XI. A TELEGRAPHIC DESPATCH
"Cecil," asked Thomas Godolphin, as they walked along, "how came you to go alone to Ashlydyat, in this unceremonious manner?"
"There was no harm in it," answered Cecil, who possessed a spice of self-will. "Mrs. Verrall said she was lonely, and it would be a charity if I or Bessy would go home with her. Bessy could not: she was engaged at the Rectory. Where was the harm?"
"My dear, had there been 'harm,' I am sure you would not have wished to go. There was none. Only, I do not care that you should become very intimate with the Verralls. A little visiting on either side cannot be avoided: but let it end there."
"Thomas! you are just like Janet!" impulsively spoke Cecil. "She does not like the Verralls."
"Neither do I. I do not like him. I do not like Charlotte Pain----"
"Janet again!" struck in Cecil. "She and you must be constituted precisely alike, for you are sure to take up the same likes and dislikes. She would not willingly let me go to-day; only she could not refuse without downright rudeness."
"I like Mrs. Verrall the best of them, I was going to say," he continued. "Do not become too intimate with them, Cecil."
"But you know nothing against Mr. Verrall?"
"Nothing whatever. Except that I cannot make him out."
"How do you mean--'make him out?'"
"Well, Cecil, it may be difficult to define my meaning. Verrall is so impassive; so utterly silent with regard to himself. Who is he? Where did he come from? Did he drop from the moon? Where has he previously lived? What are his family? Where does his property lie?--in the funds, or in land, or in securities, or what? Most men, even though they do come as strangers into a neighbourhood, supply indications of some of these things, either accidentally or purposely."
"They have lived in London," said Cecil.
"London is a wide term," answered Thomas Godolphin.
"And I'm sure they have plenty of money."
"There's where the chief puzzle is. When people possess so much money as Verrall appears to do, they generally make no secret of whence it is derived. Understand, my dear, I cast no suspicion on him in any way: I only say that we know nothing of him: or of the ladies either----"
"They are very charming ladies," interrupted Cecil again. "Especially Mrs. Verrall."
"Beyond the fact that they are very charming ladies," acquiesced Thomas in a tone that made Cecil think he was laughing at her: "you should let me finish, my dear. But I would prefer that they were rather more open, as to themselves, before they became the too-intimate friends of Miss Cecilia Godolphin."
Cecil dropped the subject. She did not always agree with what she called Thomas's prejudices. "How quaint that old doctor of ours is!" she exclaimed. "When he had looked at Mrs. Verrall's arm, he made a great parade of getting out his spectacles, and putting them on, and looking again. 'What d'ye call it--a burn?' he asked her. 'It is a burn, is it not?' she answered, looking at him. 'No,' said he, 'it's nothing but a scorch.' It made her laugh so. I think she was pleased to have escaped with so little damage."
"That is just like Snow," said Thomas Godolphin.
Arrived at home, Miss Godolphin was in the same place, knitting still. It was turned half-past nine. Too late for Thomas to pay his visit to Lady Sarah's. "Janet, I fear you have waited tea for us!" said Cecil.
"To be sure, child. I expected you home to tea."
Cecil explained why they did not come, relating the accident to Mrs. Verrall. "Eh! but it's like the young!" said Janet, lifting her hands. "Careless! careless! She might have been burned to death."
"What a loud ring!" exclaimed Cecil, as the hall-bell, pealed with no gentle hand, echoed and re-echoed through the house. "If it is Bessy come home, she thinks she will let us know who's there."
It was not Bessy. A servant entered the room with a telegraphic despatch. "The man is waiting, sir," he said, holding out the paper for signature to his master.
Thomas Godolphin affixed his signature, and took up the despatch. It came from Scotland. Janet laid her hand upon it ere it was open: her face looked ghastly pale. "A moment of preparation!" she said. "Thomas, it may have brought us tidings that we have no longer a father."
"Nay, Janet, do not anticipate evil," he answered, though his memory flew unaccountably to that ugly Shadow, and to what he had deemed would be Janet's conclusions respecting it. "It may not be ill news at all."
He glanced his eye rapidly and privately over it, while Cecil came and stood near him with a stifled sob. Then he held it out to Janet, reading it aloud at the same time.
"'Lady Godolphin to Thomas Godolphin, Esquire.
"'Come at once to Broomhead. Sir George wishes it. Take the first train.'"
"He is not dead, at any rate, Janet," said Thomas quietly. "Thank Heaven."
Janet, her extreme fears relieved, took refuge in displeasure. "What does Lady Godolphin mean, by sending so vague a message as that?" she uttered. "Is Sir George worse? Is he ill? Is he in danger? Or has the summons no reference at all to his state of health?"
Thomas had taken it into his hand again, and was studying the words: as we are all apt to do in uncertainty. He could make no more out of them.
"Lady Godolphin should have been more explicit," he resumed.
"Lady Godolphin has no right thus to play upon our fears, our suspense," said Janet. "Thomas, I have a great mind to start this very night for Scotland."
"As you please, of course, Janet. It is a long and fatiguing journey for a winter's night."
"And I object to being a guest at Broomhead, unless driven to it, you might add," rejoined Janet. "But our father may be dying."
"I should think not, Janet. Lady Godolphin would certainly have said so. Margery, too, would have taken care that those tidings should be sent to us."
The suggestion reassured Miss Godolphin. She had not thought of it. Margery, devoted to the interests of Sir George and his children (somewhat in contravention to the interests of my lady), would undoubtedly have apprised them were Sir George in danger. "What shall you do?" inquired Janet of her brother.
"I shall do as the despatch desires me--take the first train. That will be at midnight," he added, as he prepared to pay a visit to Lady Sarah's.
Grame House, as you may remember, was situated at the opposite end of the town to Ashlydyat, past All Souls' Church. As Thomas Godolphin walked briskly along, he saw Mr. Hastings leaning over the Rectory gate, the dark trees shading him from the light of the moon.
"You are going this way late," said the Rector.
"It is late for a visit to Lady Sarah's. But I wish particularly to see them."
"I have now come from thence," returned Mr. Hastings.
"Sarah Anne grows weaker, I hear."
"Ay. I have been praying over her."
Thomas Godolphin felt shocked. "Is she so near death as that?" he asked, in a hushed tone.
"So near death as that!" repeated the clergyman in an accent of reproof. "I did not expect to hear a like remark from Mr. Godolphin. My good friend, is it only when death is near that we are to pray?"
"It is chiefly when death is near that prayers are said over us," replied Thomas Godolphin.
"True--for those who have not known when and how to pray for themselves. Look at that girl: passing away from amongst us, with all her worldly thoughts, her selfish habits, her evil, peevish temper! But that God's ways are not as our ways, we might be tempted to question why such as these are removed; such as Ethel left. The one child as near akin to an angel as it is well possible to be, here; the other---- In our blind judgment, we may wonder that she, most ripe for heaven, should not be taken to it, and that other one left, to be pruned and dug around; to have, in short, a chance given her of making herself better."
"Is she so very ill?"
"I think her so; as does Snow. It was what he said that sent me up there. Her frame of mind is not a desirable one: and I have been trying to do my part. I shall be with her again to-morrow."
"Have you any message for your daughter?" asked Thomas Godolphin. "I start in two hours' time for Scotland." And then, he explained why: telling of their uncertainty.
"When shall you be coming back again?" inquired Mr. Hastings.
"Within a week. Unless my father's state should forbid it. I may be wishing to take a holiday at Christmas time, or thereabouts, so shall not stay away now. George is absent, too."
"Staying at Broomhead?"
"No; he is not at Broomhead now."
"Will you take charge of Maria? We want her home."
"If you wish it, I will. But I should think they would all be returning very shortly. Christmas is intended to be spent here."
"You may depend upon it, Christmas will not see Lady Godolphin at Prior's Ash, unless the fever shall have departed to spend its Christmas in some other place," cried the Rector.
"Well, I shall hear their plans when I get there."
"Bring back Maria with you, Mr. Godolphin. Tell her it is my wish. Unless you find that there's a prospect of her speedy return with Lady Godolphin. In that case, you may leave her."
"Very well," replied Thomas Godolphin.
He continued his way, and Mr. Hastings looked after him in the bright moonlight, till his form disappeared in the shadows cast by the roadside trees.
It was striking ten as Thomas Godolphin opened the iron gates at Lady Sarah Grame's: the heavy clock-bell of All Souls' came sounding upon his ear in the stillness of the night. The house, all except from one window, looked dark: even the hall-lamp was out, and he feared they might all have retired. From that window a dull light shone behind the blind: a stationary light it had been of late, to be seen by any nocturnal wayfarer all night long; for it came from the sick-chamber.
Elizabeth opened the door. "Oh, sir!" she exclaimed in the surprise of seeing him so late, "I think Miss Ethel has gone up to bed."
Lady Sarah came hastening down the stairs as he stepped into the hall: she also was surprised at the late visit.
"I would not have disturbed you, but that I am about to leave for Broomhead," he explained. "A telegraphic despatch has arrived from Lady Godolphin, calling me thither. I should like to see Ethel, if not inconvenient to her. I know not how long I may be away."
"I sent Ethel to bed: her head ached," said Lady Sarah. "It is not many minutes since she went up. Oh, Mr. Godolphin, this has been such a day of grief! heads and hearts alike aching."
Thomas Godolphin entered the drawing-room, and Lady Sarah Grame called Ethel down, and then returned to her sick daughter's room. Ethel came instantly. The fire in the drawing-room was still alight, and Elizabeth had been in to stir it up. Thomas Godolphin stood over it with Ethel, telling her of his coming journey and its cause. The red embers threw a glow upon her face: her brow looked heavy, her eyes swollen.
He saw the signs, and laid his hand fondly upon her head. "What has given you this headache, Ethel?"
The ready tears came into her eyes. "It does ache very much," she answered.
"Has crying caused it?"
"Yes," she replied. "It is of no use to deny it, for you would see it by my swollen eyelids. I have wept to-day until it seems that I can weep no longer, and it has made my eyes ache and my head dull and heavy."
"But, my darling, you should not give way to this grief. It may render you seriously ill."
"Oh, Thomas! how can I help it?" she returned, with emotion, as the tears dropped swiftly over her cheeks. "We begin to see that there is no chance of Sarah Anne's recovery. Mr. Snow told mamma so to-day: and he sent up Mr. Hastings."
"Ethel, will your grieving alter it?"
Ethel wept silently. There was full and entire confidence between her and Thomas Godolphin: she could speak out all her thoughts, her troubles to him, as she could have told them to a mother--if she had had a mother who loved her.
"If she were only a little more prepared to go, the pain would seem less," breathed Ethel. "That is, we might feel more reconciled to losing her. But you know what she is, Thomas. When I have tried to talk a little bit about heaven, or to read a psalm to her, she would not listen: she said it made her dull, it gave her the horrors. How can she, who has never thought of God, be fit to meet Him?"
Ethel's tears were deepening into sobs. Thomas Godolphin involuntarily thought of what Mr. Hastings had just said to him. His hand still rested on Ethel's head.
"You are fit to meet Him?" he exclaimed involuntarily. "Ethel, whence can have arisen the difference between you? You are sisters; reared in the same home."
"I do not know," said Ethel simply. "I have always thought a great deal about heaven; I suppose it is that. A lady, whom we knew as children, used to buy us a good many story-books, and mine were always stories of heaven. It was that which first got me into the habit of thinking of it."
"And why not Sarah Anne?"
"Sarah Anne would not read them. She liked stories of gaiety and excitement; balls, and things like that."
Thomas smiled; the words were so simple and natural. "Had the fiat gone forth for you, instead of for her, Ethel, it would have brought you no dismay?"
"Only that I must leave all my dear ones behind me," she answered, looking up at him, a bright smile shining through her tears. "I should know that God would not take me, unless it were for the best. Oh, Thomas! if we could only save her!"
"Child, you contradict yourself. If what God does must be for the best--and it is--that thought should reconcile you to parting with Sarah Anne."
"Y--es," hesitated Ethel. "Only I fear she has never thought of it herself, or in any way prepared for it."
"Do you know that I have to find fault with you?" resumed Thomas Godolphin, after a pause. "You have not been true to me, Ethel."
She turned her eyes upon him in surprise.
"Did you not promise me--did you not promise Mr. Snow, not to enter your sister's chamber while the fever was upon her? I hear that you were in it often: her head nurse."
A hot colour flushed into Ethel's face. "Forgive me, Thomas," she whispered; "I could not help myself. Sarah Anne--it was on the third morning of her illness, when I was getting up--suddenly began to cry out for me very much, and mamma came to my bedroom and desired me to go to her. I said that Mr. Snow had forbidden me, and that I had promised you. It made mamma angry. She asked if I could be so selfish as to regard a promise before Sarah Anne's life; that she might die if I thwarted her: and she took me by the arm and pulled me in. I would have told you, Thomas, that I had broken my word; I wished to tell you; but mamma forbade me to do so."
Thomas Godolphin stood looking at her. There was nothing to answer: he had known, in his deep and trusting love, that the fault had not lain with Ethel. She mistook his silence, thinking he was vexed.
"You know, Thomas, so long as I am here in mamma's home, her child, it is to her that I owe obedience," she gently pleaded. "As soon as I shall be your wife, I shall owe it and give it implicitly to you."
"You are right, my darling."
"And it has produced no ill consequences," she resumed. "I did not catch the fever. Had I found myself growing in the least ill, I should have sent for you and told you the truth."
"Ethel?" he impulsively cried--very impulsively for calm Thomas Godolphin; "had you caught the fever, I should never have forgiven those who led you into danger. I could not lose you."
"Hark!" said Ethel. "Mamma is calling."
Lady Sarah had been calling to Mr. Godolphin. Thinking she was not heard, she now came downstairs and entered the room, wringing her hands; her eyes were overflowing, her sharp thin nose was redder than usual. "Oh dear! I don't know what we shall do with her!" she uttered. "She is so ill, and it makes her so fretful. Mr. Godolphin, nothing will satisfy her now but she must see you."
"See me!" repeated he.
"She will, she says. I told her you were departing for Scotland, and she burst out crying, and said if she were to die she should never see you again. Do you mind going in? You are not afraid?"
"No, I am not afraid," said Thomas Godolphin. "Infection cannot have remained all this time. And if it had, I should not fear it."
Lady Sarah Grame led the way upstairs. Thomas followed her. Ethel stole in afterwards. Sarah Anne lay in bed, her thin face, drawn and white, raised upon the pillow; her hollow eyes were strained forward with a fixed look. Ill as he had been led to suppose her, he was scarcely prepared to see her like this; and it shocked him. A cadaverous face, looking ripe for the tomb.
"Why have you never come to see me?" she asked in her hollow voice, as he approached and leaned over her. "You'd never have come till I died. You only care for Ethel."
"I would have come to see you had I known you wished it," he answered. "But you do not look strong enough to receive visitors."
"They might cure me, if they would," she continued, panting for breath. "I want to go away somewhere, and that Snow won't let me. If it were Ethel, he would take care to cure her."
"He will let you go as soon as you are equal to it, I am sure," said Thomas Godolphin.
"Why should the fever have come to me at all?--Why couldn't it have gone to Ethel instead? She's strong. She would have got well in no time. It's not fair----"
"My dear child, my dear, dear child, you must not excite yourself," implored Lady Sarah, abruptly interrupting her.
"I shall speak," cried Sarah Anne, with a touch, feeble though it was, of her old peevish vehemence. "Nobody's thought of but Ethel. If you had had your way," looking hard at Mr. Godolphin, "she wouldn't have been allowed to come near me; no, not if I had died."
Her mood changed to tears. Lady Sarah whispered to him to leave the room: it would not do, this excitement. Thomas wondered why he had been brought to it. "I will come and see you again when you are better," he soothingly whispered.
"No you won't," sobbed Sarah Anne. "You are going to Scotland, and I shall be dead when you come back. I don't want to die. Why do they frighten me with their prayers? Good-bye, Thomas Godolphin."
The last words were called after him; when he had taken his leave of her and was quitting the room. Lady Sarah attended him to the threshold: her eyes full, her hands lifted. "You may see that there's no hope of her!" she wailed.
Thomas did not think there was the slightest hope. To his eye--though it was not so practised an eye in sickness as Mr. Snow's, or even as that of the Rector of All Souls'--it appeared that in a very few days, perhaps hours, hope for Sarah Anne Grame would be over for ever.
Ethel waited for him in the hall, and was leading the way back to the drawing-room; but he told her he could not stay longer, and opened the front door. She ran past him into the garden, putting her hand into his as he came out.
"I wish you were not going away," she sadly said, her spirits, that night very unequal, causing her to see things with a gloomy eye.
"I wish you were going with me!" replied Thomas Godolphin. "Do not weep, Ethel. I shall soon be back again."
"Everything seems to make me weep to-night. You may not be back until--until the worst is over. Oh! if she might but be saved!"
He held her face close to him, gazing down at it in the moonlight. And then he took from it his farewell kiss. "God bless you, my darling, for ever and for ever!"
"May He bless you, Thomas!" she answered, with streaming eyes: and, for the first time in her life, his kiss was returned. Then they parted. He watched Ethel indoors, and went back to Prior's Ash.
XII. DEAD
"Thomas, my son, I must go home. I don't want to die away from Ashlydyat!"
A dull pain shot across Thomas Godolphin's heart at the words. Did he think of the old superstitious tradition--that evil was to fall upon the Godolphins when their chief should die, and not at Ashlydyat? At Ashlydyat his father could not die; he had put that out of his power when he let it to strangers: in its neighbourhood, he might.
"The better plan, sir, will be for you to return to the Folly, as you seem to wish it," said Thomas. "You will soon be strong enough to undertake the journey."
The decaying knight was sitting on a sofa in his bedroom. His second fainting-fit had lasted some hours--if that, indeed, was the right name to give to it--and he had recovered, only to be more and more weak. He had grown pretty well after the first attack--when Margery had found him in his chamber on the floor, the day Lady Godolphin had gone to pay her visit to Selina. The next time, he was on the lawn before the house, talking to Charlotte Pain, when he suddenly fell to the ground. He did not recover his consciousness until evening; and nearly the first wish he expressed was a desire to see his son Thomas. "Telegraph for him," he said to Lady Godolphin.
"But you are not seriously ill, Sir George," she had answered.
"No; but I should like him here. Telegraph to him to start by first train."
And Lady Godolphin did so, accordingly, sending the message that angered Miss Godolphin. But, in this case, Lady Godolphin did not deserve so much blame as Janet cast on her: for she did debate the point with herself whether she should say Sir George was ill, or not. Believing that these two fainting-fits had proceeded from want of strength only, that they were but the effect of his long previous illness, and would lead to no bad result, she determined not to speak of it. Hence the imperfect message.
Neither did Thomas Godolphin see much cause for fear when he arrived at Broomhead. Sir George did not look better than when he had left Prior's Ash, but neither did he look much worse. On this, the second day, he had been well enough to converse with Thomas upon business affairs: and, that over, he suddenly broke out with the above wish. Thomas mentioned it when he joined Lady Godolphin afterwards. It did not meet with her approbation.
"You should have opposed it," said she to him in a firm, hard tone.
"But why so, madam?" asked Thomas. "If my father's wish is to return to Prior's Ash, he should return."
"Not while the fever lingers there. Were he to take it--and die--you would never forgive yourself."
Thomas had no fear of the fever on his own score, and did not fear it for his father. He intimated as much. "It is not the fever that will hurt him, Lady Godolphin."
"You have no right to say that. Lady Sarah Grame, a month ago, might have said she did not fear it for Sarah Anne. And now Sarah Anne is dying!"
"Or dead," put in Charlotte Pain, who was leaning listlessly against the window frame devoured with ennui.
"Shall you be afraid to go back to Prior's Ash?" he asked of Maria Hastings.
"Not at all," replied Maria. "I should not mind if I were going to-day, as far as the fever is concerned."
"That is well," he said. "Because I have orders to convey you back with me."
Charlotte Pain lifted her head with a start. The news aroused her. Maria, on the contrary, thought he was speaking in jest.
"No, indeed I am not," said Thomas Godolphin. "Mr. Hastings made a request to me, madam, that I should take charge of his daughter when I returned," continued he to Lady Godolphin. "He wants her at home, he says."
"Mr. Hastings is very polite!" ironically replied my lady. "Maria will go back when I choose to spare her."
"I hope you will allow her to return with me--unless you shall soon be returning yourself," said Thomas Godolphin.
"It is not I that shall be returning to Prior's Ash yet," said my lady. "The sickly old place must give proof of renewed health first. You will not see either me or Sir George there on this side Christmas."
"Then I think, Lady Godolphin, you must offer no objection to my taking charge of Maria," said Thomas courteously, but firmly, leaving the discussion of Sir George's return to another opportunity. "I passed my word to Mr. Hastings."
Charlotte Pain, all animation now, approached Lady Godolphin. She was thoroughly sick and tired of Broomhead: since George Godolphin's departure, she had been projecting how she could get away from it. Here was a solution to her difficulty.
"Dear Lady Godolphin, you must allow me to depart with Mr. Godolphin--whatever you may do with Maria Hastings," she exclaimed. "I said nothing to you--for I really did not see how I was to get back, knowing you would not permit me to travel so far alone--but Mrs. Verrall is very urgent for my return. And now that she is suffering from this burn, as Mr. Godolphin has brought us news, it is the more incumbent upon me to be at home."
Which was a nice little fib of Miss Charlotte's. Her sister had never once hinted that she wished her home again; but a fib or two more or less was nothing to Charlotte.
"You are tired of Broomhead," said Lady Godolphin.
Charlotte's colour never varied, her eye never drooped, as she protested that she should not tire of Broomhead were she its inmate for a twelvemonth; that it was quite a paradise upon earth. Maria kept her head bent while Charlotte said it, half afraid lest unscrupulous Charlotte should call upon her to bear testimony to her truth. Only that very morning she had protested to Maria that the ennui of the place was killing her.
"I don't know," said Lady Godolphin shrewdly. "Unless I am wrong, Charlotte, you have been anxious to leave. What was it that Mr. George hinted at--about escorting you young ladies home--and I stopped him ere it was half spoken? Prior's Ash would talk if I sent you home under his convoy."
