by Ellen Wood
Thomas left the room, saying no more. He would not pain her by speaking of the utter ruin which had come upon them, the disgraceful ruin; of the awful trouble looming upon them, in which she must be a sufferer equally with himself; perhaps she the greatest sufferer. Time enough for it. Maria sat down in her place again, a dull mist before her eyes, sorrow in her heart.
“Mamma, I’ve eaten my egg. I want some of that.”
Meta’s finger was stretched towards the ham at the foot of the table. Maria rose mechanically to cut her some. There was no saying this morning, “That is not good for Meta.” Her heart was utterly bowed down beyond resistance, or thought of it. She placed some ham on a plate, cut it into small pieces, and laid it before that eager young lady.
“Mamma, I should like some buttered roll.”
The roll was supplied also. What would not Maria have supplied, if asked for? All these commonplace trifles appeared so pitiably insignificant beside the dreadful trouble come upon them.
“A little more sugar, please, mamma.”
Before any answer could be given to this latter demand, either in word or action, a tremendous summons at the hall-door resounded through the house. Maria shrank from its sound. A fear, she knew not of what, had taken up its abode within her, some strange, undefined dread, connected with her husband.
Her poor heart need not have beaten so; her breath need not have been held, her ears strained to listen. Pierce threw open the dining-room door, and there rushed in a lady, all demonstrative sympathy and eagerness. A lady in a handsome light Cashmere shawl, which spread itself over her dress and nearly covered it, and a straw hat, with an upright scarlet plume.
It was Charlotte Pain. She seized Maria’s hand and impulsively asked what she could do for her. “I knew it would be so!” she volubly exclaimed— “that you’d be looking like a ghost. That’s the worst of you, Mrs. George Godolphin! You let any trifle worry you. The moment I got the letters in this morning, and found how badly things were turning out for your husband, I said to myself, ‘There’ll be Mrs. George in the dumps!’ And I flung this shawl on to cover my toilette, for I was not en grande tenue, and came off to cheer you, and see if I could be of any use.”
Charlotte flung her shawl off as she spoke, ignoring ceremony. She had taken the chair vacated by Thomas Godolphin, and with a dexterous movement of the hands, the shawl fell behind her, disclosing the “toilette.” A washed-out muslin skirt of no particular colour, tumbled, and a little torn; and some strange-looking thing above it, neither jacket nor body, of a bright yellow, the whole dirty and stained.
“You are very kind,” answered Maria, with a shrinking spirit and a voice that faltered. Two points in Mrs. Pain’s words had struck upon her ominously. The mention of the letters, and the hint conveyed in the expression, things turning out “badly” for George. “Have you heard from him?” she continued.
“Heard from him! — how could I?” returned Charlotte. “London letters don’t come in this morning. What should he have to write to me about, either? I have heard from another quarter, and I have heard the rumours in Prior’s Ash.”
“Will you tell me what you have heard?” rejoined Maria.
“Well,” said Charlotte in a friendly tone, as she leaned towards her, “I suppose the docket will be struck to-day — if it is not struck already. The Philistines are down on the house, and mean to declare it bankrupt.”
Maria sat in blank dismay. She understood very little of the details of these business matters. Charlotte was quite at home in such things. “What will be the proceedings?” Maria asked, after a pause. “What do they do?”
“Oh, there’s a world of bother,” returned Charlotte. “It will drive quiet Thomas Godolphin crazy. The books have all to be gone through, and accounts of moneys rendered. The worst is, they’ll come here and note down every individual thing in the house, and then put a man in to see that nothing’s moved. That agreeable item in the business I dare say you may expect this morning.”
Let us give Charlotte her due. She had really come in a sympathizing, friendly spirit to Maria Godolphin, and in no other. It may be, that Charlotte rather despised her for being so simple and childish in the ways of the world, but that was only the more reason why she should help her if she could. Every word of information that Mrs. Pain was giving was as a dagger thrust in Maria’s heart. Charlotte had no suspicion of this. Had a similar calamity happened to herself, she would have discussed it freely with all the world: possessing no extreme sensibility of feeling, she did not understand it in another. For Maria to talk of the misfortune, let its aspect be ever so bad, seemed to Charlotte perfectly natural.
