The Shadow of Ashlydyat

Circumstances were cruelly against her. She might have battled with the bankruptcy—with the shock and the disgrace; she might have battled with the discomforts of their fallen position, with the painful consciousness of the distress cast upon many a home, with the humiliation dealt out to herself as her own special portion by the pious pharisees around; she might have battled with the vague prospects of the future, hopeless though they looked: women equally sensitive, good, refined as Maria, have had to contend with all this, and have survived it. But what Maria could not battle with; what had told upon her heart and her spirit more than all the rest, was that dreadful shock touching her husband. She had loved him passionately, she had trusted him wholly; in her blind faith she had never cast as much as a thought to the possibility that he could be untrue to his allegiance: and she had been obliged to learn that—infidelity forms part of a man’s frail nature. It had dashed to the ground the faith and love of years; it had outraged every feeling of her heart; it seemed to have destroyed her trust in all mankind. Implicit faith! pure love! trust that she had deemed stronger than death!—all had been rent in one moment, and the shock had been greater than was her strength to endure. It was just as when one cuts a cord asunder. Anything, anything but this! She could have borne with George in his crime and disgrace, and clung to him when the world shunned him; had he been sent out to Van Diemen’s Land, the felon that he might have been, she could have crept by his side and loved him still. But this was different. To a woman of refined feeling, as was Maria, loving trustingly, it was as the very sharpest point of human agony. It must be so. She had reposed calmly in the belief that she was all in all to him: and she awoke to find that she was no more to him than were others. They had lived, as she fondly thought, in a world of their own, a world of tenderness, of love, of unity; she and he alone; and now she learnt that his world at least had not been so exclusive. Apart from more sacred feelings that were outraged, it brought to her the most bitter humiliation. She seemed to have sunk down to a level she scarcely knew with what. It was not the broad and bare infidelity: at that a gentlewoman scarcely likes to glance; but it was the fading away of all the purity and romance which had enshrined them round, as with a halo, they alone, apart from the world. In one unexpected moment, as a flash of lightning will blast a forest tree and strip it of its foliage, leaving it bare—withered—helpless—so had that blow rent the heart’s life of Maria Godolphin. And she did not grow strong.

Yes. Thomas Godolphin was dying at Ashlydyat, Maria was breaking her heart in her lonely lodgings, Prior’s Ash was suffering in its homes; but where was the cause of it all—Mr. George? Mr. George was in London. Looking after something to do, he told Maria. Probably he was. He knew that he had his wife and child upon his hands, and that something must be done, and speedily, or the wolf would come to the door. Lord Averil, good and forgiving as was Thomas Godolphin, had promised George to try and get him some post abroad—for George had confessed to him that he did not care to remain in England. But the prospect was a remote one at best: and it was necessary that George should exert himself while it came. So he was in town looking after the something, and meanwhile not by any means breaking his heart in regrets, or living as an anchorite up in a garret. Maria heard from him, and of him. Once a week, at least, he wrote to her, sometimes oftener; affectionate and gay letters. Loving words to herself, kisses and stories for Meta, teasings and jokes for Margery. He was friendly with the Verralls—which Prior’s Ash wondered at; and would now and then be seen riding in the Park with Mrs. Charlotte Pain—the gossip of which was duly chronicled to Maria by her gossiping acquaintance. Maria was silent on the one subject, but she did write a word of remonstrance to him about his friendship with Mr. Verrall. It was scarcely seemly, she intimated, after what people had said. George wrote her word back that she knew nothing about it; that people had taken up a false notion altogether. Verrall was a good fellow at heart; what had happened was not his fault, but the fault of certain men with whom he, Verrall, had been connected; and Verrall was showing himself a good friend now, and he did not know what he should do without him.

“A warm bright day like this, and I find you moping and stewing on that sofa! I’ll tell you what it is, Mrs. George Godolphin, you are trying to make yourself into a chronic invalid.”

Mr. Snow’s voice, in its serio-comic accent, might be heard at the top of the house as he spoke. It was his way.

“I am better than I was,” answered Maria. “I shall get well some time.”

“Some time! It’s to be hoped you will. But you are not doing much yourself towards it. Have the French left you a cloak and bonnet, pray?”