"Mr. Godolphin is not George," rejoined Charlotte.
"No, he is not," replied my lady significantly.
The subject of departure was settled amicably; both the young ladies were to return to Prior's Ash under the charge of Mr. Godolphin. There are some men, single men though they be, and not men in years, whom society is content to recognize as entirely fit escorts. Thomas Godolphin was one of them. Had my lady despatched the young ladies home under Mr. George's wing, she might never have heard the last of it from Prior's Ash: but the most inveterate scandalmonger in it would not have questioned the trustworthiness of his elder brother. My lady was also brought to give her consent to her own departure for it by Christmas, provided Mr. Snow would assure her that the place was "safe."
In a day or two Thomas Godolphin spoke to his father of his marriage arrangements. He had received a letter from Janet, written the morning after his departure, in which she agreed to the proposal that Ethel should be her temporary guest. This removed all barrier to the immediate union.
"Then you marry directly, if Sarah Anne lives?"
"Directly. In January, at the latest."
"God bless you both!" cried the old knight. "She'll be a wife in a thousand, Thomas."
Thomas thought she would. He did not say it.
"It's the best plan; it's the best plan," continued Sir George in a dreamy tone, gazing into the fire. "No use to turn the girls out of their home. It will not be for long; not for long. Thomas"--turning his haggard, but still fine blue eye upon his son--"I wish I had never left Ashlydyat!"
Thomas was silent. None had more bitterly regretted the departure from it than he.
"I wish I could go back to it to die!"
"My dear father, I hope that you will yet live many years to bless us. If you can get through this winter--and I see no reason whatever why you should not, with care--you may regain your strength and be as well again as any of us."
Sir George shook his head. "It will not be, Thomas; I shall not long keep you out of Ashlydyat. Mind!" he added, turning upon Thomas with surprising energy, "I will go back before Christmas to Prior's Ash. The last Christmas that I see shall be spent with my children."
"Yes, indeed, I think you should come back to us," warmly acquiesced Thomas.
"Therefore, if you find, when Christmas is close upon us, that I am not amongst you, that you hear no tidings of my coming amongst you, you come off at once and fetch me. Do you hear, Thomas? I enjoin it upon you now with a father's authority; do not forget it, or disobey it. My lady fears the fever, and would keep me here: but I must be at Prior's Ash."
"I will certainly obey you, my father," replied Thomas Godolphin.
Telegraphic despatches seemed to be the order of the day with Thomas Godolphin. They were all sitting together that evening, Sir George having come downstairs, when a servant called Thomas out of the room. A telegraphic message had arrived for him at the station, and a man had brought it over. A conviction of what it contained flashed over Thomas Godolphin's heart as he opened it--the death of Sarah Anne Grame.
From Lady Sarah it proved to be. Not a much more satisfactory message than had been Lady Godolphin's; for if hers had not been explanatory, this was incoherent.
"The breath has just gone out of my dear child's body. I will write by next post. She died at four o'clock. How shall we all bear it?"
Thomas returned to the room; his mind full. In the midst of his sorrow and regret for Sarah Anne, his compassion for Lady Sarah--and he did feel all that with true sympathy--intruded the thought of his own marriage. It must be postponed now.
"What did Andrew want with you?" asked Sir George, when he entered.
"A telegraphic message had come for me from Prior's Ash."
"A business message?"
"No, sir. It is from Lady Sarah."
By the tone of his voice, by the falling of his countenance, they could read instinctively what had occurred. But they kept silence, all,--waiting for him to speak further.
"Poor Sarah Anne is gone. She died at four o'clock."
"This will delay your plans, Thomas," observed Sir George, after some minutes had been given to expressions of regret.
"It will, sir."
The knight leaned over to his son, and spoke in a whisper, meant for his ear alone: "I shall not be very long after her. I feel that I shall not. You may yet take Ethel home at once to Ashlydyat."
Very early indeed did they start in the morning, long before daybreak. Prior's Ash they would reach, all things being well, at nine at night. Margery was sent to attend them, a very dragon of a guardian, as particular as Miss Godolphin herself--had a guardian been necessary.
A somewhat weary day; a long one, at any rate; but at last their train steamed into the station at Prior's Ash. It was striking nine. Mr. Hastings was waiting for Maria, and Mrs. Verrall's carriage for Charlotte Pain. A few minutes were spent in collecting the luggage.
"Shall I give you a seat as far as the bank, Mr. Godolphin?" inquired Charlotte, who must pass it on her way to Ashlydyat.
"Thank you, no. I shall just go up for a minute's call upon Lady Sarah Grame."
Mr. Hastings, who had been placing Maria in a fly, heard the words. He turned hastily, caught Thomas Godolphin's hand, and drew him aside.
"Are you aware of what has occurred?"
"Alas, yes!" replied Thomas. "Lady Sarah telegraphed to me last night."
The Rector pressed his hand, and returned to his daughter. Thomas Godolphin struck into a by-path, a short cut from the station, which would take him to Grame House.
Six days ago, exactly, since he had been there before. The house looked precisely as it had looked then, all in darkness, excepting the faint light that burned from Sarah Anne's chamber. It burnt there still. Then it was lighting the living; now----
Thomas Godolphin rang the bell gently.--Does any one like to do otherwise at a house in which death is an inmate? Elizabeth, as usual, opened the door, and burst into tears when she saw who it was. "I said it would bring you back, sir!" she exclaimed.
"Does Lady Sarah bear it pretty well?" he asked, as she showed him into the drawing-room.
"No, sir, not over well," sobbed the girl. "I'll tell my lady that you are here."
He stood over the fire, as he had done the other night: it was low now, as it had been then. Strangely still seemed the house: he could almost have told that one was lying dead in it. He listened, waiting for Ethel's step, hoping she would be the first to come to him.
Elizabeth returned. "My lady says would you be so good as to walk up to her, sir?"
Thomas Godolphin followed her upstairs. She made for the room to which he had been taken the former night--Sarah Anne's chamber. In point of fact, the chamber of Lady Sarah, until it was given up to Sarah Anne for her illness. Elizabeth, with soft and stealthy tread, crossed the corridor to the door, and opened it.
Was she going to show him into the presence of the dead? He thought she must have mistaken Lady Sarah's orders, and he hesitated on the threshold.
"Where is Miss Ethel?" he whispered.
"Who, sir?"
"Miss Ethel. Is she well?"
The girl stared, flung the door full open, and with a great cry flew down the staircase.
He looked after her in amazement. Had she gone crazy? Then he turned and walked into the room with a hesitating step.
Lady Sarah was coming forward to meet him. She was convulsed with grief. He took both her hands in his with a soothing gesture, essaying a word of comfort: not of inquiry, as to why she should have brought him to this room. He glanced to the bed, expecting to see the dead upon it. But the bed was empty. And at that moment, his eyes caught something else.
Seated by the fire in an invalid chair, surrounded with pillows, covered with shawls, with a wan, attenuated face, and eyes that seemed to have a glaze over them, was--who?
Sarah Anne? It certainly was Sarah Anne, and in life still. For she feebly held out her hand in welcome, and the tears suddenly gushed from her eyes. "I am getting better, Mr. Godolphin."
Thomas Godolphin--Thomas Godolphin--how shall I write it? For one happy minute he was utterly blind to what it could all mean: his whole mind was a chaos of wild perplexity. And then, as the dreadful truth burst upon him, he staggered against the wall, with a wailing cry of agony.
It was Ethel who had died.
XIII. UNAVAILING REGRETS
Yes. It was Ethel who had died.
Thomas Godolphin leaned against the wall in his agony. It was one of those moments that can fall only once in a lifetime; in many lives never; when the greatest limit of earthly misery bursts upon the startled spirit, shattering it for all time. Were Thomas Godolphin to live for a hundred years, he never could know another moment like this: the power so to feel would have left him.
It had not left him yet. Nay, it had scarcely come to him in its full realization. At present he was half stunned. Strange as it may seem, the first impression upon his mind, was--that he was so much nearer to the next world. How am I to define this "nearer?" It was not that he was nearer to it by time; or in goodness: nothing of that sort. She had passed within its portals; and the great gulf, which divides time from eternity, seems to be only a span now to Thomas Godolphin: it was as if he, in spirit, had followed her in. From being a place far, far off, vague, indefinite, indistinct, it had been suddenly brought to him, close and palpable: or he to it: Had Thomas Godolphin been an atheist, denying a hereafter,--Heaven in its compassion have mercy upon all such!--that one moment of suffering would have recalled him to a sense of his mistake. It was as if he looked above with the eye of inspiration and saw the truth; it was as a brief, passing moment of revelation from God. She, with her loving spirit, her gentle heart, her simple trust in God, had been taken from this world to enter upon a better. She was as surely living in it, had entered upon its mysteries, its joys, its rest, as that he was living here; she, he believed, was as surely regarding him now and his great sorrow, as that he was left alone to battle with it. From henceforth Thomas Godolphin possessed a lively, ever-present link with that world; and knew that its gates would, in God's good time, be opened for him.
These feelings, impressions, facts--you may designate them as you please--took up their place in his mind all in that first instant, and seated themselves there for ever. Not yet very consciously. To his stunned senses, in his weight of bitter grief, nothing could be to him very clear: ideas passed through his brain quickly, confusedly; as the changing scenes in a phantasmagoria. He looked round as one bewildered. The bed, prepared for occupancy, on which, on entering, he had expected to see the dead, but not her, was between him and the door. Sarah Anne Grame in her invalid chair by the fire, a table at her right hand, covered with adjuncts of the sick-room--a medicine-bottle with its accompanying wine-glass and tablespoon--jelly, and other delicacies to tempt a faded appetite--Sarah Anne sat there and gazed at him with her dark hollow eyes, from which the tears rolled slowly over her cadaverous cheeks. Lady Sarah stood before him; sobs choking her voice as she wrung her hands. Ay, both were weeping. But he----it is not in the presence of others that man gives way to grief: neither will tears come to him in the first leaden weight of anguish.
Thomas Godolphin listened mechanically, as one who cannot do otherwise, to the explanations of Lady Sarah. "Why did you not prepare me?--why did you let it come upon me with this startling shock?" was his first remonstrance.
"I did prepare you," sobbed Lady Sarah. "I telegraphed to you last night, as soon as it had happened. I wrote the message with my own hand, and sent it off to the office before I turned my attention to any other thing."
"I received the message. But you did not say--I thought it was,"--Thomas Godolphin turned his glance on Sarah Anne. He remembered her state, in the midst of his own anguish, and would not alarm her. "You did not mention Ethel's name," he continued to Lady Sarah. "How could I suppose you alluded to her? How could I suppose that she was ill?"
Sarah Anne divined his motive for hesitation. She was uncommonly keen in penetration: sharp, as the world says; and she had noted his words on entering, when he began to soothe Lady Sarah for the loss of a child; she had noticed his startled recoil, when his eyes fell on her. She spoke up with a touch of her old querulousness, the tears arrested, and her eyes glistening.
"You thought it was I who had died! Yes, you did, Mr. Godolphin, and you need not attempt to deny it. You would not have cared, so that it was not Ethel."
Thomas Godolphin had no intention of contradicting her. He turned from Sarah Anne in silence, to look inquiringly and reproachfully at her mother.
"Mr. Godolphin, I could not prepare you better than I did," said Lady Sarah, "When I wrote the letter to you, telling of her illness----"
"What letter?" interrupted Thomas Godolphin. "I received no letter."
"But you must have received it," returned Lady Sarah in her quick, cross manner. Not cross with Thomas Godolphin, but from a rising doubt whether the letter had miscarried. "I wrote it, and I know that it was safely posted. You ought to have had it by last evening's delivery, before you would receive the telegraphic despatch."
"I never had it," said Thomas Godolphin. "When I waited in your drawing-room now, I was listening for Ethel's footsteps to come to me."
Thomas Godolphin knew, later, that the letter had arrived duly and safely at Broomhead, at the time mentioned by Lady Sarah. Sir George Godolphin either did not open the box that night; or, if he opened it, had overlooked the letter for his son. Charlotte Pain's complaint, that the box ought not to be left to the charge of Sir George, had reason in it. On the morning of his son's departure with the young ladies, Sir George had found the letter, and at once despatched it back to Prior's Ash. It was on its road at this same hour when he was talking with Lady Sarah. But the shock had come.
He took a seat by the table, and covered his eyes with his hand as Lady Sarah gave him a detailed account of the illness and death. Not all the account, that she or any one else could give, would take one iota from the dreadful fact staring him in the face. She was gone; gone for ever from this world; he could never again meet the glance of her eye, or hear her voice in response to his own. Ah, my readers, there are griefs that change all our after-life! rending the heart as an earthquake will rend the earth: and, all that can be done is, to sit down under them, and ask of Heaven strength to bear them. To bear them as we best may, until time shall in a measure bring healing upon its wings.
On the last night that Thomas Godolphin had seen her, Ethel's brow and eyes were heavy. She had wept much in the day, and supposed the pain in her head to arise from that circumstance; she had given this explanation to Thomas Godolphin. Neither she, nor he, had had a thought that it could come from any other source. More than a month since Sarah Anne was taken with the fever; fears for Ethel had died out. And yet those dull eyes, that hot head, that heavy weight of pain, were only the symptoms of approaching sickness! A night of tossing and turning, snatches of disturbed sleep, of terrifying dreams, and Ethel awoke to the conviction that the fever was upon her. About the time that she generally rose, she rang her bell for Elizabeth.
"I do not feel well," she said. "As soon as mamma is up, will you ask her to come to me? Do not disturb her before then."
Elizabeth obeyed her orders. But Lady Sarah, tired and wearied out with her attendance upon Sarah Anne, with whom she had been up half the night, did not rise until between nine and ten. Then the maid went to her and delivered the message.
"In bed still! Miss Ethel in bed still!" exclaimed Lady Sarah. She spoke in much anger: for Ethel was wont to be up betimes and in attendance upon Sarah Anne. It was required of her to be so.
Throwing on a dressing-gown, Lady Sarah proceeded to Ethel's room. And there she broke into a storm of reproach and anger; never waiting to ascertain what might be the matter with Ethel, anything or nothing. "Ten o'clock, and that poor child to have lain until now with no one near her but a servant!" she reiterated. "You have no feeling, Ethel."
Ethel drew the clothes from her flushed face, and turned her glistening eyes, dull last night, bright with fever now, upon her mother. "Oh, mamma, I am ill, indeed I am! I can hardly lift my head for the pain. Feel how it is burning! I did not think I ought to get up."
"What is the matter with you?" sharply inquired Lady Sarah.
"I cannot quite tell," answered Ethel. "I only know that I feel ill all over. I feel, mamma, as if I could not get up."
"Very well! There's that dear suffering angel lying alone, and you can think of yourself before you think of her! If you choose to remain in bed you must. But you will reproach yourself for your selfishness when she is gone. Another four and twenty hours and she may be no longer with us. Do as you think proper."
Ethel burst into tears, and caught her mother's robe as she was turning away. "Mamma, do not be angry with me! I trust I am not selfish. Mamma"--and her voice sank to a whisper--"I have been thinking that it may be the fever."
The fever! For one moment Lady Sarah paused in consternation, but the next she decided there was no fear of it. She really believed so.
"The fever!" she reproachfully said. "Heaven help you for a selfish and a fanciful child, Ethel! Did I not send you to bed with headache last night, and what is it but the remains of that headache that you feel this morning? I can see what it is; you have been fretting after this departure of Thomas Godolphin! Get up and dress yourself, and come in and attend upon your sister. You know she can't bear to be waited on by any one but you. Get up, I say, Ethel."
Will Lady Sarah Grame remember that little episode until death shall take her? I should, in her place. She suppressed all mention of it to Thomas Godolphin. "The dear child told me she did not feel well, but I only thought she had a headache, and that she would perhaps feel better up," were the words in which she related it to him. What sort of a vulture was gnawing at her heart as she spoke them? It was true that, in her blind selfishness for that one undeserving child, she had lost sight of the fact that illness could come to Ethel; she had not allowed herself to entertain its probability; she, who had accused of selfishness that devoted, generous girl, who was ready at all hours to sacrifice herself to her sister; who would have sacrificed her very life to save Sarah Anne's.
Ethel got up. Got up as she best could; her limbs aching, her head burning. She went into Sarah Anne's room, and did for her what she was able, gently, lovingly, anxiously, as of yore. Ah, child! let those, who are left, be thankful that it was so: it is well to be stricken down in the path of duty, working until we can work no more.
She did so. She stayed where she was until the day was half gone; bearing up, it was hard to say how. She could not touch breakfast; she could not take anything. None saw how ill she was. Lady Sarah was wilfully blind; Sarah Anne had eyes and thoughts for herself alone. "What are you shivering for?" Sarah Anne once fretfully asked her. "I feel cold, dear," was Ethel's unselfish answer: not a word said she further of her illness. In the early part of the afternoon, Lady Sarah was away from the room for some time upon domestic affairs; and when she returned to it Mr. Snow was with her. He had been prevented from calling earlier in the day. They found that Sarah Anne had dropped into a doze, and Ethel was stretched on the floor before the fire, moaning. But the moans ceased as they entered.
Mr. Snow, regardless of waking the invalid, strode up to Ethel, and turned her face to the light. "How long has she been like this?" he cried out, his voice shrill with emotion. "Child! child! why did they not send for me?"
Alas! poor Ethel was, even then, growing too ill to reply. Mr. Snow carried her to her room with his own arms, and the servants undressed her and laid her in the bed from which she was never more to rise. The fever attacked her violently: but not more so than it had attacked Sarah Anne; scarcely as badly; and danger, for Ethel, was not imagined. Had Sarah Anne not got over a similar crisis, they would have feared for Ethel: so are we given to judge by collateral circumstances. It was only on the third or fourth day that highly dangerous symptoms declared themselves, and then Lady Sarah wrote to Thomas Godolphin the letter which had not reached him. There was this much of negative consolation to be derived from its miscarriage: that, had it been delivered to him on the instant of its arrival, he could not have been in time to see her.
"You ought to have written to me as soon as she was taken ill," he observed to Lady Sarah.
"I would have done so had I apprehended danger," she repentantly answered. "But I never did apprehend it. Mr. Snow did not do so. I thought how pleasant it would be to get her safe through the danger and the illness, before you should know of it."
"Did she not wish me to be written to?"
The question was put firmly, abruptly, after the manner of one who will not be cheated of his answer. Lady Sarah dared not evade it. How could she equivocate, with her child lying dead in the house.
"It is true. She did wish it. It was on the first day of her illness that she spoke. 'Write, and tell Thomas Godolphin.' She never said it but that once."
"And you did not do so?" he returned, his voice hoarse with pain.
"Do not reproach me! do not reproach me!" cried Lady Sarah, clasping her hands in supplication, while the tears fell in showers from her eyes. "I did it for the best. I never supposed there was danger: I thought what a pity it was to bring you back, all that long journey: putting you to so much unnecessary trouble and expense."
Trouble and expense, in such a case! She could speak of expense to Thomas Godolphin! But he remembered how she had had to battle both with expense and trouble her whole life long; that for her these must wear a formidable aspect: and he remained silent.
"I wish now I had written," she resumed, in the midst of her choking sobs. "As soon as Mr. Snow said there was danger, I wished it. But"--as if she would seek to excuse herself--"what with the two upon my hands, she upstairs, Sarah Anne here, I had not a moment for proper reflection."
"Did you tell her you had not written?" he asked. "Or did you let her lie waiting for me, hour after hour, day after day, blaming me for my careless neglect?"
"She never blamed any one; you know she did not," wailed Lady Sarah: "and I believe she was too ill to think even of you. She was only sensible at times. Oh, I say, do not reproach me, Mr. Godolphin! I would give my own life to bring her back again! I never knew her worth until she was gone. I never loved her as I love her now."
There could be no doubt that Lady Sarah Grame was reproaching herself far more bitterly than any reproach could tell upon her from Thomas Godolphin. An accusing conscience is the worst of all evils. She sat there, her head bent, swaying herself backwards and forwards on her chair, moaning and crying. It was not a time, as Thomas Godolphin felt, to say a word of her past heartless conduct, in forcing Ethel to breathe the infection of Sarah Anne's sick-room. And, all that he could say, all the reproaches, all the remorse and repentance, would not bring Ethel back to life.
"Would you like to see her?" whispered Lady Sarah, as he rose to leave.
"Yes."
She lighted a candle, and preceded him upstairs. Ethel had died in her own room. At the door, Thomas Godolphin took the candle from Lady Sarah.
"I must go in alone."
He passed on into the chamber, and closed the door. On the bed, laid out in her white night-dress, lay what remained of Ethel Grame. Pale, still, pure, her face was wonderfully like what it had been in life, and a calm smile rested upon it.--But Thomas Godolphin wished to be alone.
Lady Sarah stood outside, leaning against the opposite wall, and weeping silently, the glimmer from the hall-lamp below faintly lighting the corridor. Once she fancied that a sound, as of choking sobs, struck upon her ears, and she caught up a small black shawl that she wore, for grief had chilled her, flung it over her shoulders, and wept the faster.
He came out by-and-by, calm and quiet as he ever was. He did not perceive Lady Sarah standing there in the shade, and went straight down, the wax-light in his hand. Lady Sarah caught him up at the door of Sarah Anne's room, and took the light from him.
"She looks very peaceful, does she not?" was her whisper.
"She could not look otherwise."
He went on down alone, wishing to let himself out. But Elizabeth had heard his steps, and was already at the door. "Good night, Elizabeth," he said, as he passed her.
The girl did not answer. She slipped out into the garden after him. "Oh, sir! and didn't you know of it?" she whispered.
"No."
"If anybody was ever gone away to be an angel, sir, it's that sweet young lady," continued Elizabeth, letting her tears and sobs come forth as they would. "She was just one here! and she's gone to her own fit place above."
"Ay. It is so."
"You should have been in this house throughout the whole of the illness, to have see the difference between them, sir! Nobody would believe it. Miss Grame, angry and snappish, and not caring who suffered, or who was ill, or who toiled, so that she was served: Miss Ethel, lying like a tender lamb, patient and meek, thankful for all that was done for her. It does seem hard, sir, that we should lose her for ever."
"Not for ever, Elizabeth," he answered.