Charlotte leaned closer to Maria, and spoke in a whisper. “Is there anything you’d like to put away?”
“To put away?” repeated Maria, not awake to the drift of the argument.
“Because you had better give it to me at once. Spoons, or plate of any sort, or your own jewellery; any little things that you may want to save. I’ll carry them away under my shawl. Don’t you understand me?” she added, seeing the blank perplexity on Maria’s face. “If once those harpies of men come in, you can’t move or hide a single article, but you might put the whole house away now, if you could get it out.”
“But suppose it were known?” asked Maria.
“Then there’d be a row,” was Charlotte’s candid answer. “Who’s to know it? Look at that greedy little monkey?”
Meaning Miss Meta, who was filling her mouth quickly with the pieces of ham and the buttered roll, seemingly with great relish.
“Is it good, child?” said Charlotte.
For answer, Meta nodded her head, too busy to speak. Maria, as in civility bound, invited her visitor to take some breakfast.
“I don’t care if I do,” said Charlotte. “I was just going to breakfast when I came off to you. Look here, Mrs. George Godolphin, I’ll help myself; you go meanwhile and make up a few parcels for me. Just what you set most value by, you know.”
“I should be afraid,” answered Maria.
“What is there to be afraid of?” asked Charlotte, opening her eyes. “They’ll be safe enough at the Folly. That is Lady Godolphin’s: her private property. The bankruptcy can’t touch that; as it will this place and Ashlydyat. For the matter of that, I’d swear they were mine with all the pleasure in life, if they did get seen.”
“Ashlydyat!” broke from Maria’s lips.
“Ashlydyat will have to go of course, and everything in it. At the same time that those harpies walk in here, another set will walk into Ashlydyat. I should like to see Janet’s face when they arrive! You make haste, and put up all you can. There may be no time to lose.”
“I do not think it would be right,” debated Maria.
“Stuff and nonsense about ‘right!’ such things are done every day. I dare say you have many little valuables that you had rather keep than lose.”
“I have many that it would be a great grief to me to lose.”
“Well, go and put them together. I will take every care of them, and return them to you when the affair has blown over.”
Maria hesitated. To her honourable mind, there appeared to be something like fraud in attempting such a thing. “Will you allow me just to ask Thomas Godolphin if I may do it?” she said.
Charlotte Pain began to think that Maria must be an idiot. “Ask Thomas Godolphin! You would get an answer! Why, Mrs. George, you know what Thomas Godolphin is — with his strait-laced principles! He would cut himself in two, rather than save a button, if it was not legally his to save. I believe that if by the stroke of a pen he could make it appear that Ashlydyat could not be touched, he wouldn’t make the stroke. Were you to go with such a question to Thomas Godolphin, he’d order you, in his brother’s name, not to put aside as much as a ten-and-sixpenny ring. You must do it without the knowledge of Thomas Godolphin.”
“Then I think I would rather not do it,” said Maria. “Thank you all the same, Mrs. Pain.”
Mrs. Pai
n shrugged her shoulders with a movement of contempt, threw off her hat, and drew her chair to the breakfast-table. Maria poured out some coffee, and helped her to what she chose to take.
“Are you sure — the people you speak of will be in the house to-day?” asked Maria.
“I suppose they will.”
“I wish George would come back?” involuntarily broke from Maria’s lips.
“He’d be a great simpleton if he did,” said Charlotte. “He’s safer where he is.”
“Safer from what?” quickly asked Maria.
“From bother. I should not come if I were George. I should let them fight the battle out without me. Mrs. George Godolphin,” added Charlotte, meaning to be good-natured, “you had better reconsider your resolve and let me save you a few things. Not a stick or stone will be left to you. This will be a dreadful failure, and you won’t be spared. They’ll take every trinket you possess, leaving you nothing but your wedding-ring.”
Maria could not be persuaded. She seemed altogether in a fog, understanding little: but she felt that what Charlotte proposed would not be within the strict rules of right.
“They’ll poke their noses into drawers and boxes, into every hole and corner in the house; and from that time forth the things are not yours, but theirs,” persisted Charlotte, for her information.
