Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  “Thank goodness the day has already dawned!” involuntarily broke from George.

  Mr. Verrall looked at him for an explanation. He did not understand what particular cause for thankfulness there should be in that.

  “We shall get away from the place to-day,” said George. “If I stopped in it I should come to the dogs.”

  “Nothing of the sort,” cried Mr. Verrall. “Luck is safe to turn some time. It’s like the tide, it has its time for flowing in, and its time for flowing out; once let it turn, and it comes rushing in all one way. But, what do you mean about going? Your wife is not well enough to travel yet.”

  “Yes she is,” was George’s answer. “Quite well enough.”

  “Of course you know best. I think you should consider — —”

  “Verrall, I should consider my wife’s health and safety before any earthly thing,” interrupted George. “We might have started to-day, had we liked: I speak of the day that has gone: the doctor said yesterday that she was well enough to travel.”

  “I was not aware of that. I shall remain here a week longer.”

  “And I shall be away before to-morrow night.”

  “Not you,” cried Mr. Verrall.

  “I shall: if I keep in the mind I am in now.”

  Mr. Verrall smiled. He knew George was not famous for keeping his resolutions. In the morning, when his smarting should be over, he would stay on, fast enough. They wished each other good night, and George turned into his hotel.

  To his great surprise, Margery met him on the stairs. “Are you walking the house as the ghosts do?” cried he, with a renewal of his good-humour. Nothing pleased George better than to give old Margery a joking or a teasing word. “Why are you not in bed?”

  “There’s enough ghosts in the world, it’s my belief, without my personating them, sir,” was Margery’s answer. “I’m not in bed yet, because my mistress is not in bed.”

  “Your mistress not in bed!” repeated George. “But that is very wrong.”

  “So it is,” said Margery. “But it has been of no use my telling her so. She took it into her head to sit up for you; and sit up she has. Not there, sir” — for he was turning to their sitting-room— “she is lying back in the big chair in her bedroom.”

  George entered. Maria, white and wan and tired, was lying back, as Margery expressed it, in the large easy-chair. She was too fatigued, too exhausted to get up: she only held out her hand to her husband.

  “My darling, you know this is wrong,” he gently said, bending over her. “Good heavens, Maria! how ill and tired you look!”

  “I should not have slept had I gone to bed,” she said. “George, tell me where you have been: where it is that you go in an evening?”

  A misgiving crossed George Godolphin’s mind — that she already knew where. She looked painfully distressed, and there was a peculiar significance in her tone, but she spoke with timid deprecation. His conscience told him that the amusement he had been recently pursuing would not show out well in the broad light of day. An unmarried man may send himself to ruin if it pleases him to do it; but not one who has assumed the responsibilities of George Godolphin. Ruin, however, had not yet come to George Godolphin, or fear of ruin. The worst that had happened was, that he had contracted a debt to Mr. Verrall, which he did not at present see his way clear to paying. He could not refund so large a sum out of the bank without the question being put by his partners, Where does it go to? Mr. Verrall had relieved him of the embarrassment by suggesting interest. A very easy settling of the question it appeared to the careless mind of George Godolphin: and he felt obliged to Mr. Verrall.

  “Maria!” he exclaimed, “what are you thinking of? What is the matter?”

  Maria changed her position. She let her head glide from the chair on to his sheltering arm. “Mrs. Verrall frightened me, George. Will you be angry with me if I tell you? She came in this evening, and she said you and Mr. Verrall were losing all your money at the gaming-table.”

  George Godolphin’s face grew hot and angry, worse than it had been in the gambling-room, and mentally he gave Mrs. Verrall an exceedingly uncomplimentary word. “What possessed her to say that?” he exclaimed. And in truth he wondered what could have possessed her. Verrall, at any rate, was not losing his money. “Were you so foolish as to believe it, Maria?”

  “Only a little of it, George. Pray forgive me! I am weak just now, you know, and things startle me. I have heard dreadful tales of these foreign gaming-places: and I knew how much you had been out at night since we came here. It is not so, is it, George?”