"And that's true, too! But, sir, the worst is, one can't think of that sort of consolation just when one's troubles are fresh. Good night to you, sir."
"No, no," he murmured to himself; "not for ever."
XIV. GONE ON BEFORE
Thomas Godolphin walked on, leaving the high-road for a less-frequented path, the one by which he had come. About midway between this and the railway station, a path, branching to the right, would take him into Prior's Ash. He went along, musing. In the depth of his great grief, there was no repining. He was one to trace the finger of God in all things. If Mrs. Godolphin had imbued him with superstitious feelings, she had also implanted within him something better: and a more entire trust in God it was perhaps impossible for any one to feel, than was felt by Thomas Godolphin. It was what he lived under. He could not see why Ethel should have been taken; why this great sorrow should fall upon him: but that it must be for the best, he implicitly believed. The best: for God had done it. How he was to live on without her, he knew not. How he could support the lively anguish of the immediate future, he did not care to think about. All his hope in this life gone! all his plans, his projects, uprooted by a single blow! never, any of them, to return. He might still look for the bliss of a hereafter--ay! that remains even for the most heavy-laden, thank God!--but his sun of happiness in this world had set for ever.
Thomas Godolphin might have been all the better for a little sun then--not speaking figuratively. I mean the good sun that illumines our daily world; that would be illumining my pen and paper at this moment, but for an envious fog, which obscures everything but itself. The moon was not shining as it had shone the last night he left Lady Sarah's, when he had left his farewell kiss--oh that he could have known it was the last!--on the gentle lips of Ethel. There was no moon yet; the stars were not showing themselves, for a black cloud enveloped the skies like a pall, fitting accompaniment to his blasted hopes; and his path altogether was dark. Little wonder then, that Thomas Godolphin all but fell over some dark object, crouching in his way: he could only save himself by springing back. By dint of peering, he discovered it to be a woman. She was seated on the bare earth; her hands clasped under her knees, which were raised almost level with her chin which rested on them, and was swaying herself backwards and forwards as one does in grief; as Lady Sarah Grame had done not long before.
"Why do you sit here?" cried Thomas Godolphin. "I nearly fell over you."
"Little matter if ye'd fell over me and killed me," was the woman's response, given without raising her head, or making any change in her position. "'Twould only have been one less in an awful cold world, as seems made for nothing but trouble. If the one half of us was out of it, there'd be room perhaps for them as was left."
"Is it Mrs. Bond?" asked Thomas Godolphin, as he caught a glimpse of her features.
"Didn't you know me, sir? I know'd you by the voice as soon as you spoke. You have got trouble too, I hear. The world's full of nothing else. Why does it come?"
"Get up," said Thomas Godolphin. "Why do you sit there? Why are you here at all at this hour of the night?"
"It's where I'm going to stop till morning," returned the woman, sullenly. "There shall be no getting up for me."
"What is the matter with you?" he resumed.
"Trouble," she shortly answered. "I've been toiling up to the work'us, asking for a loaf, or a bit o' money: anything they'd give to me, just to keep body and soul together for my children. They turned me back again. They'll give me nothing. I may go into the union with the children if I will, but not a stiver of help'll they afford me out of it. Me, with a corpse in the house, and a bare cubbort."
"A corpse!" involuntarily repeated Thomas Godolphin. "Who is dead!"
"John."
Curtly as the word was spoken, the tone yet betrayed its own pain. This John, the eldest son of the Bonds, had been attacked with the fever at the same time as the father and brother. They had succumbed to it: this one had recovered: or, at least, had appeared to be recovering.
"I thought John was getting better," observed Thomas Godolphin.
"He might ha' got better, if he'd had things to make him better! Wine and meat, and all the rest of it. He hadn't got 'em; and he's dead."
Now a subscription had been entered into for the relief of the poor sufferers from the fever, Godolphin, Crosse, and Godolphin having been amongst its most liberal contributors; and to Thomas Godolphin's certain knowledge, a full share, and a very good share, had been handed to the Bonds. Quite sufficient to furnish proper nourishment for John Bond for some time to come. He did not say to the woman, "You have had enough: where has it gone to? it has been wasted in riot." That it had been wasted in riot and improvidence, there was no doubt, for it was in the nature of the Bonds so to waste it; but to cast reproach in the hour of affliction was not the religion of everyday life practised by Thomas Godolphin.
"Yes, they turned me back," she resumed, swaying herself nose and knees together, as before. "They wouldn't give me as much as a bit o' bread. I wasn't going home without taking something to my famished children; and I wasn't going to beg like a common tramp. So I just sat myself down here; and I shan't care if I'm found stark and stiff in the morning!"
"Get up, get up," said Thomas Godolphin. "I will give you something for bread for your children to-night."
In the midst of his own sorrow he could feel for her, improvident old sinner though she was, and though he knew her to be so. He coaxed and soothed, and finally prevailed upon her to rise, but she was in a reckless, sullen mood, and it took him a little effort before it was effected. She burst into tears when she thanked him, and turned off in the direction of the Pollard cottages.
The reflection of Mr. Snow's bald head was conspicuous on the surgery blind: he was standing between the window and the lamp. Thomas Godolphin observed it as he passed. He turned to the surgery door, which was at the side of the house, opened it, and saw that Mr. Snow was alone.
The surgeon turned his head at the interruption, put down a glass jar which he held, and grasped his visitor's hand in silence.
"Snow! why did you not write for me?"
Mr. Snow brought down his hand on a pair of tiny scales, causing them to jangle and rattle. He had been bottling up his anger against Lady Sarah for some days now, and this was his first explosion.
"Because I understood that she had done so. I was present when that poor child asked her to do it. I found her on the floor in Sarah Anne's chamber. On the floor, if you'll believe me! Lying there, because she could not hold her aching head up. My lady had dragged her out of bed in the morning, ill as she was, and forced her to attend as usual upon Sarah Anne. I got it all out of Elizabeth. 'Mamma,' she said, when I pronounced it to be fever, though she was almost beyond speaking then, 'you will write to Thomas Godolphin.' I never supposed but that my lady did it. Your sister, Miss Godolphin, inquired if you had been written for, and I told her yes."
"Snow," came the next sad words, "could you not have saved her?"
The surgeon shook his head and answered in a quiet tone, looking down at the stopper of a phial, which he had taken up and was turning about listlessly in his fingers.
"Neither care nor skill could save her. I gave her the best I had to give. As did Dr. Beale. Godolphin,"--raising his quick dark eyes, flashing then with a peculiar light--"she was ready to go. Let it be your consolation."
Thomas Godolphin made no answer, and there was silence for a time. Mr. Snow resumed. "As to my lady, the best consolation I wish her, is, that she may have her heart wrung with remembrance for years to come! I don't care what people may preach about charity and forgiveness; I do wish it. But she'll be brought to her senses, unless I am mistaken: she has lost her treasure and kept her bane. A year or two more, and that's what Sarah Anne will be."
"She ought to have written for me."
"She ought to do many things that she does not do. She ought to have sent Ethel from the house, as I told her, the instant the disorder appeared in it. Not she. She kept her in her insane selfishness: and now I hope she's satisfied with her work. When alarming symptoms showed themselves in Ethel, on the fourth day of her illness, I think it was, I said to my lady, 'It is strange what can be keeping Mr. Godolphin!' 'Oh,' said she, 'I did not write to him.' 'Not write!' I answered: and I fear I used an ugly word to my lady's face. 'I'll write at once,' returned she humbly. 'Of course,' cried I, 'when the steed's stolen we shut the stable-door.' It's the way of the world."
Another pause. "I would have given anything to take Ethel from the house at the time; to take her from the town," observed Thomas Godolphin in a low tone. "I said so then. But it could not be."
"I should have done it, in your place," said Mr. Snow. "If my lady had said no, I'd have carried her off in the face of it. Not married, you say? Rubbish! Every one knows she'd have been safe with you. And you would have been married as soon as was convenient. What are forms and ceremonies and carping tongues, in comparison with a girl's life? A life, precious as was Ethel's!"
Thomas Godolphin leaned his forehead in his hand, lost in retrospect. Oh, that he had taken her! that he had set at nought what he had then bowed to, the convenances of society! She might have been by his side now, in health and life, to bless him! Doubting words interrupted the train of thought.
"And yet I don't know," the surgeon was repeating, in a dreamy manner. "What is to be, will be. We look back, all of us, and say, 'If I had acted thus, if I had done the other, so and so would not have happened; events would have turned out differently.' But who is to be sure of it? Had you taken Ethel out of harm's way--as we might have thought it--there's no telling but she'd have had the fever just the same: her blood might have become infected before she left the house. There's no knowing, Mr. Godolphin."
"True. Good evening, Snow."
He turned suddenly and hastily to the outer door, but the surgeon caught him before he passed its threshold, and touched his arm to detain him. They stood there in the obscurity, their faces shaded in the dark night.
"She left you a parting word, Mr. Godolphin."
"Ah?"
"An hour before she died she was calm and sensible, though fearfully weak. Lady Sarah had gone to her favourite, and I was alone with Ethel. 'Has he not come yet?' she asked me, opening her eyes. 'My dear,' I said, 'he could not come; he was never written for.' For I knew she alluded to you, and was determined to tell her the truth, dying though she was. 'What shall I say to him for you?' I continued. She put up her hand to motion my face nearer hers, for her voice was growing faint. 'Tell him, with my dear love, not to grieve,' she whispered, between her panting breath. 'Tell him that I have gone on before.' I think they were almost the last words she spoke."
Thomas Godolphin leaned against the modest post of the surgery door, and eagerly drank in the words. Then he wrung the doctor's hand, and departed, hurrying along the street as one who shrank from observation: for he did not care, just then, to encounter the gaze of his fellow-men.
Coming with a quick step up the side street, in which the entrance to the surgery was situated, was the Reverend Mr. Hastings. He stopped to accost the surgeon.
"Was that Mr. Godolphin?"
"Ay. This is a blow for him."
Mr. Hastings's voice insensibly shrank to a whisper. "Maria tells me that he did not know of Ethel's death or illness. Until they arrived here to-night, they thought it was Sarah Anne who died. He went up to Lady Sarah's after the train came in, thinking so."
"Lady Sarah's a fool," was the complimentary rejoinder of Mr. Snow.
"She is, in some things," warmly assented the Rector. "The telegraphic message she despatched to Scotland, telling of the death, was so obscurely worded as to cause them to assume that it alluded to Sarah Anne."
"Ah well! she's only heaping burdens on her conscience," rejoined Mr. Snow in a philosophic tone. "She has lost Ethel through want of care (as I firmly believe) in not keeping her out of the way of infection; she prevented their last meeting, through not writing to him; she----"
"He could not have saved her, had he been here," interrupted Mr. Hastings.
"No one said he could. There would have been satisfaction in it for him, though. And for her too, poor child."
Mr. Hastings did not contest the point. He was so very practical a man (in contradistinction to an imaginative one) that he saw little use in "last" interviews, unless they produced actual good. Turning away, he walked home at a brisk pace. Maria was alone when he entered. Mrs. Hastings and Grace were out of the room, talking to some late applicant: a clergyman's house, like a parish apothecary's, is never free long together. Divested of her travelling cloaks and seated before the fire in her quiet merino dress, Maria looked as much at home as if she had never left it. The blaze, flickering on her face, betrayed to the keen glance of the Rector that her eyelashes were wet.
"Grieving after Broomhead already, Maria?" asked he, his tone a stern one.
"Oh, papa, no! I am glad to be at home. I was thinking of poor Ethel."
"She is better off. The time may come, Maria--we none of us know what is before us--when some of you young ones who are left may wish you had died as she has. Many a one, battling for very existence with the world's cares, wails out a vain wish that he had been taken early from the evil to come."
"It must be so dreadful for Thomas Godolphin!" Maria resumed, looking straight into the fire, and speaking as if in commune with herself, more than to her father.
"Thomas Godolphin must find another love."
It was one of those phrases, spoken in satire only, to which the Rector of All Souls' was occasionally given. He saw so much to condemn in the world, things which grated harshly on his advanced mind, that his speech had become imbued with a touch of gall, and he would often give utterance to cynical remarks, uncalled for at the moment.
Maria took up the words literally. She turned to Mr. Hastings; her cheek flushed, her hands clasped; altogether betraying vivid emotion. "Oh, papa! another love! You should not say it of Thomas Godolphin. Love, such as his, is not for a week or a year: it is for all time."
The Rector paused a moment in his reply. His penetrating gaze was fixed upon his daughter. "May I inquire whence you have derived your knowledge of 'love,' Miss Maria Hastings?"
Her eyes drooped, her face turned crimson, her manner grew confused. She turned her countenance from that of her father, and stammered forth some lame excuse. "Every one knows, papa, that Thomas Godolphin was fond of Ethel."
"Possibly. But every one does not know that Maria Hastings deems herself qualified to enlarge upon the subject," was the Rector's reply. And Maria shrank into silence.
There came a day, not many days afterwards, when Maria Hastings, her sisters, and two of her brothers, were gathered in sombre silence around the study window of the Rectory. The room was built out at the back of the house, over the kitchen, and its side window commanded a full view of the churchyard of All Souls', and of the church porch. Grace, who constituted herself mistress of the others a great deal more than did Mrs. Hastings herself, allowed the blind to be drawn up about two inches at the bottom of the window; and Maria, Isaac, Harry, and Rose, kneeling down for convenience sake, brought their faces into contact with it, as the mob outside the churchyard gate did there. Human nature is the same everywhere, whether in the carefully-trained children of a Christian gentleman, or in those who know no training but what the streets have given.
The funeral, even now, was inside the church: it had been inside so long that those eager watchers, estimating time by their impatience, began to think it was never coming out again. A sudden movement in the church porch reassured them, and Grace knelt down and made one with the rest.
Slowly--slowly--on it came. The Reverend Mr. Hastings first, in his white robes; the coffin next; Thomas Godolphin last, with a stranger by his side. Nothing more, except some pall-bearers in their white scarfs, and the necessary attendants. It was a perfectly simple funeral: according well with what the dead had been in her simple life.
The appearance of this stranger took the curious gazers by surprise. Who was he? A spare man, past middle age, with a red nose and an unmistakable wig on his head. Rumours circulating in Prior's Ash had said that Thomas Godolphin would be sole mourner. Lady Sarah Grame's relatives--and she could not boast of many--lived far north of Aberdeen. "Who can he be?" murmured Grace Hastings.
"Why, don't you girls know? That's through your having stuck yourselves in the house all the morning, for fear you should lose the funeral. If you had gone out, you'd have heard who he is." The retort came from Harry Hastings. Let it be a funeral or a wedding, that may be taking place under their very eyes, boys must be boys all the world over. And so they ever will be.
"Who is he, then?" asked Grace.
"He is Ethel's uncle," answered Harry. "He arrived by train this morning. The Earl of Macsomething."
"The Earl of Macsomething!" repeated Grace.
Harry nodded. "Mac begins the name, and I forget the rest. Lady Sarah was his sister."
"Is, you mean," said Grace. "It must be Lord Macdoune."
The church porch was opposite the study window. The grave had been dug in a line between the two, very near to the family vault of the Godolphins and to the entrance gate of the churchyard. On it came, crossing the broad churchyard path which wound round to the road, treading between mounds and graves. The clergyman took his place at the head, the mourners near him, the rest disposing themselves decently around.
"Grace," whispered Isaac, "if we had the window open an inch, we should hear." And Grace was pleased to accord her sanction, and they silently raised it.
"Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay."
The children--indeed they were little more--hushed their breath and listened, and looked at Thomas Godolphin. Thomas Godolphin stood there, his head bowed, his face still, the gentle wind stirring his thin dark hair. It was probably a marvel to himself in after-life, how he had contrived, in that closing hour, to retain his calmness before the world.
"The coffin's lowered at last!" broke out Harry, who had been more curious to watch the movements of the men, than the aspect of Thomas Godolphin.
"Hush, sir!" sharply rebuked Grace. And the minister's voice again stole over the silence.
"Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear sister here departed, we therefore commit her body to the ground; earth to earth ... ashes to ashes ... dust to dust ... in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change our vile body, that it may be like unto his glorious body, according to the mighty working, whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself."
Every word came home to Thomas Godolphin's senses; every syllable vibrated upon his heartstrings. That sure and certain hope laid hold of his soul, never again to quit it. It diffused its own holy peace and calm into his troubled mind: and never, until that moment, had he fully realized the worth, the truth, of her dying legacy: "Tell him that I have gone on before." A few years--God, now present with him, alone knew how few or how many--and Thomas Godolphin would have joined her in eternal life.
But why had Mr. Hastings come to a temporary pause? Because his eye had fallen upon one, then gliding up from the entrance of the churchyard to take his place amidst the mourners. One who had evidently arrived in a hurry. He wore neither scarf nor hatband, neither cloak nor hood: nothing but a full suit of plain black clothes.
"Look, Maria," whispered Grace.
It was George Godolphin. He fell quietly in below his brother, his hat carried in his hand, his head bowed, his fair curls waving in the breeze. It was all the work of an instant: and the minister resumed:
"I heard a voice from heaven, saying unto me, Write, From henceforth blessed are the dead which die in the Lord: even so saith the Spirit; for they rest from their labours."
And so went on the service to the end.
The beadle, with much bustle and a liberal use of his staff, scattered and dispersed the mob from the gates, to clear a passage. Two mourning coaches were in waiting. Thomas Godolphin came forth, leaning on his brother's arm, both of them bare-headed still. They entered one; Lord Macdoune stepped into the other.
"Thomas!" cried George Godolphin, leaning forward and seizing his brother's hand impulsively, as the mourning-coach paced slowly on: "I should have been here in good time, but for a delay in the train."
"How did you hear of it? I did not know where to write to you," was Thomas's reply, spoken calmly.
"I heard of it at Broomhead. I went back there, and then I came off at once. Thomas, could they not save her?"
A slight negative movement was all Thomas Godolphin's answer. "How did you find your father, George?"
"Breaking. Breaking fast. Thomas, all his talk is, that he must come home to die."
"To Ashlydyat. I know. How is he to come to it? The Folly is not Ashlydyat. He has desired me to see that he is at Prior's Ash before Christmas, and I shall do so."
George looked surprised. "Desired you to see that he is?"
"If he is not back speedily, I am to go to Broomhead."
"Oh, I see. That your authority, upholding his, may be pitted against my lady's. Take care, Thomas: she may prove stronger than both of you put together."
"I think not," replied Thomas quietly; and he placed his elbow on the window frame, and bent his face upon his hand, as if wishing for silence.
Meanwhile the Reverend Mr. Hastings had passed through the private gate to his own garden; and half a dozen men were shovelling earth upon the coffin, sending it with a rattle upon the bright plate, which told who was mouldering within:
"ETHEL GRAME. Aged twenty years."
XV. A MIDNIGHT WALK
Thomas Godolphin sat in his place at the bank, opening the morning letters. It was some little time after the interment of Ethel Grame, and the second week in December was already on the wane. In two days more it was his intention to start for Broomhead: for no tidings arrived of the return of Sir George. The very last of the letters he came upon, was one bearing the Scotch post-mark. A poor little note with a scrawled address: no wonder the sorting-clerk had placed it last of all! It looked singularly obscure, in comparison with those large blue letters and their business hands.
Thomas Godolphin knew the writing. It was Margery's. And we may as well read the contents with him, verbatim:
"MR. THOMAS SIR,
"I imbrace this favurible oportunaty of adresing you for I considur it my duty to take up my pen and inform you about my master, He's not long for this world, Mr. Thomas I know it by good tokens which I don't write not being an easy writer but they are none the less true, The master's fretting his life away because he is not at home and she is keeping him because she's timorus of the fever. But you saw how it was sir when you were here and it's the same story still. There'd have been a fight for it with my lady but if I'd been you Mr. Thomas I'd have took him also when me and the young ladies went with you to Prior's Ash. When I got back here, sir I saw an awful change in him and Mr. George he saw it but my lady didn't. I pen these lines sir to say you had better come off at once and not wait for it to be nearer Christmas, The poor master is always saying Thomas is coming for me, Thomas is coming for me but I'd not answer for it now that he will ever get back alive, Sir it was the worst day's work he ever did to go away at all from Ashlydyat if my lady was dying to live at the new Folly place she might have gone to it but not him, When we do a foolish wrong thing we don't think of the consekences at the time at least not much of em but we think all the more after and fret our hearts out with blame and it have been slowly killing him ever since, I am vexed to disturb you Mr. Thomas with this epistle for I know you must be in enough grief of your own just now.
"Your humble servant, "MARGERY."
Thomas Godolphin read it over twice, and then crossed to the opposite side of the private room, where sat a gentleman at another desk. A tall, portly man, with a fresh colour, large, keen dark eyes, and hair white as snow. It was Mr. Crosse.
"Anything particular, Thomas?" he asked, as Thomas Godolphin put the letter into his hand.
"Not in business. Read it, will you?"
Mr. Crosse read the letter through. "Is it my advice you wish for?" asked he, when he came to the last word.
"Not exactly," replied Thomas Godolphin. "I have made up my mind, I believe."
"To go immediately?"
"Yes. Within an hour."
"Right. It is what I should have recommended you to do, had you been undecided. When it comes to letter-writing with Margery, the thing is serious, rely upon it."
And within the hour Thomas Godolphin had started.
The railway station nearest to Broomhead, was three miles distant from it, by the road: but there was a shorter cut across some fields--bearing past the house of that Mr. Sandy Bray, if you are curious to know--which reduced it to less than two. It was one of those rural stations so little frequented that travellers are tempted to ask why they were built at all. Such a thing as a fly, or an omnibus, had never yet been seen at it, at midday: you may therefore judge what chance Thomas Godolphin had of either, getting there, as he did, at midnight. He was the only passenger to alight, and the train went puffing on. The man, who lived in the one-roomed cottage close by, and was called the station-master, appeared to be the only official to receive him. A man who had been drafted thither from one of the English lines.
"For Broomhead, sir?" he questioned, recognizing the traveller.
"Yes. Do you happen to know how Sir George Godolphin is?"
"He looks rare and poorly, sir. He was past here in his carriage to-day. Huddled up in a corner of it, as if he was cold; or else hadn't the strength to sit up. Her ladyship was inside with him."
