The Shadow of Ashlydyat

Maria, debarred from assisting, wandered in her restlessness through some of the more familiar rooms. It was well that she should pay them a farewell visit. From the bedroom where the packing was going on, to George’s dressing-room, thence to her own sitting-room, thence to the drawing-room, all on that floor. She lingered in all. A home sanctified by years of happiness cannot be quitted without regret, even when exchanged at pleasure for another; but to turn out of it in humiliation, in poverty, in hopelessness, is a trial of the sharpest and sorest kind. Apart from the pain, the feeling was a strange one. The objects crowding these rooms: the necessary furniture costly and substantial; the elegant ornaments of various shapes and sorts, the chaste works of art, not necessary, but so luxurious and charming, had hitherto been their own—hers in conjunction with her husband’s. They might have done what they pleased with them. Had she broken that Wedgwood vase, there was no one to call her to ac count for it: had she or George chosen to make a present of that rare basket in medallion, with its speaking likenesses of the beauties of the whilom gay French court, there was no one to say them nay; had they felt disposed to change that fine piano for another, the liberty to do so was theirs. They had been the owners of these surroundings, master and mistress of the house and its contents. And now? Not a single article belonged to them: they were but tenants on sufferance: the things remained, but their right in them had passed away. If she dropped and broke only that pretty trifle which her hand was touching now, she must answer for the mishap. The feeling, I say, was a strange one.

She walked through the rooms with dry eyes and a hot brow. Tears seemed long ago to have gone from her. It is true she had been surprised into a few that day, but the lapse was unusual. Why should she make this farewell visit to the rooms, she began asking herself. She needed it not to remember them. Visions of the past came crowding upon her memory; of this or the other happy day spent in them: of the gay meetings when they had received the world; of the sweet home hours when she had sat there alone with him of whom she had well-nigh made an idol—her husband. Mistaken idolatry, Mrs. George Godolphin! mistaken, useless, vain idolatry. Was there ever an earthly idol yet that did not mock its worshipper? I know of none. We make an idol of our child, and the time comes when it will turn and sting us: we make an idol of the god or goddess of our passionate love, and how does it end?

Maria sat down and leaned her head upon her hand, thinking more of the past than of the future. She was getting to have less hope in the future than was good for her. It is a bad sign when a sort of apathy with regard to it steals over us; a proof that the mind is not in the healthy state that it ought to be. A time of trial, of danger, was approaching for Maria, and she seemed to contemplate the possibility of her sinking under if with strange calmness. A few months ago, the bare glance at such a fear would have unhinged her: she would have clung to her husband and Meta, and sobbed out her passionate prayer to God in her dire distress, not to be taken from them. Things had changed: the world in which she had been so happy had lost its charm for her; the idol in whose arms she had sheltered herself turned out not to have been of pure gold: and Maria Godolphin began to realize the truth of the words of the wise king of Jerusalem—that the world and its dearest hopes are but vanity.

Meanwhile Mrs. Charlotte Pain, in her looped-up petticoats and nicely-fitting kid boots, was tripping jauntily through the streets of Prior’s Ash. Mrs. Pain had been somewhat vacillating in regard to her departure from that long-familiar town; she had reconsidered her determination of quitting it so abruptly; and on the day she went out of Lady Godolphin’s Folly, she entered on some stylish lodgings in the heart of Prior’s Ash. Only for a week or two; just to give her time to take proper leave of her friends she said: but the weeks had gone on and on, and Charlotte was still there.

Society had been glad to keep Charlotte. Society of course shuts its lofty ears to the ill-natured tales spread by low-bred people: that is, when it finds it convenient so to do. Society had been pleased to be deaf to any little obscure tit-bits of scandal which had made vulgarly free with Charlotte’s name: and as to the vague rumours connecting Mr. Verrall with George Godolphin’s ruin, no one knew whether that was not pure scandal too. But if not, why—Mrs. Pain could not be justly reflected on for the faults of Mr. Verrall. So Charlotte was as popular and dashing in her hired rooms as she had been at Lady Godolphin’s Folly, and she had remained in them until now.

But now she was really going. This was the last day of her sojourn at Prior’s Ash, and Charlotte was walking about unceremoniously, bestowing her farewells on any one who would receive them. It almost seemed as if she had only waited to witness the removal from the Bank of Mr. and Mrs. George Godolphin.