  George made a show of laughing at her anxiety. “I and Verrall have strolled into the places and watched the play,” said he. “We have staked a few coins ourselves — not to be looked upon as two churls who put their British noses into everything and then won’t pay for the privilege. I lost what I staked, with a good grace; but as to Verrall, I don’t believe he is a halfpenny out of pocket. Mrs. Verrall must have been quarrelling with her husband, and so thought she’d say something to spite him. And my wife must take it for gospel, and begin to fret herself into a fever!”

  Maria drew a long, relieved breath. The address was candid, the manner was playful and tender: and she possessed the most implicit faith in her husband. Maria had doubted almost the whole world before she could have doubted George Godolphin. She drew his face down to hers, once more whispering that he was to forgive her for being so silly.

  “My dearest, I have been thinking that we may as well go on to-morrow. To-day, that is: I won’t tell you the time, if you don’t know it; but it’s morning.”

  She knew the time quite well. No anxious wife ever sat up for a husband yet, but knew it. In her impatience to be away — for she was most desirous of being at home again — she could take note of the one sentence only. “Oh, George, yes! Let us go!”

  “Will you promise to get a good night’s rest first, and not attempt to be out of bed before eleven o’clock to-morrow morning, then?”

  “George, I will promise you anything,” she said, with a radiant face. “Only say we shall start for home to-morrow.”

  “Yes, we will.”

  And, somewhat to Mr. Verrall’s surprise, they did start. That gentleman made no attempt to detain them. “But it is shabby of you both to go off like this, and leave us among these foreigners, like Babes in the wood,” said he, when Maria was already in the carriage, and George was about to step into it.

  “There is nothing to prevent you leaving too, is there, Mr. Verrall?” asked Maria, leaning forward. “And what did you and Mrs. Verrall do before we came? You had been ‘Babes in the wood’ a fortnight then.”

  “Fairly put, young lady,” returned Mr. Verrall. “I must congratulate you on one thing, Mrs. George Godolphin: that, in spite of your recent indisposition, you are looking more yourself to-day than I have yet seen you.”

  “That is because I am going home,” said Maria.

  And home they reached in safety. The land journey, the pleasant sea crossing — for the day and the waters were alike calm — and then the land again, all grew into things of the past, and they were once more at Prior’s Ash. As they drove to the Bank from the railway station, Maria looked up at the house when it came into sight, a thrill of joy running through her heart. “What a happy home it will be for me!” was her glad thought.

  “What would Thomas and old Crosse say, if they knew I had dipped into it so deeply at Homburg?” was the involuntary thought which flashed across George Godolphin.

  Quite a levee had assembled to meet them. Mrs. Hastings and Grace, Bessie and Cecil Godolphin, Thomas Godolphin and Mr. Crosse. Maria threw off her bonnet and shawl, and stood amidst them all in her dark silk travelling dress. There was no mistaking that she was intensely happy: her eye was radiant, her colour softly bright, her fair young face without a cloud. And now walked in the Rector of All Souls’, having escaped (nothing loth) from a stormy vestry meeting, to see Maria.

  “I have brought her ho
me safely, you see, sir,” George said to Mr. Hastings, leading Maria up to him.

  “And yourself also,” was the Rector’s reply. “You are worth two of the shaky man who went away.”

  “I told you I should be, sir, if you allowed Maria to go with me,” cried gallant George. “I do not fancy we are either of us the worse for our sojourn abroad.”

  “I don’t think either of you look as though you were,” said the Rector. “Maria is thin. I suppose you are not sorry to come home, Miss Maria?”

  “So glad!” she said. “I began to think it very, very long, not to see you all. But, papa, I am not Miss Maria now.”

  “You saucy child!” exclaimed Mr. Hastings. But the Rector had the laugh against him. Mrs. Hastings drew Maria aside.

  “My dear, you have been ill, George wrote me word. How did it happen? We were sorry to hear it.”