Maria smiled at his joke. She knew he alluded to the bankruptcy commissioners. When Mr. Snow was a boy, the English and French were at war, and he generally used the word French in a jesting way to designate enemies.

“They left me all,” she said.

“Then be so good as to put them on. I don’t terminate this visit until I have seen you out of doors.”

To contend would be more trouble than to obey. She wrapped herself up and went out with Mr. Snow. Her steps were almost too feeble to walk alone.

“See the lovely day it is! And you, an invalid, suffering from nothing but dumps, not to be out in it! It’s nearly as warm as September. Halloa, young lady! are you planting cabbages?”

They had turned an angle and come upon Miss Meta. She was digging away with a child’s spade, scattering mould over the path; her woollen shawl, put on for warmth, had turned round, and her hat had fallen back, with the ardour of her labours. David Jekyl, who was digging to more purpose close by, was grumbling at the scattered mould on his clean paths.

“I’ll sweep it up, David: I’ll sweep it up!” the young lady said.

“Fine sweeping it ’ud be!” grunted David.

“I declare it’s as warm as summer in this path!” cried Mr. Snow. “Now mind, Mrs. George, you shall stay here for half an hour; and if you grow tired there’s a bench to sit upon. Little damsel, if mamma goes indoors, you tell me the next time I come. She is to stay out.”

“I’ll not tell of mamma,” said Meta, throwing down her spade and turning her earnest eyes, her rosy cheeks, full on Mr. Snow.

He laughed as he walked away. “You are to stay out for the half-hour, mind you, Mrs. George. I insist upon it.”

Direct disobedience would not have been expedient, if only in the light of example to Meta; but Maria had rather been out on any other day, or been ordered to any other path. This was the first time she had seen David Jekyl since the Bank had failed, and his father’s loss was very present to her.

“How are you, David?” she inquired.

“I’m among the middlins,” shortly answered David.

“And your father? I heard he was ill.”

“So he is ill. He couldn’t be worser.”

“I suppose the coming winter is against him?”

“Other things are again him as well as the coming winter,” returned David. “Fretting, for one.”

Ah, how bitter it all was! But David did not mean to allude in any offensive manner to the past, or to hurt the feelings of George Godolphin’s wife. It was his way.

“Is Jonathan better?” she asked.

“He isn’t of much account, since he got that hurt,” was David’s answer. “Doing about three days’ work in a week! It’s to be hoped times ’ll mend.”

Maria walked slowly to and fro in the sunny path, saying a word or two to David now and then, but choosing safer subjects; the weather, the flowers under his charge, the vegetables already nipped with frost. She looked very ill. Her face thin and white, her soft sweet eyes larger and darker than was natural. Her hands were wrapped in the cloak for warmth, and her steps were unequal. Crusty David actually ventured on a little bit of civility.

“You don’t seem to get about over quick, ma’am.”

“Not very, David. But I feel better than I did.”

She sat down on the bench, and Meta came flying to her, spade in hand. Might she plant a gooseberry-tree, and have all the gooseberries off it next year for herself?

Maria stroked the child’s hair from her flushed face as she answered. Meta flew off to find the “tree;” and Maria sat on, plunged in a train of thought which the question had led to. Where should they be at the gooseberry season next year? In that same dwelling? Would George’s prospects have become more certain then?

“Now then! Is that the way you dig?”

The sharp words came from Margery, who had looked out at the kitchen window and caught sight of Miss Meta rolling in the mould. The child jumped up laughing, and ran into the house for her skipping-rope.

“Have I been out half an hour, do you think, David?” Maria asked by-and-by.

“Near upon ’t,” said David, without lifting his eyes.

She rose to pursue her way slowly indoors. She was so fatigued—and there had been, so to say, no exertion—that she felt as if she could never stir out again. Merely putting on and taking off her cloak was almost beyond her. She let it fall from her shoulders, took off her bonnet, and sank into an easy-chair.

From this she was aroused by hearing the gate hastily opened. Quick footsteps came up the path, and a manly voice said something to David Jekyl in a free, joking tone. She bounded up, her cheek flushing to hectic, her heart beating. Could it be George?

No; it was her brother, Reginald Hastings. He came in with a great deal of unnecessary noise and clatter. He had arrived from London only that morning, he proceeded to tell Maria, and was going up again by the night train.

