“I shall not prosecute him, Mrs. George Godolphin. My long friendship with his brother debars it. He may come back to-morrow, in perfect assurance that he has nothing to fear from me.”

“Is it true?—I may rely upon you?” she gasped.

“Indeed you may. I have never had a thought of prosecuting. I cannot describe to you the pain that it has been to me; I mean the affair altogether, not my particular loss: but that pain would be greatly increased were I to bring myself to prosecute one bearing the name of Godolphin. I am sorry for George; deeply sorry for him. Report says that he has allowed himself to fall into bad hands, and could not extricate himself.”

The worst was over; the best known: and Maria leaned against the friendly tree, untied her bonnet-strings, and wiped the moisture from her now pallid face. Exhaustion was supervening. Lord Averil rose and held out his arm to her.

“Let me take you to the house and give you a glass of sherry.”

“I could not take it, thank you. I would rather not go to the house.”

“Colonel Max will be very glad to see you. I have only just parted from him. He went round by the stables.”

She shook her head. “I do not like to see any one now.”

The subdued words, the saddened tone seemed to speak volumes. Lord Averil glanced down at her compassionately. “This has been a grievous trial to you, Mrs. Godolphin.”

“Yes,” she answered very quietly. Had she spoken but a word of what it had really been to her, emotion might again have broken forth.

“But you must not let it affect you too greatly,” he remonstrated. “As I fear it is doing.”

“I can’t help it,” she whispered. “I knew nothing of it, and it came upon me as a thunderbolt. I never had so much as a suspicion that anything was going wrong: had people asked me what Bank was the most stable throughout the kingdom, I should have said ours. I never suspected evil: and yet blame is being cast upon me. Lord Averil, I—I—did not know about those bonds.”

“No, no,” he warmly answered. “You need not tell me that. I wish you could allow the trouble to pass over you more lightly.”

The trouble! She clasped her hands to pain. “Don’t speak of it,” she wailed. “At times it seems more than I can bear. But for Meta, I should be glad to die.”

What was Lord Averil to answer? He could only give her the earnest sympathy of his whole heart. “A man who can bring deliberately this misery upon the wife of his bosom deserves hanging,” was his bitter thought.

“What are you going to do?” he asked. “Surely not to attempt to walk back again?”

“I shall take my time over it,” she answered. “It is not much of a walk.”

“Too much for you at present,” he gravely said. “Let me send you home in one of Colonel Max’s carriages.”

“No, oh no!” she quickly answered. “Indeed I have not miscalculated my strength: I can walk perfectly well, and would prefer to do so.”

“Then you will first come into the house and rest.”

“I would rather not. Let me sit here a little longer; it is resting me.”

“I will be back immediately,” he said, walking from her very quickly, and plunging into a narrow path which was a short cut to the house. When he reappeared he bore a glass of wine and a biscuit on a plate.

She took the wine. The biscuit she put back with a shiver. “I never can eat anything now,” she said, lifting her eyes to his to beseech his pardon.

When she at length rose, Lord Averil took her hand and laid it within his arm. She supposed he meant to escort her to the gate.

“I have not said a word of thanks to you,” she murmured, when they reached it. “I am very, very grateful to you, very sensible of your kindness; but I cannot speak of it. My heart seems broken.”

She had halted and held out her hand in farewell. Lord Averil did not release her, but walked on. “If you will walk home, Mrs. George Godolphin, you must at least allow my arm to help you.”

“I could not; indeed I could not,” she said, stopping resolutely, though the tears were dropping from her eyes. “I must go back alone: I would rather.”

Lord Averil partially yielded. The first part of the road was lonely, and he must see her so far. “I should have called on Thomas Godolphin before this, but I have been away,” he remarked, as they went on. “I will go and see him—perhaps this afternoon.”

“He will be so thankful to hear this! It will be as a renewed lease of life to him. They have been fearful at Ashlydyat.”

An exceedingly vexed expression crossed Lord Averil’s lips. “I thought they had known me better at Ashlydyat,” he said. “Thomas, at any rate. Feared me!”