She walked along in exuberant spirits, nodding her head to everyone: up at windows, in at doorways, to poor people on foot, to rich ones in carriages; her good-natured smile was everywhere. She rushed into shops and chatted familiarly, and won the shopkeepers’ hearts by asking if they were not sorry to lose her. She was turning out of one when she came upon the Rector of All Souls’. Charlotte’s petticoats went down in a swimming reverence.

“I am paying my farewell visits, Mr. Hastings. Prior’s Ash will be rid of me to-morrow.”

Not an answering smile crossed the Rector’s face: it was cold, impassive, haughtily civil: almost as if he were thinking that Prior’s Ash might have been none the worse had it been rid of Mrs. Charlotte Pain before.

“How is Mrs. Hastings to-day?” asked Charlotte.

“She is not well.”

“No! I must try and get a minute to call in on her. Adieu for the present. I shall see you again, I hope.”

Down sank the skirts once more, and the Rector lifted his hat in silence. In the ultra-politeness, in the spice of sauciness gleaming out from her flashing eyes, the clergyman read incipient defiance. But if Mrs. Pain feared that he might be intending to favour her with a little public clerical censure, she was entirely mistaken. The Rector washed his hands of Mrs. Pain, as Lady Godolphin did of her step-son, Mr. George. He walked on, a flash of scorn lighting his face.

Charlotte walked on: and burst into a laugh as she did so. “Was he afraid to forbid my calling at the Rectory?” she asked herself. “He would have liked to, I know. I’ll go there now.”

She was not long reaching it. But Isaac was the only one of the family she saw. He came to her charged with Mrs. Hastings’s compliments—she felt unequal to seeing Mrs. Pain.

“I hear you are going to London,” said Charlotte. “You have found some situation there, George Godolphin tells me.”

Isaac threw his eyes—they were just like the Rector’s—straight and full into her face. In her present spirit, half mischievous, half defiant, she had expressly paraded the name of George, as her informant, and Isaac thoroughly understood her. Charlotte’s eyes were dancing with a variety of expressions, but the chief one was good-humoured malice.

“I am going into a bank in Lombard-street. Mr. Godolphin got me into it.”

“You won’t like it,” said Charlotte.

“I dare say not. But I think myself lucky to get it.”

“There will be one advantage,” continued Charlotte good-naturedly—“you can come and see us. You know Mrs. Verrall’s address. Come as often as you can; every Sunday, if you like; any week-day evening: I’ll promise you a welcome beforehand.”

“You are very kind,” briefly returned Isaac. They were walking slowly to the gate, and he held it open for her.

“What’s Reginald doing?” she asked. “Have you heard from him lately?”

“Not very lately. You are aware that he is in London, under a master of navigation, preparatory to passing for second officer. As soon as he has passed, he will go to sea again.”

“When you write to him, give him our address, and tell him to come and see me. And now good-bye,” added Charlotte heartily. “And mind you don’t show yourself a muff, Mr. Isaac, but come and see us. Do you hear?”

“I hear,” said Isaac, smiling, as he thawed to her good-humour. “I wish you a pleasant journey, Mrs. Pain.”

“Merci bien. Good-bye.”

The church clock boomed out five as Charlotte passed it, and she came to a standstill of consideration. It was the hour at which she had ordered dinner to be ready.

“Bother dinner!” decided she. “I can’t go home for that. I want to see if they are in their lodgings yet. Is that you, Mrs. Bond?”

Sure enough, Mrs. Bond had come into view, and was halting to bob down to Charlotte. Her face looked pale and pinched. There had been no supply of strong waters to-day.

“I be a’most starving, ma’am. I’m waiting here to catch the parson, for I’ve been to his house, and they say he’s out. I dun know as it’s of any good seeing him, either. ’Tain’t much he has to give away now.”

“I am about to leave, Mrs. Bond,” cried Charlotte in her free and communicative humour.

“More’s the ill-luck, and I have heered on’t,” responded Mrs. Bond. “Everybody as is good to us poor goes away, or dies, or fails, or sum’at. There’ll soon be nought left for us but the work’us. Many’s the odd bit o’ silver you have given me at times, ma’am.”

“So I have,” said Charlotte, laughing. “What if I were to give you this, as a farewell remembrance?”

She took a half-sovereign out of her purse, and held it up. Mrs. Bond gasped: the luck seemed too great to be realized.

“Here, you may have it,” said Charlotte, dropping it into the trembling hand held out. “But you know you are nothing but an old sinner, Mrs. Bond.”