"There's no porter about, I suppose?"
"He has been gone this two hours, sir. I'd offer to carry your luggage myself, but I shall have the up-express by in half an hour. I shut up for the night then."
"I would not trouble you for so trifling a matter, at this hour, were you at liberty," replied Thomas Godolphin.
He took up his portmanteau himself: a thing not much larger than what the French would call a petit sac-de-nuit, containing little besides a clean shirt and his shaving-tackle: and started, bending his steps not along the road, but across it to the stile.
"I wouldn't take the field way to-night, sir, if I were you," said the man from the station door. "The road is safest."
"Why is it?" asked Thomas Godolphin.
"There's a nasty bit by the field way, a quarter of a mile before you come to Bray's. Anybody, not knowing it well, might take the wrong turning, and go, head first, into the dam."
"But I do know it well," said Thomas Godolphin. "And the night is light enough to distinguish the turnings."
The station-master looked up at the skies--figuratively speaking, for he could see nothing but fog. A light, hazy mist; not a dark one; which seemed likely to turn to rain. He said no more, except a "Good night, sir:" and Thomas Godolphin walked on, hesitating for a moment between the two roads, and then turning decisively to that of the fields, as if some hidden impulse impelled him. Perhaps it did so.
It was not a pleasant night, a pleasant time, or a pleasant way; and Thomas Godolphin began to think he should have done well to have telegraphed his intended journey from Prior's Ash to Broomhead, that they might have sent a conveyance to await him at the station. Regrets were of no use now, and he trudged along, taking two steps forward, and one backward, for the ground in places was wet and slippery. It was a peculiar night. There was no moon; there were no stars; no skies in fact to be seen at all, as you have heard; and yet the night was light.
What were Thomas Godolphin's thoughts bent upon? Need you ask? For some time to come, days and weeks and months, they must run chiefly upon her who had left him. He remembered his last arrival at Broomhead: he remembered his thoughts as he had walked from the station as he was doing now; though then it had been by daylight. His musings had been of Ethel, and his coming marriage; of that farewell kiss which she had pressed upon his lips. Now--now he must only think of her as one of Heaven's angels.
He lifted his hat to wipe his brow, and then changed his load to the other hand. He was coming to the dam now. He could hear its waters. Go carefully, Thomas Godolphin! A few steps down that dark turning, and you might never be heard of more. But he knew his way, and the night was light, and he bore on his course, and the dangerous turn was passed.
A little way farther on, and he could discern the outline of Bray's cottage in the distance. A light burnt in one of the windows, and he wondered who was ill. Probably Margery's sister. It diverted his own sad reflections. Next he became absorbed in thoughts of his father. How should he find him? Ideas, we all know, assume the colouring of surrounding associations, and Thomas Godolphin, in that solitary midnight hour, grew to take a more sombre view of the news contained in Margery's letter than he had hitherto done. It is wonderful how circumstances affect us! In the broad light of day, walking, for instance, as he had done previously to Broomhead, apprehensions would not have come over him. Now he pictured his father (by no will of his own: the scenes rose up unbidden) as lying ill; perhaps dying. Perhaps even then a telegraphic message to him might be on its road to Prior's Ash! Perhaps----
A cry right over his head! And Thomas Godolphin positively started. It proceeded from some night-bird that had dived down upon him, and now flew onwards, flapping its wings. Superstitious Margery would have called it an omen.
Thomas Godolphin followed it with his eyes, speculating upon what bird it could be. It looked like a sea-gull; had screamed like one; but the sea was far off, and, if it was one, it must have come a long distance.
Back it came again, and dived down as before. Thomas Godolphin did not like it, and he wished the portmanteau in his hand had been a gun. "I wonder what good these restless night-birds do," he ejaculated, "except to disturb from sleep any worn-out mortal who may be within hearing?"
Scenes of the recent past rose up before him: the sombre scenes in which he had been an actor. The ominous Shadow of Ashlydyat, striking on his sight as he turned the ash-trees, the night of his previous summons to Broomhead: the dead face of Ethel lying on her bed; the reminiscence of the funeral scene; of his walking away from it with the dull sound of the earth falling on her coffin smiting his ears! None of them pleasant things to recall at that particular hour. Why should they have come to him?
"What business had they there at such a time?"
Drive them away he could not. But neither did he try to do so. They served to make doubly sad, doubly ominous, his new fears for his father. He knew how precarious was Sir George's life. What if he were then dying! Nay, what if it were the very moment of his departure?--if he were dead? having called upon his children; upon him, Thomas, in vain?
That odious bird once more! It flew over his head with a shriller cry than the last. Thomas Godolphin was at that moment within a few paces of a stile which lay in his path. He turned his head round to look after the bird, without slackening his pace, putting out his hand before him to feel for the stile. The hand came into contact with it, and Thomas let it rest momentarily. His head was turned, still watching the bird, which was then flying round and round, making fierce circlets in the air.
But he could not stop there all night, staring at the bird, and he turned sharply round to cross the stile. Placing one foot on its lower rail, he----
What made Thomas Godolphin start as if he had been shot? Who and what was that standing on the other side of the stile fixedly gazing at him? A tall, shadowy, upright form, bearing the unmistakable features of Sir George Godolphin.
Will you--strong, practical, unimaginative men of the world--forgive Thomas Godolphin if in that one brief moment the wild superstitions, instilled into his mind in childhood, were allowed their play? Forgive him, or not, it was the fact. In imagination, only the instant before, he had seen his father lying upon his bed, the soul parting from the body: and Thomas Godolphin as much believed what he now saw before him was his father's spirit, as that he, himself, was in existence. The spirit, appearing to him at the moment of its departure. His flesh turned cold, and dew gathered on his brow.
"My son, can it be you?"
Thomas Godolphin came out of his folly, and grasped his father. That it was real flesh and blood which yielded to his arms, he knew now: but perhaps the surprise that it should be so, was even greater than the other emotion. Sir George Godolphin there! at that midnight hour! nearly a mile from home! and bareheaded! Was it really Sir George? Thomas Godolphin rubbed his eyes, and thought he, himself, must have taken leave of his senses.
"My father! my dear father! what are you doing here?"
"I thought I'd go to the station, Thomas, and see about a special train. I must go back to Ashlydyat to die."
Thomas climbed over the stile. The tone, the manner, the words, altogether had betrayed to him an unhappy fact--that his father's mind was not in a state of perfect sanity. He trembled for his health, too. It was a cold raw night, and here was Sir George in evening dress, without so much as an overcoat thrown on! He, who had only been out since the last fainting-fit in a close carriage: and then well wrapped up.
"Where is your hat, father?"
The old knight lifted his hand to his head, as if he had not known that his hat was not there. "I must have come out without it, Thomas," he said. "What was that noise over there?" he continued, pointing above the stile to the way Thomas had come, his frame shivering with cold as he spoke.
"I think it was a sea-gull. Or some screaming night-bird."
"I could not get over the stile, Thomas. The walk seemed to have taken the strength out of me. How did you come here? I thought you were at Prior's Ash."
Thomas Godolphin was busy. He had taken off his great coat, and was putting it upon his father, buttoning it up carefully. A smaller man than Sir George, it did not fit well: but Sir George had shrunk. The hat fitted better.
"But you have no hat yourself!" said Sir George, surveying his son's head, when he had submitted in patient silence to the dressing.
"I don't want one," replied Thomas. "The night air will not hurt me." Nevertheless, all the way to Broomhead, he was looking on either side, if perchance he might come upon Sir George's hat, lying in the road.
Thomas drew his father close, to support him on his arm, and they commenced their walk to the house. Not until then did Thomas know how very weak his father was. Stooping, shivering, tripping, with every other step, it appeared impossible that he could walk back again: the wonder was, how he had walked there.
Thomas Godolphin halted in dismay. How was he to get his father home? Carry him, he could not: it was of course beyond his strength. The light in Bray's window suggested a thought to him.
"Father, I think you had better go to Bray's and stay there, while I see about your hand-chair. You are not able to walk."
"I won't go to Bray's," returned the knight, with a touch of vehemence. "I don't like Bray, and I will not put my foot inside his threshold. Besides, it's late, and my lady will miss us."
He pressed on somewhat better towards home, and Thomas Godolphin saw nothing else that could be done, except to press on with him, and give him all the help in his power. "My dear father, you should have waited until the morning," he said, "and have gone out then."
"But I wanted to see about a train, Thomas," remonstrated the knight. "And I can't do it in the day. She will not let me. When we drive past the railway station, she won't get out, and won't let me do so. Thomas, I want to go back to Ashlydyat."
"I have come to take you back, my dear father."
"Ay, ay. And mind you are firm when she says I must not go because of the fever. The fever will not hurt me, Thomas. I can't be firm. I have grown feeble, and people take my will from me. You are my first-born son, Thomas."
"Yes."
"Then you must be firm for me, I say."
"I will be, father."
"This is a rough road, Thomas."
"No, it is smooth; and I am glad that it is so. But you are tired."
The old knight bent his head, as if choosing his steps. Presently he lifted his head:
"Thomas, when do they leave Ashlydyat?"
"Who, sir? The Verralls? They have not had notice yet."
Sir George stopped. He drew up his head to its full height, and turned to his son. "Not had notice? When, then, do I go back? I won't go to Lady Godolphin's Folly. I must go to Ashlydyat."
"Yes, sir," said Thomas soothingly. "I will see about it."
The knight, satisfied, resumed his walk. "Of course you will see about it. You are my son and heir, Thomas. I depend upon you."
They pursued their way for some little time in silence, and then Sir George spoke again, his tone hushed. "Thomas, I have put on mourning for her. I mourn her as much as you do. And you did not get there in time to see her alive!"
"Not in time. No," replied Thomas, looking hard into the mist overhead.
"I'd have come to the funeral, Thomas, if she had let me. But she was afraid of the fever. George got there in time for it?"
"Barely."
"When he came back to Broomhead, and heard of it, he was so cut up, poor fellow. Cut up for your sake, Thomas. He said he should be in time to follow her to the grave if he started at once, and he went off then and there. Thomas"--dropping his voice still lower--"whom shall you take to Ashlydyat now?"
"My sisters."
"Nay. But as your wife? You will be replacing Ethel sometime."
"I shall never marry now, father."
At length Broomhead was reached. Thomas held open the gate of the shrubbery to his father, and guided him through it.
"Shall we have two engines, Thomas?"
"Two engines, sir! What for?"
"They'd take us quicker, you know. This is not the station!" broke forth Sir George in a sharp tone of complaint, as they emerged beyond the shrubbery, and the house stood facing them. "Oh, Thomas! you said you were taking me to Ashlydyat! I cannot die away from it!"
Thomas Godolphin stood almost confounded. His father's discourse, the greater part of it, at any rate, had been so rational that he had begun to hope he was mistaken as to his weakness of mind. "My dear father, be at rest," he said: "we will start if you like with to-morrow's dawn. But to go now to the station would not forward us: it is by this time closed for the night."
They found the house in a state of commotion. Sir George had been missed, and servants were out searching for him. Lady Godolphin gazed at Thomas with all the eyes she possessed, thunderstruck at his appearance. "What miracle brought you here?" she exclaimed, wonderingly.
"No miracle, Lady Godolphin. I am thankful that I happened to come. What might have become of Sir George without me, I know not. I expect he would have remained at the stile where I found him until morning; and might have caught his death there."
"He will catch that speedily enough if he is to wander out of the house at midnight in this mad manner," peevishly rejoined my lady.
XVI. THE LAST JOURNEY
"I beg your pardon, Lady Godolphin. That is not the question."
"Not the question!" reiterated Lady Godolphin. "I say that it is the question. The question is, whether Sir George is better and safer here than he would be at Prior's Ash. And of course he is so."
"I think not," replied Thomas Godolphin quietly. "He would be equally well at Prior's Ash: equally safe, as I believe and trust. And the anxiety to be there, which has taken hold of his mind, has grown too strong to be repressed. To detain him here, against his wish, would make him ill, Lady Godolphin. Not returning home."
"Prior's Ash is an unhealthy place just now."
"Its unhealthiness has passed away. The last to be attacked was--was Ethel. And you are aware that time, since then, may be counted by weeks."
"Sir George is partially childish," pursued Lady Godolphin. "You may see for yourself that he is so. It would be most unreasonable, it would be ridiculous to take notice of his whims. Look at his starting out of the house to-night, with nothing on, and roaming a mile or two away in the dark! Is that a proof of sanity?"
"It is a proof how fixedly his mind is bent upon returning home," replied Thomas Godolphin. "He was endeavouring, as I have already informed you, Lady Godolphin, to make his way to the station."
"I shall have him watched in future," said she.
"Lady Godolphin," he resumed, speaking in the calmly quiet tone which characterized him, unmistakably firm now, in spite of its courteousness: "I am here by the desire of my father to accompany him back to Prior's Ash. I may almost say, to convey him back: for I fear he can no longer boast much power of his own, in any way. The last words I said to him, before entering, were, that he should start, if it pleased him, with to-morrow's dawn. I must keep my promise."
"Do you defy me, Thomas Godolphin?"
"I have no wish to do so. I have no wish to abate a particle of the respect and consideration due to you as my father's wife. At the same time, my duty to him is paramount: I hold it more sacred, Lady Godolphin, than any earthly thing. He has charged me, by my duty, to take him back to Ashlyd--to Prior's Ash: and I shall do so."
"You would take him back, I suppose, if Prior's Ash were full of snakes and scorpions?" returned my lady, somewhat losing her temper.
"It is full of neither. Nothing is there, so far as I am aware, that can harm Sir George. Can you urge a single good reason why he should not return to it, Lady Godolphin!"
The delicate bloom on my lady's cheeks was surely heightened--or did Thomas Godolphin fancy it? "But, what if I say he shall not return?" she asked, her voice slightly raised.
"I think you will not say it, Lady Godolphin," he replied. "It is Sir George's wish to go to Prior's Ash, and it is my province to see that wish carried out--as he has requested me. Much as I desire to respect your feelings and any plans you may have formed, they cannot weigh with me in this case. There is no necessity whatever for your returning home, Lady Godolphin, unless you choose to do so: but Sir George will leave for it to-morrow."
"And you boast that you do not defy me!" cried Lady Godolphin, with a short laugh. "I would use force to keep him in this house, rather than he should go out of it against my will."
"Force?" repeated Thomas Godolphin, looking at her for an explanation. "What sort of force?"
"Physical force," she answered, assuming a degree of fair suavity. "I would command the servants to bar his exit."
A faint smile crossed Thomas Godolphin's lips. "Do not attempt that, Lady Godolphin," he replied in the respectful manner of one who tenders earnest advice. "I should be sorry indeed to publicly oppose my authority to yours. You know the servants have, most of them, grown old in our service: and that may plead their excuse: but there is not one of them who would not be obedient to the lifting of my finger, in the cause of their master."
Lady Godolphin was foiled. Lady Godolphin had long been aware that she should be foiled, if it ever came to an encounter--strength against strength--between herself and Thomas Godolphin. Easy George she could manage, the Miss Godolphins she could put down, Sir George was, now, as a reed in her hands. But Thomas?--he was different. None of them had been so uniformly respectful and courteous to her as Thomas. And yet she had known that he, of all the rest, would not bend to her authority, were any cause to arise why he should not do so.
She sat biting--as far as she dared--her rose-tinted lips; she lifted one hand and toyed with her perfumed ringlets; she opened a fan which lay at her side, and gently fanned herself; she glanced at the still countenance of Thomas Godolphin: and she knew that she must give up the game. To give it up with a good grace was essential to her future ruling: and she was now making up her mind to do this. It would never do, either, for her to stand in the hall on the morrow, call the servants around her, and say, "It is my pleasure that Sir George does not leave this place for Prior's Ash. Keep him in; hold him in; lock the door; use any necessary means," while Thomas Godolphin was at hand, to lift--as he had phrased it--his finger, and say, "It is my pleasure that my father does go to Prior's Ash. Stand back while he passes." Lady Godolphin was no simpleton, and she could hazard a shrewd guess as to which of the two would be obeyed. So she sat, bringing her mind to make a virtue of necessity, and throw up the plea. In point of fact, she had no cause of objection to Sir George's returning to Prior's Ash, except that she did not care to return to it herself. For two reasons: one, that she liked Broomhead best: the other, that she could not yet subdue her fears of the fever. She bent her head, as if examining the chaste devices on her fan, and spoke indifferently.
"You must be aware that my wish to keep Sir George here arises solely from the state of Prior's Ash. It always has been our custom to spend Christmas there, amongst you all, and I should have had no other thought for this Christmas, but for the illness which arose. Will you guarantee that it is safe for him?"
"Nay, Lady Godolphin. To 'guarantee' an assurance of the sort would be impossible at the best of times. I believe that any fears you may entertain now of the fever will prove only a bugbear."
"The fever has been more than a bugbear to you," she exclaimed, acidity in her tone.
"Yes," he sadly answered.
He drew his chair from the table, where he had been taking some refreshment after his journey, and at that moment the hall clock struck two.
"I am keeping you up very late, Lady Godolphin."
"It is a pleasant change," she answered. "The life here, with Sir George in his delicate state, is so excessively monotonous, that a few nights of sitting up and days of bed, might prove an agreeable variety. Did I understand you rightly--that you intend to start in the morning?"
"If Sir George shall then wish to do so as anxiously as he appeared to wish it to-night. Otherwise, I shall not object to delay it until the following one. I cannot remain longer: business demands my presence at home. And," he added, lowering his voice, "I fear that speed is necessary for my father's sake. If he does not go pretty soon, he may not be able to go at all. It is more than likely that we shall start to-morrow."
"You cannot expect me to be ready in that space of time."
"Certainly not. Just as you please, Lady Godolphin."
Thomas Godolphin was shown to his room. Margery waylaid him in the corridor and entered it with him. "Did you get my epistle, Mr. Thomas?"
"It was that which brought me here now, Margery. Otherwise, I should not have come until the end of the week."
"Then you would have come too late, sir. Yes, Mr. Thomas, I mean what I say," added the woman, dropping her voice to solemnity. "By dreams and signs and tokens, which I have had----"
"Stay, Margery. You know that I am never very tolerant of your dreams and signs. Let them rest."
"It's true you are not," answered Margery, without the least appearance of discomfiture; "and many's the argument I would have liked to hold with you over it. But you'd never let me. When you were a young man, you'd laugh and joke it down--just as Mr. George might now, were I so foolish as to waste words upon him--and since you grew older and steadier you have just put me off as you are doing at this moment. Mr. Thomas, gifts are different in different people. They are not sent upon all alike: and the Scripture says so. One will see what another can't. One will play beautiful music, while another can't tell one tune from another. One man has a head for steam-engines and telegraphs, and will put 'em together as if he had a workshop inside him; and another, his own cousin maybe, can hardly tell an engine when he sees it, and couldn't work one out if he lived to be a hundred years old. And so with other things."
"Well?" responded Thomas Godolphin: for Margery paused, as if waiting for an answer.
"And do you suppose, Mr. Thomas, that it's not the same with signs and warnings? It is not given to all to see or understand them. It is not given, as I take it, for many to see or understand them. But it is given to a few. And those few can no more be talked out of knowing that it's truth, than they can be talked out of their own life, or of the skies above 'em. And, Mr. Thomas, it's not only that those who have not the gift can't see or believe for themselves, but they can't be brought to believe that others may do so: and so they laugh at and ridicule it. Many a time, sir, you have laughed at me."
"You see so many, you know, Margery," said Thomas Godolphin, with a slight smile.
Margery looked at him. "Sometimes I have thought, sir, that you are not quite as unbelieving as you seem. But I know it does not do for a gentleman, high and educated and looked up to in his town, to say he puts faith in such. So I'll not trouble you, Mr. Thomas, with the tokens I have had. I'll not tell you that only last night that ever was, I heard the footsteps of----"
"But you are telling me, Margery."
"That's just how you take me up, Mr. Thomas! Well, sir, I say I'll not bring forward these things, but I'll speak of what you may think a surer sign--and that's Sir George's state of health."
"Ay! I can follow you there."
He let her talk on. And she did so, until he was obliged to give her a gentle hint that he should be glad to be alone and get to bed.
The house was awakened before it was yet dawn. Sir George had rung for his servant, had rung for Margery, had rung for the coachman to say the carriage was wanted--in short, had rung for so many, that the whole household was aroused. My lady appeared, in fur slippers and a warm dressing-gown, to know what the commotion could mean. His son Thomas was there, the knight answered. He was sure he had not dreamt it, but that Thomas had come the previous night; he met him at the stile; and Thomas had promised that they should go to Ashlydyat in the early morning.
It appeared he was sane enough to remember that. My lady retired, grumbling; and Margery went and called Thomas.
When Thomas reached the room, Sir George was almost in the last stage of dressing. His own trembling, eager fingers had done as much towards it as his servant. He lifted his face with its ashy hue and its strange yearning. "Thomas, my son, I must hasten back to Ashlydyat. You said I should go there to die."
"Do you wish to start immediately, father?"
"You said I should do so!" he wailed in a tone imploringly earnest. "You said I should start with this morning's dawn."
"Yes, yes," acquiesced Thomas. And he forthwith busied himself to advance the preparations.
The best hour that they could leave the station was a little before nine. No train, except one much earlier, stopped at it before. This gave time to get off comfortably: though Sir George, in his impatience, could with difficulty be induced to sit down to breakfast. My lady came in when they were at the table.
"This is really the most extraordinary proceeding!" she exclaimed, speaking chiefly to Thomas Godolphin. "Were such a thing related to me as taking place in another house I should decline to give credence to it. Are the hours of the day so few that you must choose the gloom of a winter's morning for commencing a journey?"
Thomas glanced at Sir George, as if to draw her attention to him. "My father's anxiety will not allow him to wait, Lady Godolphin. I think it well that we should catch the first train."
"I wash my hands of the journey altogether," said Lady Godolphin. "If Sir George does not reach the other end of it alive, you will have the goodness to remember that I am not to blame. Far better that he were safely kept in his room wrapped up in his dressing-gown in front of a good fire."