At length Maria would not allow him to go farther, and Lord Averil clasped her hand in both his. “Promise me to try and keep up your spirits,” he said. “You should do so for your husband’s sake.”

“Yes; as well as I can,” she replied in a broken tone. “Thank you! thank you ever, Lord Averil!”

She called in at the Rectory as she passed, and sat for a while with her father and mother; but it was pain to her to do so. The bitter wrong inflicted on them by her husband was making itself heard in her heart in loud reproaches. The bitter wrong of another kind dealt out to herself by him, was all too present then. They knew how she had idolized him; they must have known how blindly misplaced that idolatry was; and the red flush mounted to Maria’s brow at the thought.

Oh, if she could only redeem the past, so far as they were concerned! It seemed that that would be enough. If she could only restore peace and comfort to their home, refund to her father what he had lost, how thankful she should be! She would move heaven and earth if that might accomplish it,—she would spend her own days in the workhouse,—pass them by a roadside hedge, and think nothing of it—if by those means she could remove the wrong done. She lifted her eyes to the blue sky, almost asking that a miracle might be wrought, to repair the injury which had been dealt out to her father. Ah me! if Heaven repaired all the injuries inflicted by man upon man, it would surely have no time for other works of mercy!

CHAPTER XXV.

IN THE STREETS OF PRIOR’S ASH

Barely had Maria departed and closed the Rectory gate behind her, when she encountered a stylish vehicle dashing along at an alarming pace, with a couple of frantic dogs behind it. It was that “turn-out” you have heard of, belonging to Mrs. Charlotte Pain. Mrs. Charlotte Pain was in it, resplendent as the sun, dazzling the admiring eyes of Prior’s Ash in a gown of pink moiré antique, and a head-gear which appeared to be composed of pink and white feathers and a glittering silver aigrette, its form altogether not unlike a French gendarme’s hat, if you have the pleasure of being familiar with that awe-imparting article. At the sight of Maria she pulled the horses up with a jerk: on which ensued some skirmishing and scattering abroad of dust, the animals, both horses and dogs, not approving of so summary a check; but Charlotte was resolute, and her whip effective. She then flung the reins to the groom who sat beside her, jumped down, and held out her hand to Maria.

Maria accepted it. The revelation gratuitously bestowed on her by Margery was beating its words upon her memory; and her brow, face and neck had flushed to a glowing crimson. Some might have flung the offered hand aside, and picked up their skirts with a jerk, and sailed away with an air; but Maria was a gentlewoman.

“How well you look!” exclaimed Charlotte, regarding her in some surprise. “Perhaps you are warm? I say, Mrs. George”—dropping her voice to a whisper—“whither do you think I am bound?”

“I cannot tell.”

“To see Lord Averil. He is back again, and stopping at old Max’s. I am going to badger him out of a promise not to hurt George Godolphin—about those rubbishing bonds, you know. I won’t leave him until I get it.”

“Yes,” said Maria.

“I will have it. Or—war to the knife, my lord! I should like to see him, or anybody else, attempt to refuse me anything I stood out for,” she added, with a triumphant glance, meant for the absent viscount. “Poor George has nobody here to fight his battles for him, and he can’t return to enter on them in person; so it’s well that some friend should do it. They are saying in the town this morning, that Averil has returned for the purpose of prosecuting: I mean to cut his prosecuting claws off.”

“It is a mistake,” said Maria. “Lord Averil has no intention of prosecuting.”

“How do you know?” bluntly asked Charlotte.

“I have just seen him.”

“You don’t mean to say you have been over to old Max’s?” exclaimed Charlotte, opening her brilliant black eyes very widely.

“Yes, I have.”

“You quiet slyboots! You have never walked there and back?”

“I don’t feel very tired. I have been resting with mamma for half an hour.”

“And he’s safe—Averil?” eagerly continued Charlotte.

“Quite safe. Remember his long friendship with Thomas Godolphin.”

“Oh, my dear, men forget friendship when their pockets are in question,” was the light remark of Charlotte. “You are sure, though, Averil’s not deceiving you? I don’t much think he is one to do a dirty trick of that sort, but I have lived long enough to learn that you must prove a man before you trust him.”