“I say, Maria, how ill you look!”

Very ill indeed just then. The excitement of sudden expectation had faded, leaving her whiter than before. Dark circles were round her eyes, and her delicate hands, more feeble, more slender than of yore, moved restlessly on her lap.

“I have been very feverish the last few weeks,” she said. “I think I am stronger. But I have been out for a walk and am tired.”

“What did the little shaver die of?” asked Reginald.

“Of convulsions,” she answered, her bodily weariness too great to speak in anything but tones of apathy. “Why are you going up again so soon? Have you a ship?”

Reginald nodded. “We have orders to join to-morrow at twelve. The Mary, bound for China, six hundred tons. I know the mother would never forgive me if I didn’t come to say good-bye, so I thought I would have two nights of it in the train.”

“Are you going as second officer, Reginald?”

“Second officer!—no. I have not passed.”

“Regy!”

“They are a confounded lot, that board!” broke out Mr. Reginald, explosively. “I don’t believe they know their own business. And as to passing any one without once turning him, they won’t do it. I should like to know who has the money! You pay your guinea, and you don’t pass. Come up again next Monday, they say. Well, you do go up again, as you want to pass; and you pay another half-guinea. I did so; and they turned me again; said I didn’t know seamanship. The owls! not know seamanship! I! They took me, I expect, for one of those dainty middies in Green’s service who walk the deck in kid gloves all day. If there’s one thing I have at my fingers’ ends it is seamanship. I could navigate a vessel all over the world—and be hanged to the idiots! You can come again next Monday, they said to me. I wish the Times would show them up!”

“Did you go again?”

“Did I!—no,” fumed Reginald. “Just to add to their pockets by another half-guinea! I hadn’t it to give, Maria. I just flung the whole lot over, and went down to the first ship in the docks and engaged myself.”

“As what?” she asked.

“As A. B.”

“A. B.?” repeated Maria, puzzled. “You don’t mean—surely you don’t mean before the mast?”

“Yes I do.”

“Oh, Reginald!”

“It doesn’t make much difference,” cried Reginald in slighting tones. “The second mates in some of those ships are not much better off than the seamen. You must work, and the food’s pretty much the same, except at the skipper’s table. Let a fellow rise to be first mate, and he is in tolerably smooth water; but until then he must rough it. After this voyage I’ll go up again.”

“But you might have shipped as third mate.”

“I might—if I had taken my time to find a berth. But who was to keep me the while? It takes fifteen shillings a week at the Sailors’ Home, besides odds and ends for yourself that you can’t do without—smoke and things. I couldn’t bear to ask them for more at home. Only think how long I’ve been on shore this time, Maria. I was knocking about London for weeks over my navigation, preparing to pass.—And for the mummies to turn me at last!”

Maria sighed. Poor Reginald’s gloomy prospects were bringing her pain.

“There’s another thing, Maria,” he resumed. “If I had passed for second mate, I don’t see how I could go out as such. Where was my outfit to come from? An officer—if he is on anything of a ship—must look spruce, and have proper toggery. I am quite certain that to go out as second mate on a good ship would have cost me twenty pounds, for additional things that I couldn’t do without. You can’t get a sextant under three pounds, second-hand, if it’s worth having. You know I never could have come upon them for twenty pounds at home, under their altered circumstances.”

Maria made no reply. Every word was going to her heart.

“Whereas, in shipping as a common seaman, I don’t want to take much more than you might tie up in a handkerchief. A fo’castle fellow can shift any way aboard. And there’s one advantage,” ingenuously added Reginald; “if I take no traps out with me, I can’t lose them.”

“But the discomfort?” breathed Maria.

“There’s enough of that in any way, at sea. A little more or less is not of much account in the long-run. It’s all in the voyage. I wish I had never been such a fool as to choose the sea. But I did choose it; so it’s of no use kicking against it now.”

“I wish you were not going as you are!” said Maria earnestly. “I wish you had shipped as third mate!”

“When a sailor can’t afford the time to ship as he would, he must ship as he can. Many a hundred has done the same before me. To one third mate wanted in the port of London, there are scores and scores of able seamen.”

“What does mamma say to it?”

“Well, you know she can’t afford to be fastidious now. She cried a bit, but I told her I should be all right. Hard work and fo’castle living won’t break bones. The parson told me–”

“Don’t, Reginald!”