"In that case, my lady, I would not answer for it that he reached the end of the day alive," interposed Margery, who was in and out of the room busier than any of them. "Whether Sir George stays, or whether he goes, he'll not last many days," she added in a lower tone, so that it might not reach her master's ear.
"If I must have gone, I would have started at a Christian hour, Sir George," resumed his wife. "Getting us all out of bed as if we were so many milkmaids?"
Sir George looked round, timidity in his voice and manner. Did he fear that she would detain him even now? "You can come on afterwards, you know, Lady Godolphin; we need not hurry you. Oh, I must, I must be at Ashlydyat!"
Thomas Godolphin came to the rescue. "We shall be in the carriage in five minutes, my dear father, if you will only take your breakfast."
And in a little more than five minutes they were seated in it, on their way to the station, Sir George's own man and Margery attending them. Margery would have deemed it just as possible to cut herself in twain, as to be separated from her master in his present state.
They did not get him that night to Prior's Ash. Thomas feared the long journey for him without a break, so they halted for the night about midway. Singularly to state, Sir George did not utter an impatient word at the delay: from the moment of leaving Broomhead he had become perfectly calm. Whether the fact of his being indisputably on the road had soothed his mind to tranquillity, or whether the strangely eager desire to be home had now left it, certain it was, that he had never mentioned Ashlydyat throughout the day. Of one thing there could be no doubt--that he was fast sinking. Sinking both in mind and body. Margery grew terrified. "Pray Heaven we may get him home!" she aspirated. "Mr. Thomas, as sure as that we are here, he would have been dead before this, had he stopped at Broomhead!"
In the twilight of the second evening, Sir George was at length once more at Prior's Ash. Thomas had telegraphed their arrival, and Janet was at the station with the carriage. But, with the first few words, Janet perceived that he was perfectly childish. Not only childish, but alarmingly changed. Janet grew pale as she turned to Margery.
"Since when?" she murmured.
"Since many days, off and on; but worse since we left Broomhead yesterday morning. He has been sinking hour by hour. Miss Janet, it's death."
They got him to the Folly. And, in half an hour, the whole of his family were gathered round his death-bed. His partner, Mr. Crosse; the surgeon; and the Rector of All Souls' were also there.
He was rambling for the most part in a disconnected manner: but he recognized them all individually, and occasionally gave utterance to rational remarks, as he might have done had he been in full possession of his senses. He fancied himself at Ashlydyat.
"I could not have died away from it, you know, Crosse," he suddenly cried to that gentleman. "Thomas was for bringing me back to the Folly, but I told him I must go to Ashlydyat. If I did let it to strangers, they could not keep me out of it, when I wanted to go there to die. A Godolphin must not die away from Ashlydyat. Where's Cecil?" he added, after a pause.
Poor Cecil, the tears streaming down her cheeks, was close to him; in view then. "I am here, papa."
The knight laid his hand upon her arm--or rather, essayed to do so, but it fell again. His thoughts seemed to pass to another subject.
"Crosse, I have been telling Thomas that I should not allow more than three per cent. on those deposits. Have you seen Mainwaring lately?"
Mr. Snow stepped forward and administered something in a wine-glass. There appeared to be a difficulty in swallowing, and only part of it was taken. "He grows more restless," said the surgeon in an undertone.
Sir George's eyes, as he was slightly raised to take the medicine, had fallen upon some object at the other end of the room, and continued to be strained on it. "Who has changed the position of the cabinet?" he exclaimed, in a stronger tone than he had yet spoken.
It caused them all to turn and look at the spot. A fine old ebony cabinet, inlaid with silver, stood opposite the bed: had stood there ever since they removed to Lady Godolphin's Folly; transplanted thither from Ashlydyat. In the latter house, it had stood on the right of Sir George's bed: and his memory had evidently gone back to that. There could not be a better proof that he was fancying himself at Ashlydyat, lying in his own chamber.
"Janet! why have you placed the cabinet there?"
Janet Godolphin bent her head soothingly over him. "My dear father, it shall be moved, if you wish it."
The knight looked at her, inquiringly for a moment, perhaps not recognizing her. Then he feebly essayed to look beyond her, as if her head interposed between his own view and something behind. "Hush, my dear, I am speaking to your mother. I want to know why she changed the place of the cabinet."
"We thought you'd like it there, Sir George; that you could see it better there," interposed Margery, who knew better than most of them how to deal with the sick. "I'll have it put back before to-morrow morning."
This satisfied him, and he lay still for a few minutes. They thought, he would sleep. Presently his eyes opened again, and they rested on George.
"George, where's Charlotte?"
"Who, sir?" demanded George, somewhat taken aback at the question. "Do you mean Charlotte Pain? She is at--she is not here."
"Are you married yet?"
"Oh no," said George hastily, while several pairs of wondering eyes were directed towards him, and those of the Reverend Mr. Hastings were of the number. "Time enough for that, father."
"George!" next came the words, in a hollow whisper this time, "don't let her die, as Ethel did."
"Not if I can help it," replied George, speaking without any serious meaning, except that of humouring his father.
"And don't let Verrall go off the bargain with the money. He is keen that way; but he has no right to touch Charlotte's. If he does--Bessy, is Jekyl dead?"
"Oh no, papa," said Bessy, suppressing her tears as she caressed her father's hand: it was in stooping to do this, that the knight had observed her. "Jekyl is well and hearty yet, and he asked after you to-day. He heard you were coming home."
"Ay! All well and hearty, but me. But it is the will of God to take me, and He knows what's best. Where's Thomas?"
"I am here, father," replied Thomas Godolphin, leaning forward so that his father could see him.
Sir George tried to put up his hand with a beckoning gesture. Thomas understood it: he bent his face close to that pale one, and clasped the nearly inanimate hand in his, listening reverently to the whisper that was breathed so solemnly.
"Thomas, I charge you, never quit Ashlydyat."
"I will not," replied Thomas Godolphin.
"If you bring one home to it, and she would urge you to quit it, urge you until you have no will of your own left, do not yield to it. Do not listen to her. Break with her, let her go forth alone, rather than quit Ashlydyat."
"Father, I will never, of my own free will, leave Ashlydyat. I promise you that, so far as I can hold control over human events, I will live and die in it."
Certainly Sir George understood the promise and its meaning. There could be no mistaking that he did so, by the smile of content which from that moment overspread his countenance, lighting up with satisfaction even his dying eye. He lay for a considerable time still, and then suddenly called for Margery.
"You'll tell your mistress that we can't root up those bushes," he said, as she approached. "It's of no use trying. As fast as they are up from one place they grow in another. They'll not hurt. Tell her I say so."
"I'd get some quicklime, Sir George, and see what that would do," was Margery's response, and the words brought up a smile from one or two of her listeners, solemn moment though it was. Margery's maxim was, never to contradict the dying, but to humour their hallucinations. "Obstinate things, those gorses!" she continued. "But, never you trouble about my mistress, sir: she don't mind them."
The children, standing round his bed, knew quite well that he was alluding to their mother, his first wife. Indeed, Lady Godolphin appeared to have passed entirely from his mind.
Again he lapsed into silence, and remained to all appearance in a stupor, his eyes closed, his breathing ominously slow. Mr. Crosse took his departure, but the Rector and surgeon stayed on yet. The latter saw that the final moment was at hand, and he whispered to Miss Godolphin that she and her sisters might be better from the room. "At any rate," he added, for he saw the dissenting, displeased look which overspread her face, "it might be as well to spare the sight to Cecil."
"No," briefly responded Miss Godolphin. "Our place is here." And they watched on.
With an impulse of strength surprising to see, Sir George suddenly rose up in bed, his eyes fixed with a yearning gaze at the opposite end of the room. Not at the cabinet this time, but at some spot, far, far up, beyond the ceiling, as it appeared. His voice, startling in its clearness, rang through the air, and his arms were outstretched as if he were about to fly.
"Janet!--Janet!--Janet! Oh, my dear Janet, I am coming!"
He fell back and died. Did anything really appear to him, not visible to the mortal eyes around? Were his senses, in that moment of the soul's departure, opened to a glimpse of the world he was about to enter? It cannot be known. Had it been fiction it would not have been written here.
A little later, the bell of All Souls' Church, booming out over the town on the night air, told that Sir George Godolphin had passed away.
It was somewhat remarkable that another funeral, at which Thomas Godolphin was again chief mourner, should follow so closely upon Ethel's. A different sort of ceremony, this: a rare pageant. A pageant which was made up of plumes and trappings and decorated horses, and carriages and mutes and batons, and a line of attendants, and all the other insignia of the illustrious dead. Ethel could be interred simply and quietly, but Sir George must be attended to the grave as the Godolphin of Ashlydyat. I don't suppose poor Sir George rested any the better for it.
Sir George made an equitable will, but it proved a vexatious one to his widow. Thomas had Ashlydyat: George, a fair sum of money; the Miss Godolphins, each her portion; and there were certain bequests to servants. But little was left to Lady Godolphin: indeed, the amount of the bequest was more in accordance with what might be willed to a friend, than to a wife. But, it was not in that that the grievance lay. Lady Godolphin had the Folly, she had Broomhead, and she had an ample income of her own. She was not a particularly covetous woman, and she had never expected or wished that Sir George should greatly take from his family, to add to it. No, it was not that: but the contents of a certain little codicil which was appended to the will. This codicil set forth that every article of furniture or property, which had been removed to the Folly from Ashlydyat, whatever might be its nature, and down to the minutest item, should be returned to Ashlydyat, and become the property of Thomas Godolphin.
It would pretty nearly strip the Folly, and my lady was very wrathful. Not for the value of the things: she sustained no injury there: for the codicil directed that a specified sum of money (their full value) should be handed over to Lady Godolphin to replace them with new at the Folly. But it struck upon her in the light of a slight, and she chose to resent it as one. It was specially enjoined that the things should be placed at Ashlydyat in the old spots where they had formerly stood.
But, be wrathful as she might, grumble as she would, there could be no rebellion to it in action. And Lady Godolphin had to bow to it.
XVII. A ROW ON THE WATER
The time went on. Three months glided by; nay, four, for April had come in: and positions were changed. Thomas Godolphin was the resident master of Ashlydyat; Janet its acting mistress; Bessy and Cecil lived with them. George had taken up his residence at the bank, with Margery to look after his comforts, never to remove from it, as he supposed, unless Ashlydyat should fall to him. My lady had left the Folly for a permanency (unless any whim should at any time send her back to it), and the Verralls had taken it. It may be said that Lady Godolphin gave up the Folly in a fit of pique. When she found that the things were positively to go out of it, she protested that she would never replace them with others: she would rather throw the money, left for the purpose, into the midst of the sea. She would let it to any one who would take it, and go back to Broomhead for ever. Mr. Verrall heard of this, and made an application for it; and my lady, still smarting, let it to him off-hand, accepting him as a yearly tenant. Whether she repented, or not, when the deed was done, and her anger had cooled down, could not be told: she took her farewell and departed for Scotland without betraying signs of it. Many thought that she would return after a while to the place which she had so eagerly and fondly erected. Perhaps she might: she could get rid of the Verralls at any time by giving them due notice.
Thomas had settled down in his father's place: head of the bank, head of all things, as Sir George had been; Mr. Godolphin, of Ashlydyat. Mr. George was head of himself alone. No one of very particular note was he: but I can tell you that a great many more anxious palpitations were cast to him from gentle bosoms, than were given to unapproachable Thomas. It seemed to be pretty generally conceded that Thomas Godolphin was wedded to the grave of Ethel. Perhaps his establishing his sisters at Ashlydyat, as their home, helped to further the opinion, and dash all hopes; but, very possible hopes from many quarters were wafted secretly to George. He would be no mean prize: with his good looks, his excellent position, and his presumptive heirdom to Ashlydyat.
April, I say, had come in. A sunny April. And these several changes had taken place, and the respective parties were settled in their new homes. It went forth to the world that the Verralls intended to give a brilliant fête, a sort of house-warming, as they styled it; and invitations were circulated far and wide. Amongst those favoured with one, were Mr. and the Miss Godolphins.
Janet was indignant. She could scarcely bring herself to decline it civilly. Cecil, who was not less fond of fêtes, and other gay inventions for killing time, than are pretty girls in general, would have given her head to go. It appeared that Mrs. Hastings also declined the invitation: and George Godolphin--who had no intention of declining it on his own score--resolved to know the reason why.
Though not a frequent visitor at the Rectory: for he could not go there much, in the teeth of discouragement so evident as had latterly been shown to him by Mr. Hastings, and depended mostly upon chance meetings in the street for keeping in exercise his love-vows to Maria: George resolved to go boldly down that evening.
Down he accordingly went. And was shown into an empty room. The Rector and Mrs. Hastings were out, the servant said, and the young ladies were in the study with the boys. She would tell them.
Maria came to him. There was no mistaking her start of surprise when she saw him, or the rush of emotion which overspread her face.
"Who did you think it was?" asked George.
"I thought it was your brother. She said 'Mr. Godolphin.' Grace will be down in an instant."
"Will she?" returned George. "You had better go and tell her it's Mr. George, and not Mr. Godolphin, and then she won't hurry herself. I am not a favourite with Miss Grace, I fancy."
Maria coloured. She had no excuse to offer for the fact, and she could not say that it was untrue. George stood with his elbow on the mantel-piece, looking down at her.
"Maria, I hear that Mrs. Hastings has declined to go to the Folly on Thursday. What's that for?"
"I don't know," replied Maria. "We do not go very much amidst those unusually grand scenes," she added, laughing. "Mamma says she always feels as much out of place in them as a fish does out of water. And I think, if papa had his own wish, we should never go within a mile of anything of the sort. He likes quiet social visiting, but not such entertainments as the Verralls give. He and mamma were consulting for a few minutes over the invitation, and then she directed Grace to write and decline it."
"It is an awful shame!" responded George. "I thought I should have had you with me for a few hours that day, at any rate, Maria."
Maria lifted her eyes. "It had nothing to do with me, George. I was not invited."
"Not invited!" repeated George Godolphin.
"Only Grace. 'Mrs. and Miss Hastings.'"
"What was that for?" he exclaimed. "Why were you left out?"
"I do not know," replied Maria, bending her eyelids and speaking with involuntary hesitation. In her heart of hearts, Maria believed that she did know: but the last person she would have hinted it to, was George Godolphin. "Perhaps," she added, "it may have been an omission, an oversight? Or, they may have so many to invite that they can only dispense their cards charily."
"Moonshine!" cried George. "I shall take upon myself to ask Mrs. Verrall why you were left out."
"Oh, George! pray don't," she uttered, feeling an invincible repugnance to have her name brought up in any such way. "Why should you? Had the invitation been sent to me, I should not have gone."
"It is a slight," he persisted. "A little later, and let any dare to show slight to you. They shall be taught better. A slight to you will be a slight to me."
Maria looked at him timidly, and he bent his head with a fond smile. "I shall want somebody to keep house for me at the bank, you know, Maria."
She coloured even to tears. Mr. George was proceeding to erase them after his own gallant fashion, when he was summarily brought-to by the entrance of Grace Hastings.
There was certainly no love lost between them. Grace did not like George, George did not like Grace. She took her seat demurely in her mother's chair of state, with every apparent intention of sitting out his visit. So George cut it short.
"What did he come for?" Grace asked of Maria, when the servant had showed him out.
"He came to call."
"You appeared to be in very close conversation when I came into the room," pursued Grace, searching Maria with her keen eyes. "May I ask its purport?"
"Its purport was nothing wrong," said Maria, her cheeks deepening under the inspection. "You question me, Grace, as if I were a child, and you possessed a right over me."
"Well," said Grace equably. "What was he talking of?"
Yielding, timid, sensitive Maria was one of the last to resist this sort of importunity. "We had been talking of the Verralls not including me in the invitation. George said it was a slight."
"As of course it was," assented Grace. "And, for that fact alone, I am glad mamma sent them a refusal. It was Charlotte Pain's doings. She does not care that you should be brought too much into contact with George Godolphin, lest her chance should be perilled. Now, Maria, don't pretend to look at me in that incredulous manner! You know as well as I do that George has a stupid liking for you; or, at least, acts as though he had. And that naturally is not pleasant to Charlotte Pain."
Maria knew well that Grace had divined the true cause for the slight. She stood for a few minutes looking silent and humble: an intimation, even from Grace, that George "liked her," jarred upon her refined sensitiveness, when openly alluded to. But that feeling was almost lost in the dull pain which the hint touching Charlotte had called up.
"Charlotte Pain is nothing to George Godolphin," she resentfully said.
"Charlotte Pain is," responded Grace. "And if your eyes are not yet opened to it, they ought to be. She is to be his wife."
"Oh no, she is not," hastily said Maria.
"Maria, I tell you that she is. I know it."
Now Grace Hastings rarely made an assertion unless she had good grounds for it. Maria knew that. And the dull pain at her heart grew and grew, until it was beating with a sharp agony. She appeared impassive enough, looking down at her thin gold chain, which her fingers were unconsciously wreathing into knots. "You cannot know it, Grace."
"I tell you I do. Mind you, I don't say that they will inevitably be married; only, that they contemplate being so at present. Charlotte does well not to make too sure of him! George Godolphin may see half a dozen yet whom he will prefer to Charlotte Pain, in his roving, butterfly nature."
Was Grace right? Not ten minutes before, Maria had listened to words from his lips which most surely intimated that it was herself George had chosen. Who was Charlotte?--who was Charlotte Pain, that she should thus thrust herself between them?
April, as we learn by its reputation, and by our own experience, mocks us with its weather: and not a few envious criticisers had prophesied showers, if not snow, for the fête at Lady Godolphin's Folly. The unusually lovely weather which had marked the month, so far as it had gone, had put it into Mrs. Verrall's head to give an outdoor entertainment. Mr. Verrall had himself suggested that the weather might change; that there was no dependence, at this season of the year, to be placed on it. But she would not give up her project. If the worst came to the worst at the last moment, she said, they must do the best they could with the people indoors.
But, for once, the weather was not fickle. The day rose warm, calm, beautifully bright, and by three o'clock in the afternoon most of the gay revellers had gathered at the Folly.
The grounds were dotted with them. These grounds, by the way, were chiefly the grounds of Ashlydyat; those belonging to the Folly being exceedingly limited in extent. Janet Godolphin drew down the blinds of Ashlydyat, that the eyesore might be shut out: but Cecil stole away to her room, and made herself a peep-hole--as the young Hastingses had done at Ethel Grame's funeral--and looked out with covetous eyes. Janet had said something to Thomas about sending a hint to the Folly that the domains of Ashlydyat would not be open to the guests: but Thomas, with his quiet good sense, had negatived it.
Graceless George arrived as large as life, one of the first. He was making himself conspicuous among the many-coloured groups--or, perhaps it was, that they made him so, by gathering round him--when two figures in mourning came gliding up to him, one of whom spoke.
"How do you do, Mr. George Godolphin?"
George turned. And--careless and thoughtless as he was, graceless as he was reported to be--a shock of surprise, not unmixed with indignation, swept over his feelings: for those standing before him were Lady Sarah and Miss Grame.
She--Sarah Anne--looked like a shadow still; peevish, white, discontented. What brought them there? Was it thus that they showed their regret for the dead Ethel?--Was it seemly that Sarah Anne should appear at a fête of gaiety in her weak, sickly state; not yet recovered from the effects of the fever; not yet out of the first deep mourning worn for Ethel?
"How do you do, Lady Sarah?" very gravely responded George Godolphin.
Lady Sarah may have discerned somewhat of his feeling from the expression of his face. Not that he intentionally suffered it to rise in reproof of her: George Godolphin did not set himself up in judgment against his fellows. He, indeed! Lady Sarah drew him aside with her, after he had shaken hands with Sarah Anne.
"I am sure it must look strange to you to see us here, Mr. George. But, poor child, she continues so weak and poorly, that I scarcely know what to do with her. She set her heart upon coming to this fête. Since Mrs. Verrall's card arrived, she has talked of nothing else, and I thought it would not do to cross her. Is Mr. Godolphin here?"
"Oh no," replied George, with more haste than he need have spoken.
"I thought he would not be. I remarked so to Sarah Anne, when she expressed a hope of seeing him: indeed, I think it was that hope which chiefly urged her to come. What have we done to him, Mr. George? He scarcely ever comes near the house."
"I don't know anything about it," returned George. "I can see that my brother still feels his loss deeply. It may be, Lady Sarah, that visits to your house remind him too forcibly of Ethel."
Lady Sarah lowered her voice to a confidential whisper: "Will he ever marry, think you?"
"At present I should be inclined to say he never would," answered George, wondering what in the world it could matter to Lady Sarah, and thinking she showed little sorrow or consideration for the memory of Ethel. "But time works surprising changes," he added: "and time may marry Mr. Godolphin."
Lady Sarah paused. "How do you think she looks--my poor child?"
"Miserable," all but rose to the tip of George's tongue. "She does not look well," he said aloud.
"And she does so regret her dear sister; she's grieving after her always," said Lady Sarah, putting her handkerchief to her eyes.
"I don't believe it," thought George to himself.
"How do you like your new residence?" she resumed, passing with little ceremony to another topic.
"I like it very well. All places are pretty much alike to a bachelor, Lady Sarah."
"Ah, so they are. You won't remain a bachelor very long," continued Lady Sarah, with a smile of archness.
"Not so very long, I dare say," frankly acknowledged Mr. George. "It is possible I may put my head in the noose some time in the next ten years."
She would have detained him further, but George did not care to be detained. He went after more attractive companionship.
Chance, or premeditation, led him to Charlotte Pain. Charlotte had all her attractions about her that day. Her bright green silk dress--green was a favourite colour of hers--with its white lace mantle, was frequently to be seen by George Godolphin's side. Once they strayed to the borders of the stream, in a remote part of the grounds. Several were gathered here. A row on the water had been proposed, and a boat stood ready. A small boat, holding very few; but, of those few, George and Charlotte made two.