“I knows I be,” humbly acquiesced Mrs. Bond. “’Tain’t of no good denying of it to you, ma’am: you be up to things.”

Charlotte laughed, taking the words, perhaps, rather as a compliment. “You’ll go and change this at the nearest gin-shop, and you’ll reel into bed to-night blindfold. That’s the only good you’ll do with it. There, don’t say I left Prior’s Ash, forgetting you.”

She walked on rapidly, leaving Mrs. Bond in her ecstasy of delight to waste her thanks on the empty air. The lodgings George had taken were at the opposite end of the town, nearer to Ashlydyat, and to them Charlotte was bound. They were not on the high-road, but in a quiet side lane. The house, low and roomy, and built in the cottage style, stood in the midst of a flourishing garden. A small grass-plat and some flowers were before the front windows, but the rest of the ground was filled with fruit and vegetables. Charlotte opened the green gate and walked up the path, which led to the house.

The front door was open to a small hall, and Charlotte went in, finding her way, and turned to a room on the left: a cheerful, good-sized, old-fashioned parlour, with a green carpet, and pink flowers on its walls. There stood Margery, laying out tea-cups and bread and butter. Her eyes opened at the sight of Mrs. Pain.

“Have they come yet, Margery?”

“No,” was Margery’s short answer. “They’ll be here in half an hour, maybe; and that’ll be before I want ’em—with all the rooms and everything to see to, and only me to do it.”

“Is that all you are going to give them for tea?” cried Charlotte, looking contemptuously at the table. “I should surprise them with a dainty dish or two on the table. It would look cheering: and they might soon be cooked.”

“I dare say they might, where there’s time and convenience,” wrathfully returned Margery, who relished Mrs. Pain’s interference as little as she liked her presence. “The kitchen we are to have is about as big as a rat-hole, and my hands are full enough this evening without dancing out to buy meats and dainties.”

“Of course you will light a fire here?” said Charlotte, turning to the grate. “I see it is laid.”

“It’s not cold,” grunted Margery.

“But a fire will be a pleasant welcome. I’ll do it myself.”

She took up a box of matches which stood on the mantel-piece, and set light to the wood under the coal. Margery took no notice one way or the other. The fire in a fair way of burning, Charlotte hastened from the house, and Margery breathed freely again.

Not for very long. A little time, and Charlotte was back again, accompanied by a boy, bearing sundry parcels. There was a renowned comestible shop in Prior’s Ash, and Charlotte had been ransacking it. She had also been home for a small parcel on her own account; but that did not contain eatables.

Taking off her cloak and bonnet, she made herself at home. Critically surveying the bedrooms; visiting the kitchen to see that the kettle boiled; lighting the lamp on the tea-table, for it was dark then; demanding an unlimited supply of plates, and driving Margery nearly wild with her audacity. But Charlotte was doing it all in good feeling; in her desire to render this new asylum bright-looking at the moment of their taking possession of it; to cheat the first entrance of some of its bitterness for Maria. Whatever may have been Mrs. Charlotte Pain’s faults—and Margery, for one, gave her credit for plenty—she was capable of generous impulses. It is probable that in the days gone by, a feeling of jealousy, of spite, had rankled in her heart against George Godolphin’s wife: but that had worn itself out; had been finally lost in the sorrow felt for Maria since misfortune had fallen. When the fly drove up to the door, and George brought in his wife and Meta, the bright room, the well-laden tea-table greeted their surprised eyes, and Charlotte was advancing with open hands.

“I thought you’d like to see some one here to get things comfortable for you, and I knew that cross-grained Margery would have enough to do between the boxes and her temper,” she cried, taking Maria’s hands. “How are you, Mr. George?”

George found his tongue. “This is kind of you, Mrs. Pain.”

Maria felt that it was kind: and in her flow of gratitude, as her hand lay in Charlotte’s warm grasp, she almost forgot that cruel calumny. Not quite: it could not be quite forgotten, even momentarily, until earth and its passions should have passed away.

“And mademoiselle?” continued Charlotte. Mademoiselle, little gourmande that she was, was raised on her toes, surveying the table with curious eyes. Charlotte lifted her in her arms, and held up to her view a glass jar, something within it the colour of pale amber. “This is for good children, Meta.”

“That’s me,” responded Meta, smacking her lips. “What is it?”

“It’s—let me read the label—it’s pine-apple jelly. And that’s boned fowl; and that’s galantine de veau; and that’s pâté de lapereaux aux truffes—if you understand what it all means, petite marmotte. And—there—you can look at everything and find out for yourself,” concluded Charlotte. “I am going to show mamma her bedroom.”