“I cannot help it,” sighed Maria. “I wish George was here!” “At any rate, you’ll do one thing,” said Charlotte. “You’ll let me carry off the child for the day. It will not be a pleasant sight for her, young as she is, to witness a lot of great hulking men going through the rooms, marking down the furniture. I’ll take her back with me.”
Maria made no immediate reply. She did not particularly like the companionship of Mrs. Pain for Meta. Charlotte saw her hesitation.
“Are you thinking she will be a trouble? Nothing of the sort. I shall be glad to have her for the day, and it is as well to spare her such sights. I am sure her papa would say so.”
Maria thought he would, and she thought how kind Mrs. Pain was. Charlotte turned to Meta.
“Will Meta come and spend the day at Lady Godolphin’s Folly? — and have a high swing made between the trees, and go out in the carriage in the afternoon, and buy sugar-plums?”
Meta looked dubious, and honoured Mrs. Pain with a full stare in the face. Notwithstanding the swing and the sugar-plums — both very great attractions indeed to Meta — certain reminiscences of her last visit to the Folly were intruding themselves.
“Are the dogs there?” asked she.
Charlotte gave a most decided shake of the head. “The dogs are gone,” she said. “They were naughty dogs to Meta, and they have been shut up in the pit-hole, and can never come out again.”
“Never, never?” inquired Meta, her wide-open eyes as earnest as her tone.
“Never,” said Charlotte. “The great big pit-hole lid’s fastened down with a strong brass chain: a chain as thick as Meta’s arm. It is all right,” added Charlotte in an aside whisper to Maria, while pretending to reach over the breakfast-table for an egg-spoon. “She shan’t as much as hear the dogs. I’ll have them shut up in the stable. We’ll have such a beautiful swing, Meta!”
Meta finished the remainder of her breakfast and slid off her chair. Reassured upon the subject of the dogs, she was eager to be off at once to the pleasures of the swing. Maria rang the bell for Harriet, and gave orders that she should be dressed.
“Let her come in this frock,” said Charlotte. “There’s no knowing what damage it may undergo before the day’s out.”
Meta was taken away by Harriet. Charlotte finished her breakfast, and Maria sat burying her load of care, even from the eyes of friendly Charlotte. “Do you like my Garibaldi shirt?” suddenly asked the latter.
“Like what?” questioned Maria, not catching the name.
“This,” replied Charlotte, indicating the yellow article by a touch. “They are new things just come up: Garibaldi shirts they are called. Mrs. Verrall sent me three down from London: a yellow, a scarlet, and a blue. They are all the rage, she says. Do you admire it?”
But for Maria’s innate politeness, and perhaps for the sadness beating at her heart, she would have answered that she did not admire it at all: that it looked a shapeless, untidy thing. Charlotte continued, without waiting for a reply.
“You don’t see it to advantage. It is soiled, and has lost a button or two. Those dogs make horrid work of my things, with their roughness and their dirty paws. Look at this great rent in my gown which I have pinned up! Pluto did that this morning. He is getting fearfully savage, now he’s old.”
“You must not allow them to frighten Meta,” said Maria somewhat anxiously. “She should not see them.”
“I have told you she shall not. Can’t you trust me? The dogs — —”
Charlotte paused. Meta came running in, ready; in her large straw hat with its flapping brim, and her cool brown-holland outdoor dress. Charlotte rose, drew her shawl about her shoulders, and carried her hat to the glass, to settle it on. Then she took Meta by the hand, said good morning, and sailed out; the effect of her visit having been partly to frighten, partly to perplex, Maria.
Maria sat on with her load of care, and her new apprehensions. These agreeable visitors that Charlotte warned her of — she wondered that Thomas had not mentioned it. Would they take all the clothes she had upstairs, leaving her only what she stood upright in? Would they take Meta’s? Would they take her husband’s out of his drawers and places? Would they take the keeper off her finger? It was studded with diamonds. Charlotte had said they would only leave her her wedding-ring. These thoughts were troubling and perplexing her; but only in a degree. Compared with that other terrible thought, they were as nothing — the uncertain fear, regarding her husband, which had been whispered to her by the careless sailor, Reginald Hastings.