Could George Godolphin have foreseen what that simple little excursion in the boat was to do for him, he had never entered it. How is it, that no shadow of warning comes over us at these times? How many a day's pleasure, begun as a jubilee, how many a voyage, entered upon in hope, ends but in death! Not a fortnight since; since now, the very hour at which I am writing; a fine young lad, fresh from his studies, was going out to one of our colonies, full of youth, of hope, of prospects. Two ships were available for the passage, one as eligible as the other: which should he choose? It seemed not to matter which of them, and the choice was made. Could no warning rise up to his aid, ever so indefinite, and point away from the chosen one and say it must be shunned? The vessel sailed. And she went down--within sight of land--not three days out; and every soul on board, except one, perished. "If we had only chosen the other ship for him!" wail that lad's mourning friends. Ay! if we could only lift the veil, what mistakes might be avoided!
George Godolphin, strong and active, took the oars. And when they had rowed about to their heart's content, and George was in a white heat with exertion, they bethought themselves that they would land for a while on what was called the mock island: a mossy spot, green and tempting to the eye. In stepping ashore, Charlotte Pain tripped, lost her balance, and would have been in the water but for George. He saved her, but he could not save her parasol: a dainty parasol, for which Miss Charlotte had given three guineas only the previous day. She naturally shrieked when it fell into the water: and George Godolphin, in recovering it, nearly lost his balance, and went in after the parasol. Nearly; not quite: he got himself pretty wet, but he made light of it, and sat himself down on the grassy island with the rest.
They were all young. Old people seldom care to venture into these shallow skiffs: but, had any of mature age been there, experienced in chills and rheumatism, they would certainly have ordered George Godolphin home at his utmost speed, for a change of clothes, and perhaps a glass of brandy.
Charlotte Pain was shaking the wet from her parasol, when some one noticed the dripping state of George's coat. "It wants shaking also," said they. "Do pray take it off, Mr. George Godolphin!"
George took it off, shook, it well, and laid it out in the sun to dry. And down he sat again, in his shirt-sleeves, passing some jokes upon his state of costume, and requesting to know what apology he must make for it.
By-and-by he began to feel rather chilled: in fact, he grew so cold that he put on his coat again, damp as it was. It might have occurred to him that the intense perspiration he had been in had struck inwardly, but it did not. In the evening he was dancing away with the best of them, apparently having escaped all ill effects from the wetting, and thinking no further of it.
Eh, but the young are heedless! as Janet would have said.
XVIII. STRAW IN THE STREETS
Ankle-deep before the banking-house of Godolphin, Crosse, and Godolphin, and for some distance on either side; ankle-deep down Crosse Street as far as you could see, lay masses of straw. As carriages came up to traverse it, their drivers checked their horses and drove them at a foot-pace, raising their own heads to look up at the windows of the dwelling; for they knew that one was lying there hovering between life and death.
It was George Godolphin. Imprudent George! Healthy and strong as he might be, sound as his constitution was, that little episode of the fête-day had told upon him. Few men can do such things with impunity, and come out of them unscathed. "What was a bit of a ducking; and that only a partial one? Nothing." As George himself said to some remonstrator on the following day. It is not much, certainly, to those who are used to it: but taken in conjunction with a white heat, and with an hour or two's cooling upon the grass afterwards, in the airy undress of shirt-sleeves, it is a great deal.
It had proved a great deal for George Godolphin. An attack of rheumatic fever supervened, dangerous and violent, and neither Dr. Beale nor Mr. Snow could give a guess as to whether he would live or die. Miss Godolphin had removed to the bank to share with Margery the task of nursing him. Knockers were muffled; bells were tied up; straw, as you hear, was laid in the streets; people passed in and out, even at the swing doors, when they went to transact business, with a softened tread: and as they counted the cash for their cheques, leaned over the counter, and asked the clerks in a whisper whether Mr. George was yet alive. Yes, he was alive, the clerks could always answer, but it was as much as they could say.
It continued to be "as much as they could say" for nearly a month, and then George Godolphin began to improve. But so slowly! day after day seemed to pass without visible sign.
How bore up Maria Hastings? None could know the dread, the grief, that was at work within her, or the deep love she felt for George Godolphin. Her nights were sleepless, her days were restless; she lost her appetite, her energy, almost her health. Mrs. Hastings wondered what was wrong with her, and hoped Maria was not going to be one of those sickly ones who always seem to fade in the spring.
Maria could speak out her sorrow to none. Grace would not have sympathized with any feeling so strong, whose object was George Godolphin. And had Grace sympathized ever so, Maria would not have spoken it. She possessed that shrinking reticence of feeling, that refined sensitiveness, to which betraying its own emotions to another would be little less than death. Maria could not trust her voice to ask after him: when Mr. Hastings or her brothers would come in and say (as they had more than once), "There's a report in the town that George Godolphin's dead," she could not press upon them her eager questions, and ask, "Is it likely to be true? Are there any signs that it is true?" Once, when this rumour came in, Maria made an excuse to go out: some trifle to be purchased in the town, she said to Mrs. Hastings: and went down the street inwardly shivering, too agitated to notice acquaintances whom she met. Opposite the bank, she stole glances up at its private windows, and saw that the blinds were down. In point of fact, this told nothing, for the blinds had been kept down much since George's illness, the servants not troubling themselves to draw them up: but to the fears of Maria Hastings, it spoke volumes. Sick, trembling, she continued her way mechanically: she did not dare to stop, even for a moment, or to show, in her timidity, as much as the anxiety of an indifferent friend. At that moment Mr. Snow came out of the house, and crossed over.
Maria stopped then. Surely she might halt to speak to the surgeon without being suspected of undue interest in Mr. George Godolphin. She even brought out the words, as Mr. Snow shook hands with her: "You have been to the bank?"
"Yes, poor fellow; he is in a critical state," was Mr. Snow's answer. "But I think there's a faint indication of improvement, this afternoon."
In the revulsion of feeling which the words gave, Maria forgot her caution. "He is not dead, then?" she exclaimed, all too eagerly, her face turning to a glowing crimson, her lips apart with emotion.
Mr. Snow gathered in the signs, and a grave expression stole over his lips. But the next minute he was smiling openly. "No, he is not dead yet, Miss Maria; and we must see what we can do towards keeping him alive." Maria turned home again with a beating and a thankful heart.
A weary, weary summer for George Godolphin--a weary, weary illness. It was more than two months before he rose from his bed at all, and it was nearly two more before he went down the stairs of the dwelling-house. A fine, balmy day it was, that one in June, when George left his bed for the first time, and was put in the easy-chair, wrapped up in blankets. The sky was blue, the sun was warm, and bees and butterflies sported in the summer air. George turned his weary eyes, weary with pain and weakness, towards the cheering signs of outdoor life, and wondered whether he should ever be abroad again.
It was August before that time came. Early in that month the close carriage of Ashlydyat waited at the door, to give Mr. George his first airing. A shadowy object he looked, Mr. Snow on one side of him, Margery on the other; Janet, who would be his companion in the drive, following. They got him downstairs between them, and into the carriage. From that time his recovery, though slow, was progressive, and in another week he was removed for change to Ashlydyat. He could walk abroad then with two sticks, or with a stick and somebody's arm. George, who was getting up his spirits wonderfully, declared that he and his sticks should be made into a picture and sent to the next exhibition of native artists.
One morning, he and his sticks were sunning themselves in the porch at Ashlydyat, when a stranger approached and accosted him. A gentlemanly-looking man, in a straw hat, with a light travelling overcoat thrown upon his arm. George looked a gentleman also, in spite of his dilapidated health and his sticks, and the stranger raised his hat with something of foreign urbanity.
"Does Mr. Verrall reside here?"
"No," replied George.
A hard, defiant sort of expression rose immediately to the stranger's face. It almost seemed to imply that George was deceiving him: and his next words bore out the impression. "I have been informed that he does reside here," he said, with a stress upon the "does."
"He did reside here," replied George Godolphin: "but he does so no longer. That is where Mr. Verrall lives," he added, pointing one of his sticks at the white walls of Lady Godolphin's Folly.
The stranger wheeled round on his heel, took a survey of it, and then lifted his hat again, apparently satisfied. "Thank you, sir," he said. "The mistake was mine. Good morning."
George watched him away as he strode with a firm, quick, elastic step towards the Folly. George wondered when he should walk again with the same step. Perhaps the idea, or the desire to do so, impelled him to try it then. He rose from his seat and went tottering out, drawing his sticks with him. It was a tempting morning, and George strolled on in its brightness, resting now on one bench, now on another, and then bearing on again.
"I might get as far as the Folly, if I took my time," he said to himself. "Would it not be a surprise to them!"
So he bore onwards to the Folly, as the stranger had done. He was drawing very near to it, was seated, in fact, on the last bench that he intended to rest on, when Mr. Verrall passed him.
"Have you had a gentleman inquiring for you?" George asked him.
"What gentleman?" demanded Mr. Verrall.
"A stranger. He came to Ashlydyat, supposing you lived there. I sent him to the Folly."
"Describe him, will you?" said Mr. Verrall.
"I noticed nothing much to describe," replied George. "He wore a straw hat, and had a thin tweed coat over his arm. I should fancy he had just come off a journey."
Mr. Verrall left George where he was, and went back to the Folly. George rose and followed more slowly. But when he got beyond the trees, he saw that Mr. Verrall must have plunged into them: as if he would go into the Folly by the servants' entrance. George crossed the lawn, and made straight for the drawing-room windows, which stood open.
Scarcely had he entered, and flung himself into the first easy-chair, when he saw the same stranger approach the house. Where had he been, not to have found it before? But George immediately divined that he had taken the wrong turning near the ash-trees, and so had had the pleasure of a round to Prior's Ash and back again. The room was empty, and George sat recovering breath and enjoying the luxury of a rest, when the stranger's knock resounded at the hall-door.
A servant, as he could hear, came forth to open it; but, before that was effected, flying footsteps followed the man across the hall, and he was called, in the voice of Charlotte Pain.
"James," said she, in a half-whisper, which came distinctly to the ear of George Godolphin, "should that be any one for Mr. Verrall, say nothing, but show him in here."
A second room, a smaller one, stood between the one George had entered, and the hall. It opened both to the drawing-room and the hall; in fact, it served as a sort of anteroom to the drawing-room. It was into this room that the stranger was shown.
Charlotte, who had taken a seat, and was toying with some embroidery-work, making believe to be busy over it, rose at his entrance, with the prettiest air of surprise imaginable. He could have staked his life, had he been required to do it, that she knew nothing whatever of his approach until that identical moment, when James threw open the door, and announced, "A gentleman, ma'am." James had been unable to announce him in more definite terms. Upon his asking the stranger for a name, the curt answer had been, "Never mind the name. Mr. Verrall knows me."
Charlotte rose. And the gentleman's abruptness changed to courtesy at the sight of her. "I wish to see Mr. Verrall," he said.
"Mr. Verrall is in town," replied Charlotte.
"In town!" was the answer, delivered in an accent of excessive surprise. "Do you mean in London, madam?"
"Certainly," rejoined Charlotte. "In London."
"But he only left London last night to come here!" was the stranger's answer.
It brought Charlotte to a pause. Self-possessed as she was, she had to think a moment before hazarding another assertion. "May I inquire how you know that he left London last night for this?" she asked.
"Because, madam, I had business yesterday of the very last importance with Mr. Verrall. He made the appointment himself, for three o'clock. I went at three: and could not find him. I went at four, and waited an hour, with a like result. I went again at seven, and then I was told that Mr. Verrall had been telegraphed for to his country seat, and had started. I had some difficulty in finding out where his country seat was situated, but I succeeded in doing that: and I followed him in the course of the night."
"How very unfortunate!" exclaimed Charlotte, who had obtained her clue. "He was telegraphed for yesterday, and arrived in answer to it, getting here very late last night. But he could not stay. He said he had business to attend to in London, and he left here this morning by an early train. Will you oblige me with your name?" she added.
"My name, madam, is Appleby. It is possible that you may have heard Mr. Verrall mention it, if, as I presume, I have the honour of speaking to Mrs. Verrall."
Charlotte did not undeceive him. "When did you see Mr. Verrall last?" she suddenly inquired, as if the thought had just struck her.
"The day before yesterday. I saw him three times that day, and he made the appointment for the following one."
"I am so sorry you should have had a useless journey," said Charlotte, with much sympathy.
"I am sorry also," said the stranger. "Sorry for the delay this causes in certain arrangements; a delay I can ill afford. I will wish you good morning, madam, and start back by the first train."
Charlotte touched the bell, and curtsied her adieu. The stranger had the door open, when he turned round, and spoke again.
"I presume I may entirely rely upon what you tell me--that Verrall has gone back?"
"Oh, certainly," answered Charlotte.
Now, every syllable of this colloquy had reached the ears of George Godolphin. It puzzled him not a little. Were there two Verralls? The Verrall of the Folly, with whom he had so recently exchanged words, had certainly not been in London for a fortnight past, or anywhere else but in that neighbourhood. And what did Charlotte mean, by saying he had gone to town that morning?
Charlotte came in, singing a scrap of a song. She started when she saw George, and then flew to him in a glow of delight, holding out her hands.
What could he do, but take them? What could he do, but draw Charlotte down beside him on the sofa, holding them still? "How pleased I am to see you!" exclaimed Charlotte. "I shall think the dear old times are coming round again."
"Charlotte mia, do you know what I have been obliged to hear? That interesting colloquy you have been taking part in in the next room."
Charlotte burst into a laugh. From the moment when she first caught a glimpse of George, seated there, she had felt sure that he must have heard it. "Did I do it well?" she cried, triumphantly.
"How could you invent such fibs?"
"Verrall came upstairs to me and Kate," said Charlotte, laughing more merrily than before. "He said there was somebody going to call here, he thought with a begging petition, and he did not care to see him. Would I go and put the man off? I asked him how I should put him off, and he answered, 'Any way. Say he had gone to London, if I liked.'"
Was Charlotte telling truth or falsehood? That there was more in all this than met the eye was evident. It was no business, however, of George Godolphin's, neither did he make it his.
"And you have really walked here all the way by yourself!" she resumed. "I am so glad! You will get well now all one way."
"I don't know about getting well 'all one way,' Charlotte. The doctors have been ordering me away for the winter."
"For the winter!" repeated Charlotte, her tone growing sober. "What for? Where to?"
"To some place where the skies are more genial than in this cold climate of ours," replied George. "If I wish to get thoroughly well, they say, I must start off next month, September, and not return until April."
"But--should you go alone?"
"There's the worst of it. We poor bachelors are like stray sheep--nobody owning us, nobody caring for us."
"Take somebody with you," suggested Charlotte.
"That's easier said than done," said George.
Charlotte threw one of her brilliant glances at him. She had risen, and was standing before him, all her attractions in full play. "There's an old saying, Mr. George Godolphin, that where there's a will, there's a way," quoth she.
George made a gallant answer, and they were progressing in each other's good graces to their own content, when an interruption came to it. The same servant who had opened the door to the stranger entered.
"Miss Pain, if you please, my master says will you go up to him."
"I declare you make me forget everything," cried Charlotte to George, as she left the room. And picking up her King Charley, she threw it at him. "There! take care of him, Mr. George Godolphin, until I come back again."
A few minutes after, George saw Mr. Verrall leave the house and cross the lawn. A servant behind him was bearing a small portmanteau and an overcoat, similar to the one the stranger had carried on his arm. Was Mr. Verrall also going to London?
XIX. ONE STICK DISCARDED
The morning sun shone on the green lawn, on the clustering flowers, rich in many colours, sweet in their perfume, before the breakfast-room at Ashlydyat. The room itself was in shadow: as it is pleasant in summer for a room to be: but the windows stood open to the delights of outdoor life.
Janet presided at the breakfast-table. She always did preside there. Thomas, Bessy, and Cecil were disposed around her; leaving the side next the windows vacant, that nothing might come between them and the view of the summer's morning. A summer that would soon be on the wane, for September was approaching.
"She ought to be here by four o'clock," observed Bessy, continuing the conversation. "Otherwise, she cannot be here until seven. No train comes in from Farnley between four o'clock and seven, does it, Thomas?"
"I think not," replied Thomas Godolphin. "But I really know very little about their branch lines. Stay. Farnley? No: I remember: I am sure that nothing comes in between four and seven."
"Don't fash yourselves," said Janet with composure, who had been occupied with the urn. "When Mrs. Briscow sends me word she will arrive by the afternoon train, I know she can only mean the one that gets here at four o'clock: and I shall be there at four in the carriage to meet her. She is early in her ideas, and she would have called seven the night train."
Cecil, who appeared to be more engaged in toying with the black ribbons that were flowing from the white sleeves round her pretty wrists, than in taking her breakfast, looked up at her sister. "How long is it since she was here last, Janet?"
"She was here the summer after your mother died."
"All that time!" exclaimed Cecil. "It is very good of her to leave her home at her age, and come amongst us once again."
"It is George who is bringing her here; I am sure of that," returned Janet. "She was so concerned about his illness. She wants to see him now he is getting better. George was always her favourite."
"How is George this morning?" inquired Thomas Godolphin.
"George is alive and pretty well," replied a voice from the door, which had opened. There stood George himself.
Alive decidedly; but weak and wan still. He could walk with the help of one stick now.
"If I don't make an effort--as somebody says, in that bookcase--I may remain a puny invalid for ever, like a woman. I thought I'd try and surprise you."
They made a place for him, and placed a chair, and set good things before him; all in affectionate eagerness. But George Godolphin could not accomplish much breakfast yet. "My appetite is capricious, Janet," he observed. "I think to-morrow I will try chocolate and milk."
"A cup can be made at once, George, if you would like it."
"No, I don't care about it now. I suppose the doctors are right that I can't get into proper order again, without change. A dull time of it, I shall have, whatever place they may exile me to."
A question had been mooted, bringing somewhat of vexation in its discussion, as to who should accompany George. Whether he should be accompanied at all, in what he was pleased to term his exile: and if so, which of them should be chosen. Janet could not go; or thought she could not; Ashlydyat wanted her. Bessy was deep in her schools, her district-visiting, in parish affairs generally, and openly said she did not care to quit them just now. Cecil was perfectly ready and willing. Had George been going to the wilds of Africa, Cecil would have entered on the journey with enthusiasm: the outer world had attractions for Cecil and her inexperience. But Janet did not deem it expedient to trust pretty Cecil to the sole guardianship of thoughtless George, and that was put down ere Cecil had well spoken of it. George's private opinion was--and he spoke it publicly--that he should be better without any of them than with them; that they would "only be a trouble." On one point, he turned restive. Janet's idea had been to despatch Margery with him; to see after his comforts, his medicines, his well-aired beds, and his beef-tea. Not if he knew it, George answered. Why not set him up at once with a lady's-maid, and a nurse from the hospitals, in addition to Margery? And he was pleased to indulge in so much ridicule upon the point, as to anger Janet and offend Margery.
"I wish I knew some fellow who was going yachting for the next six months, and would give me boat-room," observed George, stirring his tea listlessly.
"That would be an improvement!" said Janet, speaking in satire. "Six months' sea-sickness and sea-drenching would about do for you what the fever has left undone."
"So it might," said George. "Only that we get over sea-sickness in a couple of days, and sea-drenchings are wholesome. However, don't let it disturb your placidity: the yacht is wanting, and I am not likely to have the opportunity of trying it. No, thank you, Janet"--rejecting a plate she was offering him--"I cannot eat anything."
"Mrs. Briscow comes to-day, George," observed Bessy. "Janet is going to meet her at the station at four. She is coming purposely to see you."
"Very amiable of the old lady!" responded George. "It's a pity I am going out to dinner."
Thomas looked surprised. George was not yet in precisely dinner-visiting condition.
"I have promised Mrs. Verrall to get as far as the Folly this afternoon, and stay and dine with them. En famille, you know."
"Mr. Verrall is not at home," said Bessy.
"But she and Charlotte are," responded George.
"You know you must not be out in the night air, George."
"I shall be home by sundown, or thereabouts. Not that the night air would hurt me now."
"You cannot take rich dishes yet," urged Bessy again.
"Bien entendu. Mrs. Verrall has ordered an array of invalid ones: mutton-broth à l'eau, and boiled whiting au naturel," responded George, who appeared to have an answer ready for all dissentient propositions.
Janet interposed, looking and speaking very gravely. "George, it will be a great mark of disrespect to Mrs. Briscow, the lifelong friend of your father and your mother, not to be at home to sit at table with her the first day she is here. Only one thing could excuse your absence--urgent business. And, that, you have not to plead."
George answered tartly. He was weak from his recent illness, and like many others under the same circumstances, did not like being crossed in trifles. "Janet, you are unreasonable. As if it were necessary that I should break a promise, just for the purpose of dining with an old woman! There will be plenty of other days to dine with her. And I shall be at home this evening before you have risen from table."
"I beg you to speak of Mrs. Briscow with more respect, George. It cannot matter whether you dine at the Verralls' to-day or another day," persisted Janet. "I would not say a word against it, were it an engagement of consequence. You can go to the Folly any day."
"But I choose to go to-day," said George.
Janet fixed her deep eyes upon him, her gaze full of sad penetration, her voice changed to one of mourning. "Have those women cast a spell upon you, lad?"
It drove away George's ill-humour. He burst into a laugh, and returned the gaze: openly enough. "Not they, Janet. Mrs. Verrall may have spells to cast, for aught I know: it's Verrall's business, not mine: but they have certainly not been directed to me. And Charlotte----"
"Ay," put in Janet in a lower tone, "what of Charlotte Pain?"
"This, Janet. That I can steer clear of any spells cast by Charlotte Pain. Not but that I admire Charlotte very much," he added in a spirit of mischief. "I assure you I am quite a slave to her fascinations."
"Keep you out of her fascinations, lad," returned Janet in a tone of solemn meaning. "It is my first and best advice to you."
"I will, Janet, when I find them growing dangerous."
Janet said no more. There was that expression on her countenance which they well knew; telling of grievous dissatisfaction.
Rising earlier than his strength was as yet equal to, told upon George Godolphin: and by the middle of the day he felt so full of weariness and lassitude, that he was glad to throw himself on to the sofa in the large drawing-room, quiet and unoccupied then, wheeling the couch first of all with his feeble strength, close to the window, that he might be in the sunshine. Its warmth was grateful to him. He dropped asleep, and only woke considerably later, at the entrance of Cecil.
Cecil was dressed for the day, in a thin, flowing black dress, a jet necklace on her slender neck, jet bracelets on her fair arms. A fair flower was Cecilia Godolphin: none fairer within all the precincts of Prior's Ash. She knelt down by George and kissed him.