It opened from the sitting-room: an excellent arrangement, as Charlotte observed, in case of illness. Maria cast her eyes round it, and saw a sufficiently comfortable chamber. It was not their old luxurious chamber at the Bank; but luxuries and they must part company now.

Charlotte reigned at the head of the table that night, triumphantly gay. Margery waited with a stiffened neck and pursed-up lips. Nothing more: there were no other signs of rebellion. Margery had had her say out with that one memorable communication, and from thenceforth her lips were closed for ever. Did the woman repent of having spoken?—did she now think it better to have let doubt be doubt? It is hard to say. She had made no further objection to Mrs. Pain in words: she intended to make none. If that lady filled Miss Meta to illness to-night with pine-apple jelly and boned fowl, and the other things with unpronounceable names, which Margery regarded as rank poison, when regaling Miss Meta, she should not interfere. The sin might lie on her master and mistress’s head.

It was close upon ten when Charlotte rose to depart, which she persisted in doing alone, in spite of George’s remonstrance. Charlotte had no fear of being in the streets alone: she would as soon go through them by night as by day.

As a proof of this, she did not proceed directly homewards, but turned up a road that led to the railway station. She had no objection to a stroll that moonlight night, and she had a fancy for seeing what passengers the ten-o’clock train brought, which was just in.

It brought none. None that Charlotte could see: and she was preparing to turn back on the dull road, when a solitary figure came looming on her sight in the distance. He was better than no one, regarding him from Charlotte’s sociable point of view: but he appeared to be advanced in years. She could see so much before he came up.

Charlotte strolled on, gratifying her curiosity by a good stare. A tall, portly man, with a fresh colour and snow-white hair. She was passing him, when he lifted his face, which had been bent, and turned it towards her. The recognition was mutual, and she darted up to him, and gave his hand a hearty shake. It was Mr. Crosse.

“Good gracious me! We thought you never meant to come back again!”

“And I would rather not have come back, Mrs. Pain, than come to hear what I am obliged to hear. I went streaming off from Pau, where I was staying, a confounded, senseless tour into Spain, leaving no orders for letters to be sent to me; and so I heard nothing. What has brought about this awful calamity?”

“What calamity?” asked Charlotte—knowing perfectly well all the while.

“What calamity!” repeated Mr. Crosse, who was rapid in speech and hot in temper. “The failure of the Bank—the Godolphins’ ruin. What else?”

“Oh, that!” slightingly returned Charlotte. “That’s stale news now. Folks are forgetting it. Queen Anne’s dead.”

“What brought it about?” reiterated Mr. Crosse, neither words nor tone pleasing him.

“What does bring such things about?” rejoined Charlotte. “Want of money, I suppose. Or bad management.”

“But there was no want of money; there was no bad management in the Godolphins’ house,” raved Mr. Crosse, becoming excited. “I wish you’d not play upon my feelings, Mrs. Pain.”

“Who is playing upon them?” cried Charlotte. “If it was not want of money, if it was not bad management, I don’t know what else it was.”

“I was told in London, as I came through it, that George Godolphin had been playing up old Rosemary with everything, and that Verrall has helped him,” continued Mr. Crosse.

“Folks will talk,” said bold Charlotte. “I was told—it was the current report in Prior’s Ash—that the stoppage had occurred through Mr. Crosse withdrawing his money from the concern.”

“What an unfounded assertion,” exclaimed that gentleman in choler. “Prior’s Ash ought to have known better.”

“So ought those who tell you rubbish about George Godolphin and Verrall,” coolly affirmed Charlotte.

“Where’s Thomas Godolphin?”

“At Ashlydyat. He’s in luck. My Lord Averil has bought it all in as it stands, and Mr. Godolphin remains in it.”

“He is ill, I hear?”

“Pretty near dead, I hear,” retorted Charlotte. “My lord is to marry Miss Cecilia.”

“And where’s that wicked George?”

“If you call names, I won’t answer you another word, Mr. Crosse.”

“I suppose you don’t like to hear it,” he returned in so pointed a manner that Charlotte might have felt it as a lance-shaft. “Well, where is he?”

“Just gone into lodgings with his wife and Margery and Meta. I have been taking tea with them. They left the Bank to-day.”

Mr. Crosse stood, nodding his head in the moonlight, and communing aloud with himself. “And so—and so—it is all a smash together! It is as bad as was said.”