  “Yes, we were sorry too,” replied Maria, her eyelashes resting on her hot cheek. “It could not be helped.”

  “But how did it happen?”

  “It was my own fault; not intentionally, you know, mamma. It occurred the day after we reached Homburg. I and George were out walking and we met the Verralls. We turned with them, and then I had not hold of George’s arm. Something was amiss in the street, a great heap of stones and earth and rubbish; and, to avoid a carriage that came by, I stepped upon it. And, somehow I slipped off. I did not appear to have hurt myself: but I suppose it shook me.”

  “You met the Verralls at Homburg?” cried Mrs. Hastings, in surprise.

  “Yes. Did George not mention it when he wrote? They are at Homburg still. Unless they have now left it.”

  “George never puts a superfluous word into his letters,” said Mrs. Hastings, with a smile. “He says just what he has to say, and no more. He mentioned that you were not well, and therefore some little delay might take place in the return home; but he said nothing of the Verralls.”

  Maria laughed. “George never writes a long letter — —”

  “Who’s that, taking George’s name in vain?” cried George, looking round.

  “It is I, George. You never told mamma, when you wrote, that the Verralls were with us at Homburg.”

  “I’m sure I don’t remember whether I did or not,” said George.

  “The Verralls are in Wales,” observed Mr. Hastings.

  “Then they have travelled to it pretty quickly,” observed George. “When I and Maria quitted Homburg we left them in it. They had been there a month.”

  Not one present but looked up with surprise. “The impression in Prior’s Ash is, that they are in Wales,” observed Thomas Godolphin. “It is the answer given by the servants to all callers at Lady Godolphin’s Folly.”

  “They are certainly at Homburg; whatever the servants may say,” persisted George. “The servants are labouring under a mistake.”

  “It is a curious mistake for the servants to make, though,” observed the Rector, in a dry, caustic tone.

  “I think the Verralls are curious people altogether,” said Bessy Godolphin.

  “I don’t know but they are,” assented George. “But Verrall is a thoroughly good-hearted man, and I shall always speak up for him.”

  That evening George and his wife dined alone. George was standing over the fire after dinner, when Maria came and stood near him. He put out his arm and drew her to his side.

  “It seems so strange, George — being in this house with you, all alone,” she whispered.

  “Stranger than being my wife, Maria?”

  “Oh, but I have got used to that.” And George Godolphin laughed: she spoke so simply and naturally.

  “You will get used in time to this being your home, my darling.”

  PART THE SECOND.

  CHAPTER I. SIXTY POUNDS TO OLD JEKYL.

  Standing on the covered terrace outside the dining-room at the Bank, in all the warm beauty of the late and lovely spring morning, surrounded by the perfume of flowers, the green lawn stretching out before her, the pleasant sitting-room behind her, its large window open and its paintings on the walls conspicuous, was Maria Godolphin. She wore a morning dress, simple and pretty as of yore, and her fair face had lost none of its beauty, scarcely any of its youth. Looking at her you would not think that a month had elapsed since she came there, to her home, after her marriage; and yet the time, since then, would not be counted by months, but by years. Six years and a half, it is, since her marriage took place, and the little girl, whom Maria is holding by the hand, is five years old. Just now Maria’s face is all animation. She is talking to the child, and talking also to Jonathan and David Jekyl: but if you saw her at an unoccupied moment, her face in repose, you might detect an expression of settled sadness in it. It arose from the loss of her children. Three had died in succession, one after another; and this one, the eldest, was the only child remaining to her. A wondrously pretty little girl, her bare legs peeping between her frilled drawers and her white socks; with the soft brown eyes of her mother, and the golden Saxon curls of her father. With her mother’s eyes the child had inherited her mother’s gentle temperament: and Margery — who had found in her heart to leave Ashlydyat and become nurse to George’s children — was wont to say that she never had to do with so sweet-tempered a child. She had been named Maria; but the name, for home use, had been corrupted into Meta: not to interfere with Maria’s. She held her mother’s hand, and, by dint of stretching up on her toes, could just bring her eyes above the marble top of the terrace balustrade.