"We have been in to glance at you two or three times, George. Margery has prepared something nice for you, and would have aroused you to take it, only she says sleep will do you as much good as food."
"What's the time?" asked George, too indolent to take his own watch from his pocket.
"Half-past three."
"Nonsense!" cried George, partially starting up. "It can't be so late as that."
"It is, indeed. Janet has just driven off to the station. Don't rise this minute: you are hot."
"I wonder Janet let me sleep so long!"
"Why should she not? Janet has been very busy all day, and very----"
"Cross?" put in George.
"I was going to say silent," replied Cecil. "You vexed her this morning, George."
"There was nothing that she need have been vexed at," responded Mr. George.
Cecil remained for a few moments without speaking. "I think Janet is afraid of Charlotte Pain," she presently said.
"Afraid of Charlotte Pain! In what way?"
"George"--lowering her voice, and running her fingers caressingly through his bright hair as he lay--"I wish you would let me ask you something."
"Ask away," replied George.
"Ay, but will you answer me?"
"That depends," he laughed. "Ask away, Cely."
"Is there anything between you and Charlotte Pain?"
"Plenty," returned George in the lightest possible tone. "As there is between me and a dozen more young ladies. Charlotte, happening to be the nearest, gets most of me just now."
"Plenty of what?"
"Talking and laughing and gossip. That's about the extent of it, pretty Cely."
Cecil wished he would be more serious. "Shall you be likely to marry her?" she breathed.
"Just as likely as I shall be to marry you," and he spoke seriously now.
Cecil drew a sigh of relief. "Then, George, I will tell you what it is that has helped to vex Janet. You know our servants get talking to Mrs. Verrall's, and her servants to ours. And the news was brought here that Charlotte Pain has said she should probably be going on a journey: a journey abroad, for six months or so: to some place where she should remain the winter. Margery told Janet: and--and----"
"You construed it, between you, that Charlotte was going to be a partner in my exile! What droll people you must all be!"
"There's no doubt, George, that Charlotte Pain was heard to say it."
"I don't know what she may have been heard to say. It could have borne no reference to my movements. Cecil?"
"Well?"
"Did you ever hear of old Max's hounds losing their scent?"
"No--I don't know. What do you mean?"
And while George Godolphin was laughing at her puzzled look, Margery came in. "Are you almost famished, Mr. George? How could you think of dropping off to sleep till you had had something to sustain you?"
"We often do things that we don't 'think' to do, Margery," quoth he, as he rose from the sofa.
Nothing more true, Mr. George Godolphin.
Ere long he was on his way to Mrs. Verrall's. Notwithstanding Janet's displeasure, he had no idea of foregoing his engagement. The society of two attractive women had more charms for listless George than quiet Ashlydyat. It was a lovely afternoon, less hot than it had been of late, and George really enjoyed it. He was beginning to walk so much better. That long sleep had rested and refreshed him, and he believed that he could walk well into Prior's Ash. "I'll try it to-morrow," thought George.
Up the steps, over the terrace, across to the open windows of the Folly. It was the easiest way in, and George was not given to unnecessary ceremony. He supposed he might find the ladies in the drawing-room, and he stepped over the threshold.
Only one was there. Charlotte. She did not see him enter. She was before a pier-glass, holding up her dog, King Charley, that he might snarl and bark at the imaginary King Charley in the glass. That other dog of hers, the ugly Scotch terrier which you have heard of before, and a third, looking something like a bull-dog, were leaping and howling at her feet. It would appear that nothing pleased Charlotte better than putting her dogs into a fury. Charlotte wore a dark blue silk dress with shaded flounces, and a lighter blue silk jacket: the latter, ornamented with braidings and buttons of silver, somewhat after the fashion of her green riding-habit, and fitting as tightly to the shape. A well-formed shape!--and George Godolphin thought so, as she stood with her arms lifted, setting the dogs at the glass.
"Hi, King! Seize him, Charley! Go at him!--hiss! Tear him! bite him!--hiss-ss-ss!----"
The noisy reception by the other dogs of Mr. George Godolphin, brought the young lady's words and her pretty employment to a standstill. She released the imprisoned dog from her arms, letting him drop anywhere, and turned to George Godolphin.
"Have you come at last? I had given you up! I expected you an hour and a half ago."
"And, to while away the time, you set your dogs on to snarl and fight!" returned he, as he took her hand. "I wonder you don't go distracted with the noise, Charlotte!"
"You don't like dogs! I often tell you so."
"Yes, I do--in their proper places."
Charlotte turned from him with a pout. The terrier jumped upon her.
"Down, Pluto, down! A gentleman here thinks I ought to hold you poor dogs at arm's length."
"At the yard's length, if you please, Charlotte," corrected George, who did not feel inclined to compromise his opinion. "Hark at them! they might be heard at Prior's Ash."
"And his name's George Godolphin, good Pluto!" went on Charlotte, doing all she possibly could, in a quiet way, to excite the dogs. "Down, then, Pluto! down!"
"I should muzzle you, Mr. Pluto, if you were mine," cried George, as the dog jumped up at him furiously, and then turned to attack his former adversary. "Pluto!" he continued, meaningly: "who gave him that name, Charlotte?"
"I did," avowed Charlotte. "And I named this other one King Charley, after his species. And this one is Deuce. What have you to say against the names?"
"Nothing," said George. "I think them very good, appropriate names," he added, his lips parting.
They were certainly very good dogs--if to make a most excruciating noise constitutes merit. George Godolphin, his nerves still in a shattered condition, lifted his hand wearily to his forehead. It brought Charlotte Pain to her recollection.
"Oh, George, I forgot! I did, really! I forgot you were not as strong yet as the rest of us. Be quiet, then, you three horrid brutes! Be quiet, will you! Go off, and quarrel outside."
Using her pointed toe rather liberally, Charlotte set herself to scatter the dogs. They were not very obedient. As soon as one was got out another sprang in, the noise never ceasing. Charlotte snatched up a basket of macaroons that happened to be on a side-table, and scattered the cakes on the terrace. "There, quarrel and fight over those!"
She put down the empty basket, closed the window to shut out the noise, and turned to George. Spreading out her dress on either side, after the manner once in vogue in ancient ballrooms she dropped him an elaborate curtsey.
"Mr. George Godolphin, what honour do you suppose is thrust upon me to-day?"
"You must tell me, Charlotte, if it's one you wish me to know," he answered. "I can never attempt to guess when I feel tired; as I do now."
"Your walk has tired you?"
"I suppose it has. Though I thought how well I felt as I came along."
"The great honour of entertaining you all by my own self is delegated to me," cried Charlotte gaily, dropping another curtsey. "I hope we shall not quarrel, as those dogs are doing."
"The honour of entertaining me!" he repeated, not grasping her meaning. "Entertaining me for what?"
"For dinner, sir. Mrs. Verrall has gone to London."
"No!" he exclaimed. He did not believe her.
Charlotte nodded. "She went at midday."
"But what took her away so suddenly?" exclaimed George, in surprise. "She had no intention yesterday of going."
"A freak. Or, impulse--if you like the word better. Kate rarely acts upon anything else. She has been expecting Verrall home these last three days; but he has neither come nor written: and this morning, after the post was in, she suddenly declared she'd go to town, and see what was keeping him."
"They may cross each other on the road."
"Of course they may: and Kate have her journey for her pains. That's nothing to her: she likes travelling. 'What am I to do with Mr. George Godolphin? Entertain him?' I said to her. 'I suppose you can contrive to do it,' she answered. 'I suppose I could,' I said. 'But, what about its being proper?' I asked," added Charlotte, with a demure glance at George. "'Oh,' said Kate, 'it's proper enough, poor sick fellow: it would never do to disappoint him.' Therefore, sir, please take care that you behave properly, considering that a young lady is your hostess."
She threw a laughing glance at George; and, sitting down at the table, took a pack of beautifully painted cards from an ivory box, and began that delectable game that the French call "Patience." George watched her from the sofa where he was sitting. A certain thought had darted into his mind. What fit of prudence called it up? Did he think of Charlotte's good?--or of his own? Did the recollection of what Cecil had whispered actuate him? It cannot be told. It was very far indeed from George Godolphin's intention to make a wife of Charlotte Pain, and he may have deemed it well to avoid all situations where he might compromise himself by a hasty word. Such words are more easily dropped than taken up again. Or perhaps George, free and careless though he was, reflected that it was not altogether the thing for Charlotte Pain to entertain him alone. With all his faults, George Godolphin was a gentleman: and Charlotte was not altogether fitted for a gentleman's wife.
"I am glad of it, Charlotte," he remarked. "I shall now have to make excuses to one only, instead of to two. I came to ask Mrs. Verrall to allow me to break through my engagement."
Charlotte had a knave in her hand, pondering where she could place it. She dropped it in her surprise.
"I must dine at home to-day, Charlotte. An old friend of my father and mother's, Mrs. Briscow, is arriving for dinner. I cannot be absent."
The flush deepened on Charlotte's face. "It is unkind of you!" she resentfully said. "But I knew before what your promises are worth."
"Unkind? But, Charlotte, I did not know until this morning that Mrs. Briscow was coming to-day. There's nothing unkind about it."
"It is unkind!" flashed Charlotte. "If you were not unkind, you would not leave me here alone, to pass a solitary evening and play at this wretched 'patience.'"
"But I am not going to leave you here. I wish to take you back with me to Ashlydyat to dinner. If you will put on your bonnet, we can be walking thither at once."
"You did not come intending to ask me."
"I did not. I did not know that Mrs. Verrall would be absent. But I ask you now, being alone as you say. And I intend to take you."
"What will Miss Godolphin say?"
"Miss Godolphin will be very happy to see you." Which little assertion Mr. George knew to contain more politeness than truth. "Will you get ready, Charlotte? I must be returning."
Charlotte pushed the cards from her in a heap, and came and stood before George Godolphin, turning herself about for his inspection. "Shall I do without further embellishment?" she asked.
"Admirably," was the gallant answer. "Why dress more for Ashlydyat than you would for home?"
Charlotte marched to the glass and surveyed herself. "Just something in my hair," she said, ringing the bell.
A maid came in by her desire, and fastened some blue and silver flowers in her hair. Charlotte Pain wore her hair capriciously: rarely two days alike. To-day it was all strained back from the face, that most trying of all styles, let the features be ever so pretty. A shawl was thrown over her shoulders, and then she turned to George.
"I am ready now."
"But your bonnet?" returned that gentleman, who had looked on with laughing eyes at the mysteries of the hair-dressing.
"I shall not put on a bonnet," she said. "They can bring it to me to Ashlydyat, for returning at night. People won't meet us: the road's not a public road. And if they should meet us," she added, laughing, "they will rejoice in the opportunity of seeing me abroad like this. It will be food for Prior's Ash."
So they started. Charlotte would not take his arm: she said he must take hers: he needed support and she did not. That, George would not agree to: and they strolled on, side by side, resting on benches occasionally. George found he had not much to boast of yet, in the way of strength.
"Who's this, coming up?" exclaimed Charlotte, when they had almost gained Ashlydyat, and were resting for the last time.
George followed the direction of her eyes. Advancing towards Ashlydyat was a lady, her grey silk dress gleaming in the sun, a light Cashmere shawl folded round her. There was no mistaking the ladylike figure of Mrs. Hastings.
"Is she to be one of your dinner-party?"
"Not that I am aware of."
Mrs. Hastings joined them. She sat down on a bench by George's side, affectionately inquiring into his state of health, speaking kindly and truthfully her pleasure at seeing him, so far, well again. Whatever prejudice may have been taken against George Godolphin by the Rector of All Souls', it did not extend to his wife. She liked him much.
"I am getting on famously," said George, in a merry tone. "I have promoted myself now to one stick: until yesterday I was forced to use two. You are going to Ashlydyat, Mrs. Hastings?"
"I wish to say a few words to Bessy. We have discovered something unpleasant relating to one of the schools, in which the under-mistress is mixed up. A good deal of deceit has been going on, in fact. Mr. Hastings says Bessy ought to hear of it at once, for she was as much interested in it as we are. So I came up."
Mrs. Hastings, in speaking, had taken two or three glances at Charlotte's head. That young lady set herself to explain. Mr. George Godolphin had given her an impromptu invitation to go back with him to dine at Ashlydyat.
Then George explained. He had been engaged to dine at the Folly: but found, on arriving, that Mrs. Verrall had departed for London. "My friends are all kind to me, Mrs. Hastings," he observed. "They insist upon it that a change of a few hours must benefit me, and encumber themselves with the trouble of a fanciful invalid."
"I am sure there's nothing like change and amusement for one growing convalescent," said Charlotte.
"Will you let us contribute in some little way to it?" asked Mrs. Hastings of George. "If a few hours' sojourn in our quiet house would be agreeable to you, you know that we should only be too happy for you to try it."
"I should like it of all things," cried George, impulsively, "I cannot walk far yet without resting, and it is pleasant to sit a few hours at my walk's end, before I begin to start back again. I shall soon extend my journeys to Prior's Ash."
"Then come to us the first day that you feel able to get as far. You will always find some of us at home. We will dine at any hour you like, and you shall choose your own dinner."
"A bargain," said George.
They rose to pursue their way to Ashlydyat. Mrs. Hastings offered her arm to George, and he took it with thanks. "He would not take mine!" thought Charlotte, and she flashed an angry glance at him.
The fact was, that for some considerable time Charlotte Pain had put Maria Hastings almost out of her head, as regarded her relations to George Godolphin. Whatever reason she may have seen at Broomhead to believe he was attached to Maria, the impression had since faded away. In the spring, before his illness, George had been much more with her than with Maria. This was not entirely George's fault: the Rectory did not court him: Charlotte Pain and the Folly did. A week had now passed since Mr. Verrall's departure for town, when George and his sticks appeared at the Folly for the first time after his illness; and, not a day of that week since but George and Charlotte had met. Altogether, her hopes of winning the prize had gone up to enthusiastic heat; and Charlotte believed the greatest prize in the world--taking all his advantages collectively--to be George Godolphin. George went at once to his sister Janet's chamber. She was in it, dressing for dinner, after bringing her aged guest, Mrs. Briscow, from the station. He knocked at the door with his stick, and was told to enter.
Janet was before the glass in her black silk dress, trimmed heavily with crape still. She was putting on her sober cap, a white one, with black ribbons. Janet Godolphin had taken to wear caps at thirty years of age: her hair, like Thomas's, was thin; and she was not troubled with cares of making herself appear younger than she was.
"Come in, George," she said, turning to him without any appearance of surprise.
"See how good I am, Janet!" he cried, throwing himself wearily into a chair. "I have come back to dine with you."
"I saw you from the window. You have been walking too far!"
"Only to the Folly and back. But I sauntered about, looking at the flowers, and that tires one far worse than bearing on steadily."
"Ay. Lay yourself down on that couch at full length, lad. Mrs. Hastings is here, I see. And--was that other Charlotte Pain?"
"Yes," replied George, disregarding the injunction to lie down.
"Did she come from the Folly in that guise?--Nothing on her head but those flowers? I could see no bonnet even in her hand."
"It is to be sent after her. Janet"--passing quickly from the other matter--"she has come to dine with us."
Miss Godolphin turned in amazement, and fixed her eyes reproachfully on George. "To dine with us?--to-day? Have you been asking her?"
"Janet, I could not well help myself. When I got to Lady Godolphin's Folly, I found Charlotte alone: Mrs. Verrall has departed for town. To break through my engagement there, I proposed that Charlotte should come here."
"Nay," said Janet, "your engagement was already broken, if Mrs. Verrall was away."
"Not so. Charlotte expected me to remain."
"Herself your sole entertainer?"
"I suppose so."
A severe expression arose to Miss Godolphin's lips, and remained there. "It is most unsuitable, Charlotte Pain's being here to-day," she resumed. "The changes which have taken place render our meeting with Mrs. Briscow a sad one; no stranger ought to be at table. Least of all, Charlotte Pain. Her conversation is at times unfeminine."
"How can you say so, Janet?" he involuntarily exclaimed.
"Should she launch into some of her favourite topics, her horses and her dogs, it will sound unfeminine to Mrs. Briscow's ears. In her young days--in my days also, George, for the matter of that--these subjects were deemed more suitable to men's lips than to young women's. George, had your mother lived, it would have been a sore day to her, the one that brought the news that you had fixed your mind on Charlotte Pain."
"It was not so to my father, at any rate," George could not help saying.
"And was it possible that you did not see how Charlotte Pain played her cards before your father?" resumed Janet. "Not a word, that could offend his prejudices as a refined gentleman, did she ever suffer herself to utter. I saw; if you did not."
"You manage to see a great deal that the rest of us don't see, Janet. Or you fancy that you do."
"It is no fancy, lad. I would not like to discourage a thing that you have set your heart upon; I would rather go a mile out of my way than do it: but I stand next door to a mother to you, and I can but warn you that you will repent it, if you ever suffer Charlotte Pain to be more to you than she now is."
George rose. "Set your mind at rest, Janet. It has never been my intention to marry Charlotte Pain: and--so far as I believe at present--it never will be."
The dinner went off pleasantly. Mrs. Briscow was a charming old lady, although she was of the "antediluvian" school, and Charlotte was on her best behaviour, and half fascinated Mrs. Briscow. George, like a trespassing child, received several hints from Janet that bed might be desirable for him, but he ingeniously ignored them, and sat on. Charlotte's bonnet and an attendant arrived, and Thomas Godolphin put on his hat to see her to the Folly.
"I need not trouble you, Mr. Godolphin. I shall not be run away with."
"I think it will be as well that I should see you do not," said he, smiling.
It was scarcely dark. The clock had not struck ten, and the night was starlight. Thomas Godolphin gave her his arm, and the maid walked behind them. Arrived at Ashlydyat, he left her. Charlotte stood for a few moments, then turned on her heel and entered the hall. The first thing that caught her notice was a hat; next a travelling coat. They had not been there when she left in the afternoon.
"Then Verrall's back!" she mentally exclaimed.
Hastening into the dining-room, she saw, seated at a table, drinking brandy and water, not Mr. Verrall, but Rodolf Pain.
"Good gracious!" exclaimed Charlotte, with more surprise in her tone than satisfaction, "have you come?"
"Come to find an empty house," rejoined Mr. Pain. "Where's Mrs. Verrall? They tell me she is gone to London."
"She is," replied Charlotte. "Verrall neither came back nor wrote; she had a restless fit upon her, and started off this morning to him."
"Verrall won't thank her," observed Mr. Pain. "He is up to his eyes in business."
"Good or bad business?" asked Charlotte.
"Both. We have got into a mess, and Verrall's not yet out of it."
"Through what? Through whom?" she questioned.
Rodolf Pain gave his shoulders a jerk, as if he had been a Frenchman. "It need not trouble you, Charlotte."
"Some one came down here from London a week ago; a Mr. Appleby. Is it through him? Verrall seemed strangely put out at his coming."
Mr. Pain nodded his head. "They were such idiots in the office as to give Appleby the address here. I have seen Verrall in a tolerable passion once or twice in my life, but I never saw him in such a one as he went into when he came up. They'll not forget it in a hurry. He lays the blame on me, remotely; says I must have left a letter about with the address on it. I know I have done nothing of the sort."
"But what is it, Rodolf? Anything very bad?"
"Bad enough. But it can be remedied. Let Verrall alone for getting out of pits, however deep they may be. I wish, though, we had never set eyes on that fellow, Appleby!"
"Tell me about it, Rodolf."
Mr. Rodolf declined. "You could do no good," said he, "and business is not fitted for ladies' ears."
"I don't care to know it," said Charlotte. "It's no concern of mine: but, somehow, that man Appleby interested me. As to business not being fitted for my ears, I should make a better hand at business than some of you men make."
"Upon my word, I think you would, Charlotte. I have often said it. But you are one in a thousand."
"Have you had anything to eat since you came in?"
"They brought me some supper. It has just gone away."
"I had better inquire whether there's a room ready for you?" she remarked, moving towards the bell.
"It's all done, Charlotte. I told them I had come to stay. Just sit down, and let me talk to you."
"Shall you stay long?"
"I can't tell until I hear from Verrall to-morrow. I may be leaving again to-morrow night, or I may be here for interminable weeks. The office is to be clear of Mr. Verrall just now, do you understand?"
Charlotte apparently did understand. She took her seat in a chair listlessly enough. Something in her manner would have told an accurate observer that she could very well have dispensed with the company of Rodolf Pain. He, however, saw nothing of that. He took his cigar-case from his pocket, selected a cigar, and then, by way of sport, held the case out to Charlotte.
"Will you take one?"
For answer, she dashed it out of his hand half way across the room. And she did it in anger, too.
"How uncertain you are!" he exclaimed, as he rose to pick up his property. "There are times when you can take a joke pleasantly, and laugh at it."
He sat down again, lighted his cigar, and smoked a few minutes in silence. Then he turned to her. "Don't you think it is time, Charlotte, that you and I brought ourselves to an anchor?"
"No, I don't," she bluntly answered.
"But I say it is," he resumed. "And I mean it to be done."
"You mean!"
Something in the tone roused him, and he gazed at her with surprise. "You are not going from your promise, Charlotte?"
"I don't remember that I made any distinct promise," said she.
Mr. Rodolf Pain grew heated. "You know that you did, Charlotte. You know that you engaged yourself irrevocably to me----"
"Irrevocably!" she slightingly interrupted. "How you misapply words!"
"It was as irrevocable as promise can be. Have you not led me on, this twelvemonth past, believing month after month that you would be my wife the next? And, month after month, you have put me off upon the most frivolous pretexts!"
He rose as he spoke, drew up his little figure to its utmost height in his excitement, and pushed back his light hair from his small, insignificant face. A face that betrayed not too much strength of any sort, physical, moral, or intellectual; but a good-natured face withal. Charlotte retained unbroken calmness.
"Rodolf, I don't think it would do," she said, with an air of candid reasoning. "I have thought it over and over, and that's why I have put you off. It is not well that we should all be so closely connected together. Better get new ties, that will shelter us, in case a--a----"
"A what?" asked Rodolf Pain, his eyes strained on Charlotte through their very light lashes.