“It couldn’t be worse,” cried Charlotte. “Prior’s Ash won’t hold up its head for many a day. It’s no longer worth living in. I leave it for good to-morrow.”

“Poor Sir George! It’s a good thing he was in his grave. Lord Averil could have prosecuted George, I hear.”

“Were I to hear to-morrow that I could be prosecuted for standing here and talking to you to-night, it wouldn’t surprise me,” was the answer.

“What on earth did he do with the money? What went with it?”

“Report runs that he founded a cluster of almhouses with it,” said Charlotte demurely. “Ten old women, who were to be found in coals and red cloaks, and half-a-crown a week.”

The words angered him beyond everything. Nothing could have been more serious than his mood; nothing could savour of levity, of mockery, more than hers. “Report runs that he has been giving fabulous prices for horses to make presents of,” angrily retorted Mr. Crosse, in a tone of pointed significance.

“Not a bit of it,” returned undaunted Charlotte. “He only gave bills.”

“Good night to you, Mrs. Pain,” came the next words, haughtily and abruptly, and Mr. Crosse turned to continue his way.

Leaving Charlotte standing there. No other passengers came down from the station: there were none to come: and she turned to retrace her steps to the town. She walked slowly and moved her head from side to side, as if she would take in all the familiar features of the landscape by way of farewell in anticipation of the morrow; the day that was to close her residence at Prior’s Ash for ever.

PART THE THIRD

CHAPTER I.

A MORNING CALL

Time elapsed. Autumn weather had come; and things were going on in their progression at Prior’s Ash as things always must go on. Be it slow or fast, marked or unmarked, the stream of life must glide forward; onwards, onwards; never turning from its appointed course that bears us straight towards eternity.

In the events that concern us nothing had been very marked. At least, not outwardly. There were no startling changes to be recorded—unless, indeed, it was that noted change in the heart of the town. The Bank of which you have heard so much was no more; but in its stead flourished an extensive ironmongery establishment—which, it was to be hoped, would not come to the same ignoble end. The house had been divided into two dwellings: the one, accessible by the former private entrance, was let to a quiet widow lady and her son, a young man reading for the Church; the other had been opened in all the grandeur and glory of highly-polished steel and iron. Not one of the Godolphins could pass it without a keen heart-pang, but the general public were content to congregate and admire as long as the novelty lasted.

The great crash, which had so upset the equanimity of Prior’s Ash, was beginning to be forgotten as a thing of the past. The bankruptcy was at an end—excepting some remaining formal proceedings which did not at all concern the general public, and not much the creditors. Compassion for those who had been injured by the calamity was dying out: many a home had been rendered needy—many desolate; but outside people do not make these uncomfortable facts any lasting concern of theirs. There were only two who did make them so, in regard to Prior’s Ash; and they would make them so as long as their lives should last.

George Godolphin’s wife was lying in her poor lodgings, and Thomas was dying at Ashlydyat. Dying so slowly and imperceptibly that the passage to the grave was smoothed, and the town began to say that he might yet recover. The wrong inflicted upon others, however unwillingly on his own part, the distress rife in many a house around, was ever present to him. It was ever present to Maria. Some of those who had lost were able to bear it; but there were others upon whom it had brought privation, poverty, utter ruin. It was for these last that the sting was felt.

A little boy had been born to Maria, and had died at the end of a few days. He was baptized Thomas. “Name him Thomas: it will be a remembrance of my brother,” George Godolphin had said. But the young Thomas died before the elder one. The same disorder which had taken off two of Maria’s other infants took him off—convulsions. “Best that it should be so,” said Maria, with closed eyes and folded hands.

Somehow she could not grow strong again. Lying in bed, sick and weak, she had time to ruminate upon the misfortunes which had befallen them: the bitter, hopeless reminiscence of the past, the trouble and care of the present, the uncertainty of the future. To dwell upon such themes is not good for the strongest frame; but for the weak it is worse than can be described. Whether it was that, or whether it was a tendency to keep ill, which might have arisen without any mental trouble at all, Maria did not grow strong. Mr. Snow sent her no end of tonics; he ordered her all kinds of dainties; he sat and chatted and joked with her by the half-hour together: and it availed not. She was about again, as the saying runs, but she remained lamentably weak. “You don’t make an effort to rouse yourself,” Mr. Snow would say, rapping his stick in displeasure upon the floor as he spoke. Well, perhaps she did not: the simple fact was, that there was neither health nor spirit within her to make the effort.