  “Donatan, why don’t you get that big ting, to-day?”

  Jonathan looked up, a broad smile on his face. He delighted in little children. He liked to hear them call him “Donatan:” and the little lady before him was as backward in the sound of the “th,” as if she had been French. “She means the scythe, ma’am,” said Jonathan.

  “I know she does,” said Maria. “The grass does not want mowing to-day, Meta. David, do you not think those rose-trees are very backward?”

  David gave his usual grunt. “I should wonder if they were for’ard. There ain’t no rose-trees for miles round but what is back’ard, except them as have been nursed. With the cutting spring we’ve had, how are the rose-trees to get on, I’d like to know?”

  Jonathan looked round, his face quite sunshine compared with David’s: his words also. “They’ll come on famous now, ma’am, with this lovely weather. Ten days of it, and we shall have them all out in bloom. Little miss shall have a rare posy then, and I’ll cut off the thorns first.”

  “A big one, mind, Donatan,” responded the young lady, beginning to dance about in anticipation. The child had an especial liking for roses, which Jonathan remembered. She inherited her mother’s great love for flowers.

  “David, how is your wife?” asked Maria.

  “I’ve not heard that there’s anything the matter with her,” was David’s phlegmatic answer, without lifting his face from the bed. He and Jonathan were both engaged almost at the same spot: David, it must be confessed, getting through more work than Jonathan.

  They had kept that garden in order for Mr. Crosse, when the Bank was his residence. Also for Thomas Godolphin and his sisters, the little time they had lived there: and afterwards for George. George had now a full complement of servants — rather more than a complement, indeed — and one of them might well have attended to that small garden. Janet had suggested as much: but easy George continued to employ the Jekyls. It was not often that the two attended together; as they were doing to-day.

  “David,” returned Maria, in answer to his remark, “I am sure you must know that your wife is often ailing. She is anything but strong. Only she is always merry and in good spirits, and so people think her better than she is. She is quite a contrast to you, David,” Maria added, with a smile. “You don’t talk and laugh much.”

  “Talking and laughing don’t get on with a man’s work, as ever I heerd on,” returned David.

  “Is it true that your father slipped yesterday, and sprained his ankl
e?” continued Maria. “I heard that he did.”

  “True enough,” growled David.

  “’Twas all along of his good fortune, ma’am,” said sunny Jonathan. “He was so elated with it that he slipped down Gaffer Thorpe’s steps, where he was going to tell the news, and fell upon his ankle. The damage ain’t of much account. But that’s old father all over! Prime him up with a piece of good fortune, and he is all cock-a-hoop about it.”

  “What is the good fortune?” asked Maria.

  “It’s that money come to him at last, ma’am, what he had waited for so long. I’m sure we had all given it up for lost; and father stewed and fretted over it, wondering always what was going to become of him in his old age. ‘Tain’t so very much, neither.”

  “Sixty pound is sixty pound,” grunted David.

  “Well, so it is,” acquiesced Jonathan. “And father looks to it to make him more comfortable than he could be from his profits; his honey, and his garden, and that. He was like a child last night, ma’am, planning what he’d do with it. I told him he had better take care not to lose it.”

  “Let him bring it to the Bank,” said Maria. “Tell him I say so, Jonathan. It will be safe here. He might be paid interest for it.”

  “I will, ma’am.”

  Maria spoke the words in good faith. Her mind had conjured up a vision of old Jekyl keeping his sixty pounds in his house, at the foot of some old stocking: and she thought how easily he might be robbed of it. “Yes, Jonathan, tell him to bring it here: don’t let him keep it at home, to lose it.”

  Maria had another auditor, of whose presence she was unconscious. It was her mother. Mrs. Hastings had been admitted by a servant, and came through the room to the terrace unheard by Maria. The little girl’s ears — like all children’s — were quick, and she turned, and broke into a joyous cry of “Grandma!” Maria looked round.