"In case a smash comes. That--if we are all in the same boat--would ruin the lot. Better that you and I should form other connections."
"You are talking great nonsense," he angrily said. "A smash!--to us! Can't you trust Verrall better than that?"
"Why, you say that, even at this present moment----"
"You are wrong, Charlotte," he vehemently interrupted; "you entirely misunderstand me. Things go wrong in business temporarily; they must do so in business of all sorts; but they right themselves again. Why! do you know what Verrall made last year?"
"A great deal."
"My little petty share was two thousand pounds: and that is as a drop of water to the ocean compared with his. What has put you upon these foolish fancies?"
"Prudence," returned Charlotte.
"I don't believe it," was the plain answer. "You are trying to blind me. You are laying yourself out for higher game; and to shut my eyes, and gain time to see if you can play it out, you concoct a story of 'prudence' to me. It's one or the other of those Godolphins."
"The Godolphins!" mockingly repeated Charlotte. "You are clever! The one will never marry as long as the world lasts; the other's dead."
"Dead!" echoed Rodolf Pain.
"As good as dead. He's like a ghost, and he is being sent off for an everlasting period to some warmer climate. How ridiculous you are, Rodolf!"
"Charlotte, I'll take care of ways and means. I'll take care of you and your interests. Only fix the time when you will be mine."
"Then I won't, Rodolf. I don't care to marry yet awhile. I'll see about it when the next hunting season shall be over."
Rodolf Pain opened his eyes. "The hunting season!" he cried. "What has that to do with it?"
"Were you my husband, you would be forbidding me to hunt; you don't like my doing it now. So for the present I'll remain mistress of my own actions."
"Another lame excuse," he said, knitting his brow. "You will take very good care always to remain mistress of your own actions, whether married or single."
Charlotte laughed, a ringing laugh of power. It spoke significantly enough to Mr. Rodolf Pain. He would have renewed the discussion, but she peremptorily declined, and shaking hands with him, wished him good night.
XX. A REVELATION TO ALL SOULS' RECTOR
George Godolphin was not long at availing himself of the invitation to All Souls' Rectory. The very day after it was given, he was on his way to it. He started with his stick: made one halt at a shop on his road, and arrived about twelve o'clock.
Not a soul was at home but Maria. Mrs. Hastings, who had not expected him for some days, for she did not suppose his strength would allow him to get so far yet, had gone out with Grace. Mr. Hastings was in the church, and Maria was alone.
She sat in that one pleasant room of the house, the long room looking to the lawn and the flower-beds. She looked so pretty, so refined, so quiet in her simple dress of white muslin, as she pursued her employment, that of drawing, never suspecting how she was going to be interrupted.
The door of the porch stood open, as it often did in summer, and George Godolphin entered without the ceremony of knocking. The hall was well matted, and Maria did not hear him cross it. A slight tap at the room door.
"Come in," said Maria, supposing it to be one of the servants.
He came in and stood in the doorway, smiling down upon her. So shadowy, so thin! his face utterly pale, his dark blue eyes unnaturally large, his wavy hair damp with the exertion of walking. Maria's heart stood still. She rose from her seat, unable to speak, the colour going and coming in her transparent skin; and when she quietly moved forward to welcome him, her heart found its action again, and bounded on in tumultuous beats. The very intensity of her emotion caused her demeanour to be almost unnaturally still.
"Are you glad to see me, Maria?"
It was the first time they had met since his illness; the first time for more than four months. All that time separated; all that time fearing he was about to be removed by death! As he approached Maria, her emotion broke forth--she burst into tears; and surely it may be excused her.
He was scarcely less agitated. He clasped her tenderly to him, and kissed the tears from her face, his own eyelashes glistening. There was no great harm in it after all; for that each looked forward to the hope of being bound together at no great distance of time by nearer and dearer ties, was indisputable. At least no harm would have come of it, if---- Look at the window.
They did. And there they saw the awful face of the Rector glaring in upon them, and by its side, the more awful of the two, that of Charlotte Pain.
Why had she followed George Godolphin to the Rectory? Was she determined not to allow him a single chance of escaping her? She, bearing in remembrance the compact with Mrs. Hastings, had watched George Godolphin's movements that morning from the windows of the Folly; had watched the by-road leading to the Rectory. She saw George and his stick go tottering down it: and by-and-by she put on her things and went out too, imperatively declining the escort of Mr. Rodolf Pain.
Her intention was to make a call at the Rectory--all unconscious of course that she should find Mr. George Godolphin there. By dint of a little by-play with Mrs. Hastings--who was too thoroughly a lady to be given to suspicion--she might receive an invitation to remain also for the day. With these very laudable intentions Charlotte arrived opposite All Souls' Church, where she caught sight of the Reverend Mr. Hastings emerging from the door. She crossed the churchyard, and accosted him.
"Is Mrs. Hastings at home, do you know? I am going to call upon her?"
Now Charlotte was no great favourite of that gentleman's: nevertheless, being a gentleman, he answered her courteously as he shook hands. He believed Mrs. Hastings and Grace were out, he said, but Maria was at home.
"I am moped to death!" exclaimed Charlotte, as she and Mr. Hastings entered the private gate to the Rectory garden. "Mrs. Verrall is gone to London, and there am I! I came out intending to go the round of the town until I could find some good Samaritan or other who would take compassion on me, and let me stay an hour or two with them."
Mr. Hastings gave no particular reply. He did not make for the side door of the house, his usual entrance from the church, but turned towards the front, that he might usher in Charlotte in state. This took them by the windows of the drawing-room: and there they saw--what has been recorded. Mr. Hastings, in his astonishment, halted: Charlotte halted also, as you may be very sure.
George was the first to see them, and a word of anger broke from his lips. Maria hastily raised her head from its resting-place--and felt almost as if she should die. To be seen thus by Charlotte Pain was bad enough: but by her strict father! Her face grew white.
George Godolphin saw the signs. "My darling, only be calm! Leave all to me."
That an explanation was forced upon him somewhat prematurely, was undoubted. But it was no unwelcome explanation. Nay, in the second moment, he was deeming it the very best thing that could have happened: for certain visions of taking Maria with him into exile had crossed his brain lately. He would try hard now to get them realized. It is true he would have preferred, all things considered, not to speak before Miss Charlotte Pain: but necessity, as you know, has no law.
The Rector came in at the door: Charlotte following. "Mr. George Godolphin!" he frigidly began; but George interrupted what he would have further said.
"I beg your pardon, sir," he said, taking a step forward; "allow me one word of explanation before you cast blame on me. I was asking your daughter to be my wife. Will you give her to me?"
Mr. Hastings looked as a man confounded. That he was intensely surprised at the words was evident: perhaps he half doubted whether Mr. George Godolphin was playing with him. He cast a severe glance at Maria. George had taken her on his arm, and she stood there shrinking, her head drooping; her eyelashes resting on her white cheek. As for Charlotte Pain? well, you should have seen her.
Ah no, there was no deception. George was in true earnest, and Mr. Hastings saw that he was. His eyes were fixed beseechingly on those of Mr. Hastings, and emotion had brought the hectic to his wasted cheek.
"Do not blame Maria, sir," he resumed. "She is innocent of all offence, and dutiful as innocent. Were you to interpose your veto between us, and deny her to me, I know that she would obey you, even though the struggle killed her. Mr. Hastings, we have loved each other for some time past: and I should have spoken to you before, but for my illness intervening. Will you give her to me at once, and let her share my exile!"
Mr. Hastings had no insuperable objection to George Godolphin. That report had given Mr. George credit for bushels and bushels of wild oats, which he would have to sow, was certain: but in this respect he was no worse than many others, and marriage is supposed to be a cure for youthful follies. Mr. Hastings had once suspected that Maria was acquiring more liking for George than was good for her: hence his repulsion of George, for he believed that he was destined for Charlotte Pain. Even now he could not comprehend how it was, and the prominent feeling in his mind was surprised perplexity.
"I love her as my own life, sir. I will strive to render her happy."
"I cannot understand it," said Mr. Hastings, dropping his tone of anger. "I was under the impression--I beg your pardon, Miss Pain," turning to her, "but I was under the impression that you were engaged to Mr. George Godolphin!"
If ever Charlotte Pain had need to fight for composure, she had dire need then. Her hopes were suddenly hurled to the ground, and she had the cruel mortification of hearing him, whom she best loved, reject and spurn her for a long-hated rival. If her love for George Godolphin was not very deep or refined--and it was neither the one nor the other--she did love him after a fashion; better, at any rate, than she loved any one else. The position she would take as George Godolphin's wife was hurled from her; and perhaps Miss Charlotte cared for that more than she did for George himself. The Verralls and their appearance of wealth were all very well in their places--as George had said by the dogs--but what were they, compared with the ancient Godolphins? There are moments which drive a woman to the verge of madness, and Charlotte was so driven now. Anything like control of temper was quite beyond her: and malevolence entered her heart.
"I engaged to Mr. George Godolphin!" she echoed, taking up the Rector's words in a shrieking tone, which she could not have helped had her life depended on it. "Engaged to a married man? Thank you, Mr. Hastings."
"A married man!" repeated the puzzled Rector. Whilst George turned his questioning eyes upon her.
"Yes, a married man," she continued, her throat working, her breath panting. "They may have chosen to hoodwink you, to blind you, Mr. Hastings, but I saw what I saw. When your daughter--innocent Miss Maria there--came home from Scotland, she had been married to George Godolphin. A false priest, a sort of Gretna Green man, had married them: and I saw it done. I engaged to George Godolphin!"
Charlotte Pain knew that the words were false: called up to gratify her rage in that angry moment. Scarcely anything else that she could conjure up would so have told upon the Rector. In his straightforward right-doing, to his practical mind, a clandestine marriage appeared one of the cardinal sins. His face turned pale, and his eye flashed as he grasped Maria's shoulder.
"Girl! is this so?"
"Oh, papa, no!" returned Maria, with streaming eyes. "It is a wicked untruth. Charlotte! to tell such an untruth is wicked. Papa, I affirm to you----"
"Hush, Maria," interposed George, "let me deal with this. Mr. Hastings, it is a thing that you need scarcely ask of your daughter--whether it is true, or untrue. Is she one, think you, to enter into a clandestine marriage? You know better, sir. Nothing has ever passed between myself and Maria more than has passed before you this day. Were I thoughtless enough to solicit her to enter into one--and you need not think of me a whit better than you choose--Maria would only repulse me. Miss Pain, will you unsay your words?"
For answer, Miss Pain entered into a scornful account of Sandy Bray and his doings. She reiterated her assertion. She declared that she saw Maria and George standing before him, their hands clasped together in the attitude of a couple being married, when she entered suddenly with a message from Lady Godolphin, and she finished up by saying she had always believed since that they were married, only it had been no business of hers to proclaim it. The Rector's brow grew moist again, and George Godolphin looked significantly at Charlotte. He spoke significantly, too.
"No, you have not thought it, Charlotte." And he turned and related to Mr. Hastings as much as he knew of Sandy Bray, emphatically repeating his denial. "If you will take a moment's thought, sir, you may be convinced that the truth lies with me. I am beseeching you to give Maria to me; I crave it of you as the greatest boon that I can ask in life. I know not whether you will yield to my petition: but, what argument could I urge, to induce it, with half the force of the one that she was already secretly my wife? Nay, were she indeed so, why should I care for the ceremony to be repeated? I should only have to confess it, and throw myself and my wife upon your forgiveness. I heartily wish it had been so!"
"You are bold, Mr. George Godolphin!"
"Bold, sir?" returned George, with emotion. "Not more bold than I ought to be. I don't care to defend myself, but I do care to defend Maria. Give her to me, Mr. Hastings! give her to me!" he added, changing his tone to one of tender entreaty. "I will defend her through life with my best blood."
Mr. Hastings looked at him; looked at the tearful, but certainly not guilty countenance of his daughter; turned and looked at the furious one of Charlotte Pain. "Step this way," he said to George Godolphin. "I would speak to you alone."
He took him to another room, and shut the door. "I want the truth," he said, "upon one or two points----"
"Mr. Hastings," said George, drawing himself up, "I have told you nothing but the truth upon all points."
"Were you never engaged to Charlotte Pain?" proceeded Mr. Hastings, taking no notice of the interruption.
"Never. I never sought or wished to be."
"Then what did your good father, Sir George, mean, when he alluded to it the night he was dying? He asked if you and Charlotte were married yet, and you replied, 'Plenty of time for that.'"
"I said it merely in answer to his words: it was not an hour for dissent or explanation. He was not conscious of what he said."
"Had you expressed to him any particular liking for Charlotte Pain?"
"I had not; at any time. Sir George believed Miss Pain had a large fortune, and he recommended me, more than once, to think of her, and it. He said she was a handsome girl, and none the worse for possessing a fortune. He had heard she would have thirty thousand pounds. I used to laugh it off. I cared for Maria too much to cast a thought to Charlotte Pain. That is the whole truth, Mr. Hastings, on my honour."
"Would he have objected to Maria?"
"To Maria I am certain he would not have objected. To her want of fortune he might. But that is a thing that only concerns myself. I do not require fortune with my wife, and I do not seek it. You will give her to me, Mr. Hastings? You will dispense with unnecessary ceremony, and let her go abroad with me?" he urged. "She will do me more good than all else."
"I will give you no promise of any sort, Mr. George Godolphin. As to taking her abroad with you, it is absurd to think of it. And no daughter of mine shall enter a family where she is not sure of a hearty welcome. I must first know the sentiments of yours."
George looked radiant. "Mr. Hastings, if they heartily welcome Maria, will you allow me to welcome her?"
"Possibly I may."
"Then it is an affair decided. Janet will be relieved of a nightmare; and Maria is, I believe, Thomas's prime favourite in all the world, now that Ethel is gone."
"Of what nightmare will it relieve Miss Godolphin?" inquired the Rector.
A smile crossed George's lips. "She, like you, has been fearing that I intended to connect myself with Charlotte Pain. Only yesterday I assured Janet that she was mistaken; but I scarcely think she placed entire faith in me. She does not like Miss Pain."
"Do you think you have pursued a wise course in giving cause for this talk, regarding Miss Pain?"
"I have not given cause to Miss Pain herself, Mr. Hastings," replied George, warmly. "I am convinced that she has known in her heart of my attachment to Maria. As to whiling away a few hours with her occasionally in idle talk, it is a pastime that Charlotte Pain is given to favour."
"And myself also," Mr. George might have added.
They left the room together. A servant came up to Mr. Hastings as he was crossing the hall, and said an applicant at the door craved speech of him. The Rector turned to it, and George entered the drawing-room alone.
Maria stood, pale, anxious, excited, leaning against a corner of the window, half shrouded by the muslin curtains. She scarcely dared look up when George entered. It was not his gaze that she dreaded to meet, but that of Mr. Hastings. To anger or displease her father was wormwood to Maria.
George cast a glance round the room. "Where's Charlotte Pain?" he asked.
"She is gone," was Maria's answer. "Oh, George!" clasping her hands, and lifting to him her streaming eyes: "it was cruel of her to say what she did!"
"I could give it a better name than that, Maria. Never mind: we can afford to be generous to-day."
"Is papa fully convinced that--that I do not deserve blame?"
"He was convinced of that before he left this room. You are to be mine, Maria," he softly added in a whisper. "And very shortly. I must take you abroad with me."
She stood before him, not daring to look up now: shrinking from his ardent gaze, the crimson mantling to her pure cheek.
"Mr. Hastings demurs at the haste; calls it absurd," continued George; "but, if you will consent to waive ceremony, surely he may do so. Which would be more absurd, Maria? your marrying without the three months' preparation for millinery deemed necessary by fashion, or my going away alone for an indefinite period, perhaps to die."
"Not to die, George!" she involuntarily answered in a tone painfully beseeching--as if he held the fiat of life or death in his own hands. "But--about the haste--I don't know---- I heard you thought of departing soon?"
"I ought to be away in a fortnight's time."
That startled her. "A fortnight's time!" she echoed, in a voice of alarm. "Then it could not be. What would Prior's Ash say?"
"Maria," he gravely answered, "some nine months ago, when Sarah Anne Grame was seized with fever, my brother, alarmed for Ethel's safety, would have married her hastily, so that he might have the right to remove her from danger. Ethel's answer to him was, 'What would Prior's Ash say?'--as you have now answered me. Thomas bowed to it: he suffered the world's notions to reign paramount--and he lost Ethel. What value do you suppose he sets now upon the opinions of Prior's Ash? The cases may not be precisely parallel, but they are sufficiently so to decide me. If I go away from home, I take you: if I may not take you, I do not go. And now, my darling, I will say farewell to you for the present."
She was surprised. She thought he had come to stay for some hours.
"Yes," he replied; "but affairs have changed since I entered. Until they shall be more definitively settled, Mr. Hastings will not care that I remain his guest."
He bent to kiss her. Not in the stolen manner he had been accustomed to, but--quietly, gravely, turning her shy face to his, as if it were his legal province so to do. "A little while, young lady," he saucily whispered, "and you will be giving me kiss for kiss."
Mr. Hastings was in the porch still, holding a colloquy with ill-doing and troublesome Mrs. Bond. George held out his hand as he passed.
"You have not rested yourself," said the Rector.
"I shall get back as far as the bank and rest there," replied George. "I presume, sir, that you intend to see my brother?"
"And also Miss Godolphin," curtly said the Rector.
His eyes followed George down the path to the gate, as he and his stick moved unsteadily along. "Marry now!" mentally cried Mr. Hastings, his brow contracting: "he looks more fit to take to his bed, and keep it. Now, Mrs. Bond," he added aloud, "let me hear the conclusion of this fine tale."
George took his way to the bank. He had not passed it in coming, having cut across from Ashlydyat by the nearer way at the back of the town. He took them by surprise. Mr. Crosse was out, but the clerks were warm in their congratulations; they had not believed him yet equal to the exertion.
"You look very tired," said Thomas, when they were alone in the bank parlour.
"I feel fagged to death," was George's answer. "I must get you to send out for a fly for me, and go home in that. Thomas," he continued, plunging into his business abruptly, "I expect you will have an application made to you, regarding me."
"In what way?" quietly asked Thomas.
"Well--it is not exactly a certificate of character that's required," returned George, with a smile. "I--I am thinking of getting married. Will you approve of it?"
"I have no right to disapprove," said Thomas, in a kind, grave tone. "You are your own master; free to act as you shall judge best. I only hope, George, that you will, in choosing, consider your future happiness."
"Has it never occurred to you that I have chosen?"
"I used to think at times that you had chosen, or felt inclined to choose, Maria Hastings."
"Right," said George. "I have been speaking to Mr. Hastings, and it appears to have taken him entirely by surprise. He would give me no answer until he should have ascertained whether the alliance would be agreeable to you and Janet. He is a man of crotchets, you know. So I expect he will be coming to you, Thomas."
Thomas Godolphin's eyes lighted up with pleasure. "He shall receive my hearty approval," he said, warmly. "George"--changing his tone to sadness--"in the days gone by I thought there were two young beings superior to the rest of the world: Ethel and Maria."
"I said so to Mr. Hastings. I conclude he fears that Maria's want of fortune would render her unpalatable to my family," remarked George.
"Certainly not to me. Ethel, whom I chose, had even less. If you think well to dispense with fortune in your wife, George, we have no right to object to it. I am glad that you have chosen Maria Hastings."
But there was Janet yet to come. George went home in a fly, and threw himself on the first sofa he could find. Janet, full of concern, came to him.
"I said you were attempting too much, George!" she cried. "But you never will listen to me."
"I'm sure, Janet, I listen to you dutifully. I have come home to consult you now," he added, a little spirit of mischief dancing in his gay blue eyes. "It is not fatigue or illness that has brought me. Janet, I am going to be married."
Janet Godolphin's pulses beat more quickly. She sat down and folded her hands with a gesture of pain. "I knew it would be so. You need not have tried to deceive me yesterday, lad."
"But the young lady's friends refuse her to me, unless my family openly sanction and approve of the match," went on George. "You'll be kindly over it, won't you, Janet?"
"No, lad. I cannot forbid it; I have no authority over you: but, sanction it, I never will. What has put it into your head to marry in this haste? You, with one foot in the grave, as may be said, and one out of it?"
"Well, you see, Janet, you won't trust me abroad without some one to look after me," he slowly answered, as if he were arguing some momentous question. "You say you can't go, and Bessy can't go, and Cecil may not, and I say I won't have Margery. What was I to do, but marry? I cannot take a young lady, you know, without first marrying her."
Janet Godolphin's grave eyes were fixed on vacancy, and her thin lips drawn in to pressure. She did not answer.
"Thomas heartily approves," he continued. "I have been with him."
"Thomas must do as he likes," said Janet. "But, unless you have unwittingly misunderstood him, George, you are telling me a deliberate falsehood. He will never approve of your marrying Charlotte Pain."
"Charlotte Pain!" repeated George, with an air of as much surprise as if it were genuine, "who was talking about Charlotte Pain? What put her into your head?"
Janet's face flushed. "Were you not talking of Charlotte Pain?"
"Not I," said George. "In spite of the compliments you pay my truthfulness, Janet, I meant what I said to you yesterday--that I did not intend to make her my wife. I am speaking of Maria Hastings."
"Eh, lad, but that's good news!"
George burst into a laugh. "What green geese you must all have been, Janet! Had you used your eyes, you might have detected this long time past that my choice was fixed on Maria. But the Rector doubts whether you will approve. He will not promise her to me until he has your sanction."
"I'll put my shawl on and go down at once to the Rectory, and tell him that we all love Maria," said Janet, more impulsively than was common with her: but in truth she had been relieved from a great fear. There was something about Charlotte Pain that frightened sedate Janet. Compared with her, Maria Hastings appeared everything that was desirable as a wife for George. Her want of fortune, her want of position--which was certainly not equal to that of the Godolphins--were lost sight of.
"I could manage to take some broth, Janet," cried George, as she was leaving the room. "I have had nothing since breakfast."
"To be sure. I am growing forgetful. Margery shall wait upon you, my dear. But, to go down to the Rectory without delay, is a courtesy due from me."
So, no impediment was placed upon the marriage. Neither was any impediment placed upon its immediate celebration: the Rector permitting himself to be persuaded into it.