“Papa, then. He told me it was a move in the right direction, and if I would only go on so, I might make up for past shortcomings. I say, Isaac told me to give you his love.”

“Did you see much of him?”

“No. On a Sunday now and then. He doesn’t much like his new post. They are dreadfully over-worked, he says. It’s quite a different thing from what the Bank was down here.”

“Will he stop in it?”

“Oh, he’ll stop in it. Glad, too. It won’t answer for him to be doing nothing, when they can hardly keep themselves at home with the little money screwed out from what’s put aside for the Chisholms.”

Reginald never meant to hurt her. He only spoke so in his thoughtlessness. He rattled on.

“I saw George Godolphin last week. It was on the Monday, the day that swindling board first turned me back. I flung the books anywhere, and went out miles, to walk my passion off. I got into the Park, to Rotten Row. It’s precious empty at this season, not more than a dozen horses in it; but who should be coming along but George Godolphin and Mrs. Pain with a groom behind them. She was riding that beautiful horse of hers that she used to cut a dash with here in the summer; the one that folks said George gave–” Incautious Reginald coughed down the conclusion of his sentence, whistled a bar or two of a sea-song, and then resumed:

“George was well mounted, too.”

“Did you speak to them?” asked Maria.

“Of course I did,” replied Reginald, with some surprise. “And Mrs. Pain began scolding me for not having been to see her and the Verralls. She made me promise to go the next evening. They live at a pretty place on the banks of the Thames. You take the rail at Waterloo Station.”

“Did you go?”

“Well, I did, as I had promised. But I didn’t care much about it. I had been at my books all day again, and in the evening, quite late, I started. When I got there I found it was a tea-fight.”

“A tea-fight!” echoed Maria, rather uncertain what the expression might mean.

“A regular tea-fight,” repeated Reginald. “A dozen folks, mostly ladies, dressed up to the nines: and there was I in my worn-out sailor’s jacket. Charlotte began blowing me up for not coming to dinner, and she made me go into the dining-room and had it brought up for me. Lots of good things! I haven’t tasted such a dinner since I’ve been on shore. Verrall gave me some champagne.”

“Was George there?” inquired Maria, putting the question with apparent indifference.

“No, George wasn’t there. Charlotte said if she had thought of it she’d have invited Isaac to meet me: but Isaac was shy of them, she added, and had never been down once, though she asked him several times. She’s a good-natured one, Maria, is that Charlotte Pain.”

“Yes,” quietly responded Maria.

“She told me she knew how young sailors get out of money in London, and she shouldn’t think of my standing the cost of responding to her invitation; and she gave me a sovereign.”

Maria’s cheeks burnt. “You did not take it, Reginald?”

“Didn’t I! it was quite a godsend. You don’t know how scarce money has been with me. Things have altered, you know, Maria. And Mrs. Pain knows it too, and she has no stuck-up nonsense about her. She made me promise to go and see them when I had passed.—But I have not passed,” added Reginald, by way of parenthesis. “And she said if I was at fault for a home the next time I was looking out for a ship, she’d give me one, and be happy to see me. And I thought it was very kind of her; for I am sure she meant it. Oh—by the way—she said she thought you’d let her have Meta up for a few weeks.”

Maria involuntarily stretched out her hand—as if Meta were there, and she would clasp her and withhold her from some threatened danger. Reginald rose.

“You are not going yet, Regy?”

“I must. I only ran in for a few minutes. There’s Grace to see and fifty more folks, and they’ll expect me home to dinner. I’ll say good-bye to Meta as I go through the garden. I saw she was there; but she did not see me.”

He bent to kiss her. Maria held his hand in hers. “I shall be thinking of you always, Reginald. If you were only going under happier circumstances!”

“Never mind me, Maria. It will be uphill work with most of us, I suppose, for a time. I thought it the best thing I could do. I couldn’t bear to come upon them for more money at home.”

“Yours will be a hard life.”

“A sailor’s is that, at best. Don’t worry about me. I shall make it out somehow. You make haste, Maria, and get strong. I’m sure you look ill enough to frighten people.”