CHAPTER XXII. BEARING THE BRUNT.
Thomas Godolphin sat in the Bank parlour, bearing the brunt of the shock. With his pain upon him, mental and bodily, he was facing all the trouble that George ought to have faced: the murmurs, the questions, the reproaches.
All was known. All was known to Thomas Godolphin. Not alone to him. Could Thomas have kept the terrible facts within his own breast, have shielded his brother’s reputation still, he would have done it: but that was impossible. In becoming known to Mr. Godolphin, it had become known to others. The discovery had been made jointly, by Thomas and by certain business gentlemen, when he was in London on the Saturday afternoon. Treachery upon treachery! The long course of deceit on George Godolphin’s part had come out. Falsified books; wrongly-rendered accounts; good securities replaced by false; false balance-sheets. Had Thomas Godolphin been less blindly trustful in George’s honour and integrity, it could never have been so effectually accomplished. George Godolphin was the acting manager: and Thomas, in his perfect trust, combined with his failing health, had left things latterly almost entirely in George’s hands. “What business had he so to leave them?” People were asking it now. Perhaps Thomas’s own conscience was asking the same. But why should he not have left things to him, considering that he placed in him the most implicit confidence? Surely, no unprejudiced man would say Thomas Godolphin had been guilty of imprudence. George was fully equal to the business confided to him, in point of power and capacity; and it could not certainly matter which of the brothers, equal partners, equal heads of the firm, took its practical management. It would seem not: and yet they were blaming Thomas Godolphin now.
Failures of this nature have been recorded before, where fraud has played its part. We have only to look to the records of our law courts — criminal, bankruptcy, and civil — for examples. To transcribe the precise means by which George Godolphin had contrived to bear on in a course of deceit, to elude the suspicion of the world in general, and the vigilance of his own house, would only be to recapitulate what has often been told in the public records: and told to so much more purpose than I could tell it. It is rather with what may
be called the domestic phase of these tragedies that I would deal: the private, home details; the awful wreck of peace, of happiness, caused there. The world knows enough (rather too much, sometimes) of the public part of these affairs; but what does it know of the part behind the curtain? — the, if it may be so said, inner aspect?
I knew a gentleman, years ago, who was partner in a country banking-house: a sleeping partner; and the Bank failed. Failed through a long-continued course of treachery on the part of one connected with it — something like the treachery described to you as pur sued by Mr. George Godolphin. This gentleman (of whom I tell you) was to be held responsible for the losses, so the creditors and others decided: the real delinquent having disappeared, escaped beyond their reach. They lavished upon this gentleman harsh names; rogue, thief, swindler, and so on! — while, in point of fact, he was as innocent and unconscious of what had happened as they were. He gave up all he had; the bulk of his fortune had gone with the Bank; and he went out of hearing of his abusers for a while until things should become smoother; perhaps the bad man be caught. A short time, and he became ill; and a medical man was called in to him. Again, a short time, and he was dead: and the doctors said — I heard them say it — that his malady had been brought on by grief; that he had, in fact, died of a broken heart. He was a kindly gentleman; a good husband, a good father, a good neighbour; a single-hearted, honest man; the very soul of honour: but he was misjudged by those who ought to have known him better; and he died for it. I wonder what the real rogue felt when he heard of the death? They were relatives. There are many such cases in the world: where reproach and abuse are levelled at one whose heart is breaking.
There appeared to be little doubt that George Godolphin’s embarrassments had commenced years ago. It is more than probable that the money borrowed from Verrall during that short sojourn in Homburg had been its precursor. Once in the hands of the clever charlatan, the crafty, unscrupulous bill-discounter, who grew fat on the folly of others, his downward course was — perhaps not easy or swift, but at all events certain. If George Godolphin had but been a little more clear-sighted, the evil might never have come. Could he but have seen Verrall at the outset as he was: not the gentleman, the good-hearted man, as George credulously believed, but the low fellow who traded on the needs of others, the designing sharper, looking ever after his prey, George would have flung him off with no other feeling than contempt. George Godolphin was not born a rogue. George was by nature a gentleman, and honest and open; but, once in the clutches of Verrall, he was not able to escape.