“Lord Averil is not deceiving me,” quietly answered Maria. “He has given me a message for my husband.”

“Then there’s no necessity for my going to him,” said Charlotte. “Let me drive you home, Mrs. George Godolphin. I am sure you are fatigued. I never saw any one change countenance as you do. A few minutes ago you looked vulgarly hot, and now you are pale enough for the grave. Step in. James, you must change to the back seat.”

Step into that formidably high thing, and sit by Mrs. Charlotte Pain’s side, and dash through Prior’s Ash! Maria wondered whether the gossips of Prior’s Ash—who, as it seemed, had made so free with gay George’s name—or Margery, would stare the most. She declined the invitation.

“You are afraid,” cried Charlotte. “Well, it’s a great misfortune, these timid temperaments: but I suppose they can’t be cured. Kate Verrall’s another coward: but she’s not as bad as you. Toss me my parasol, James.”

James handed his mistress a charming toy of pink moiré antique silk and point lace, mounted on a handle of carved ivory. Charlotte put it up before her face, and turned to accompany Maria.

Maria put her parasol up before her face, thankful that it might serve to shield it, if only partially, from the curious eyes of Prior’s Ash. Remembering the compliments that Prior’s Ash had been kind enough to pass on her “blind simplicity,” she would not exactly have chosen her present companion to walk through the streets with. Dame Bond, with her unsteady steps and her snuffy black gown, would have been preferable of the two.

“But,” thought Maria in her generosity, striving to thrust that other unpleasant feeling down deep into her heart, and to lose sight of it, “it is really kind of Mrs. Pain to be seen thus publicly with me. Other ladies would be ashamed of me now, I suppose.”

They stepped on. Maria with her parasol so close to her face that there was danger of her running against people; Charlotte turning herself from side to side, flirting the costly little pink toy as one flirts a fan, bowing and scraping to all she met. The dogs snarled and barked behind her; the carriage pranced and curvetted by their side; the unhappy James, his hands full with the horses, which refused to recognize any mastership except that of Mrs. Charlotte Pain. Altogether, it was a more conspicuous progress than Maria would have chosen. Thus they arrived at the Bank, and Maria held out her hand to Charlotte. She could not be otherwise than courteous, no matter to whom.

“I am coming in,” said Charlotte bluntly. “Take care what you are about with the horses, James.”

Maria led the way to the dining-room. All was as it used to be in that charming room; furniture, pictures, elegant trifles for show or for use; all was the same: except—that those things belonged now not to Maria and her husband, but were noted down as the property of others. Soon, soon to be put up for sale! Charlotte’s rich moiré antique came to an anchor on a sofa, and she untied the string of the gendarme hat, and pushed it back on her head.

“I am going to leave Prior’s Ash.”

“To leave Prior’s Ash!” repeated Maria. “When?”

“Within a week of this. Lady Godolphin’s coming back to the Folly.”

“But—Lady Godolphin cannot come back to it without giving you due notice to quit?” debated Maria.

“It’s all arranged,” said Charlotte, opening her mouth with a loud yawn. “Lady Godolphin wrote to Verrall, and the arrangements have been agreed upon amicably. Lady Godolphin foregoes a certain portion of rent, and we go out immediately. I am very glad, do you know. I had made my mind up not to stay. As to the Verralls, it may be said that they virtually took leave of the Folly long ago. Uncommonly glad I shall be to leave it,” repeated Charlotte with emphasis.

“Why?”

“Who’d care to stay at Prior’s Ash, after all this bother? You and George will be leaving it for London, you know—and I hope it won’t be long first. You must make me useful up there, Mrs. George. I’ll–”

“Who told you we were going to leave for London?” interrupted Maria in astonishment.

“Nobody told me. But of course you will. Do you suppose George Godolphin will care to stop amongst this set? Not he. He’d see Prior’s Ash go promenading first. What tie has he here, now Ashlydyat’s gone? Verrall talks of buying a hunting-box in Leicestershire.”