She pressed his hands between hers, and the tears were filling her eyes as she raised them—their expression one wild yearning. “Reginald, try and do your duty,” she whispered in an imploring tone. “Think always of heaven, and try and work for it. It may be very near. I have learned to think of it a great deal now.”

“It’s all right, Maria,” was the careless and characteristic answer. “It’s a religious ship I’m going in this time. We have had to sign articles for divine service on board at half-past ten every Sunday morning.”

He kissed her several times, and the door closed upon him. As Maria lay back in her chair, she heard his voice outside for some time afterwards laughing and talking with Meta, largely promising her a ship-load of monkeys, parrots, and various other live wonders.

In this way or that, she was continually being reminded of the unhappy past and their share in it; she was perpetually having brought before her its disastrous effects upon others. Poor Reginald! entering upon his hard life! This need not have been, had means not grown scarce at home. Maria loved him best of all her brothers, and her very soul seemed to ache with its remorse. And by some means or other, she was, as you see, frequently learning that Mr. George was not breaking his heart with remorse. The suffering in all ways fell upon her.

And the time went on, and Maria Godolphin grew no stronger. It went on, and instead of growing stronger she grew weaker. Mr. Snow could do nothing more than he had done; he sent her tonic medicines still, and called upon her now and then, as a friend more than as a doctor. The strain was on the mind, he concluded, and time alone would heal it.

But Maria was worse than Mr. Snow or any one else thought. She had been always so delicate-looking, so gentle, that her wan face, her sunken spirits, attracted less attention than they would have done in one of a more robust nature. No one glanced at the possibility of danger. Margery’s expressed opinion, “My mistress only wants rousing,” was the one universally adopted: and there may have been truth in it.

All question of Maria’s going out of doors was over now. She was really not equal to it. She would lie for hours together on her sofa, the little child Meta gathered in her arms. Meta appeared to have changed her very nature. Instead of dancing about incessantly, running into every mischief, she was content to nestle to her mother’s bosom and listen to her whispered words, as if some foreshadowing were on her spirit that she might not long have a mother to nestle to.

You must not think that Maria conformed to the usages of an invalid. She was up before breakfast in the morning, she did not go to bed until the usual hour at night, and she sat down to the customary meals with Meta. She has risen from the breakfast-table now, on this fine morning, not at all cold for late autumn, and Margery has carried away the breakfast-things, and has told Miss Meta that if she will come out as soon as her mamma has read to her, and have her things put on, she may go and play in the garden.

But when the little Bible story was over, her mamma lay down on the sofa, and Meta appeared inclined to do the same. She nestled on to it, and lay down too, and kissed her mamma’s face, so pretty still, and began to chatter. It was a charming day, the sun shining on the few late flowers, the sky blue and bright.

“Did you hear Margery say you might go out and play, darling? See how fine it is.”

“There’s nothing to play with,” said Meta.

“There are many things, dear. Your skipping-rope and hoop, and–”

“I’m tired of them,” interposed Meta. “Mamma, I wish you’d come out and play at something with me.”

“I couldn’t run, dear. I am not strong enough.”

“When shall you be strong enough? How long will it be before you get well?”

Maria did not answer. She lay with her eyes fixed upon the far-off sky, her arm clasped round the child. “Meta, darling, I—I—am not sure that I shall get well. I begin to think that I shall never go out with you again.”

Meta did not answer. She was looking out also, her eyes staring straight at the blue sky.

“Meta, darling,” resumed Maria in low tones, “you had two little sisters once, and I cried when they died, but I am glad now that they went. They are in heaven.”

Meta looked up more fixedly, and pointed with her finger. “Up in the blue sky?”

“Yes, up in heaven. Meta, I think I am going to them. It is a better world than this.”

“And me too,” quickly cried Meta.

Maria laid her hand upon her bosom to press down the rising emotion. “Meta, Meta, if I might only take you with me!” she breathed, straining the child to her in an agony. The prospect of parting, which Maria had begun to look at, was indeed hard to bear.

“You can’t go and leave me,” cried Meta in alarm. “Who’d take care of me, mamma? Mamma, do you mean that you are going to die?”

Meta burst into tears. Maria cried with her. Oh reader, reader! do you know what it is, this parting between mother and child? To lay a child in the grave is bitter grief; but to leave it to the mercy of the world!—there is nothing like unto it in human anguish.