by Ellen Wood
“How shall I live through the day? how shall I live through the day?” were the words that broke from her lips. And she fell down by the bedside, and lifted her hands and her heart on high, and wailed out a cry to God to help her to get through it. Of her own strength, she truly believed that she could not.
She would certainly have need of some help, if she were to bear it patiently. At seven o’clock, a peal of muffled bells burst over the town, deafening her ears. Some mauvais sujets, discontented sufferers, had gone to the belfry of St. Mark’s Church, and set them ringing for the calamity which had overtaken Prior’s Ash, in the stoppage of the House of Godolphin.
CHAPTER XXIII. “AS FINE AS A QUEEN!”
“Is Mrs. George Godolphin within?”
The inquiry came from Grace Akeman. She put it in a sharp, angry tone, something like the sharp, angry peal she had just rung at the hall-bell. Pierce answered in the affirmative, and showed her in.
The house seemed gloomy and still, as one in a state of bankruptcy does seem. Mrs. Akeman thought so as she crossed the hall. The days had gone on to the Thursday, the bankruptcy had been declared, and those pleasant visitors, foretold by Charlotte Pain, had entered on their duties at the Bank and at Ashlydyat. Fearfully ill looked Maria: dark circles had formed under her eyes, her face had lost its bloom, and an expression as of some ever-present dread had seated itself upon her features. When Pierce opened the door to usher in her sister, she started palpably.
Things, with regard to George Godolphin, remained as they were. He had not made his appearance at Prior’s Ash, and Thomas did not know where to write to him. Maria did. She had heard from him on the Tuesday morning. His letter was written apparently in the gayest of spirits. The contrast that was presented between his state of mind (if the tone of the letter might be trusted) and Maria’s was something marvellous. A curiosity in metaphysics, as pertaining to the spiritual organization of humanity. He sent gay messages to Meta, he sent teasing ones to Margery, he never so much as hinted to Maria that he had a knowledge of anything being wrong. He should soon be home, he said; but meanwhile Maria was to write him word all news, and address the letter under cover to Mr. Verrall. But she was not to give that address to any one. George Godolphin knew he could rely upon the good faith of his wife. He wrote also to his brother: a letter which Thomas burnt as soon as read. Probably it was intended for his eye alone. But he expressed no wish to hear from Thomas; neither did he say how a letter might reach him. He may have felt himself in the light of a guilty schoolboy, who knows he merits a lecture, and would escape from it as long as possible. Maria’s suspense was almost unbearable — and Lord Averil had given no sign of what his intentions might be.
Seeing it was her sister who entered, she turned to her with a sort of relief. “Oh, Grace!” she said, “I thought I was never going to see any of you again.”
Grace would not meet the offered hand. Never much given to ceremony, she often came in and went out without giving hers. But this time Grace had come in anger. She blamed Maria for what had occurred, almost as much as she blamed George. Not of the highly refined organization that Maria was, Grace possessed far keener penetration. Had her husband been going wrong, Grace would inevitably have discovered it; and she could not believe but that Maria must have suspected George Godolphin. In her angry feeling against George, whom she had never liked, Grace would have deemed it right that Maria should denounce him. Whether she had been wilfully blind, or really blind, Grace alike despised her for it. “I shall not spare her,” Grace said to her husband: and she did not mean to spare her, now she had come.
“I have intruded here to ask if you will go to the Rectory and see mamma,” Grace began. “She is not well, and cannot come to you.”
Grace’s manner was strangely cold and stern. And Maria did not like the word “intruded.” “I am glad to see you,” she replied in a gentle voice. “It is very dull here, now. No one has been near me, except Bessy Godolphin.”
“You cannot expect many visitors,” said Grace in her hard manner — very hard to-day.
“I do not think I could see them if they came,” was Maria’s answer. “I was not speaking of visitors. Is mamma ill?”
“Yes, she is; and little wonder,” replied Grace. “I almost wish I was not married, now this misfortune has fallen upon us: it would at any rate be another pair of hands at the Rectory, and I am more capable of work than mamma or Rose. But I am married; and of course my place must be my husband’s home.”
“What do you mean by another pair of hands, Grace?”
“There are going to be changes at the Rectory,” returned Grace, staring at the wall behind Maria, apparently to avoid looking at her. “One servant only is to be retained, and the two little Chisholm girls are coming there to be kept and educated. Mamma will have all the care upon her; she and Rose must both work and teach. Papa will keep the little boy at school, and have him home in the holidays, to make more trouble at the Rectory. They, papa and mamma, will have to pinch and screw; they must deprive themselves of every comfort; bare necessaries alone must be theirs; and, all that can be saved from their income will be put by towards paying the trust-money.”
“Is this decided?” asked Maria in a low tone.
“It is decided so far as papa can decide anything,” sharply rejoined Grace. “If the law is put in force against him, by his co-trustee, for the recovery of the money, he does not know what he would do. Possibly the living would have to be sequestered.”
Maria did not speak. What Grace was saying was all too true and terrible. Grace flung up her hand with a passionate movement.
“Had I been the one to bring this upon my father and mother, Maria, I should wish I had been out of the world before it had come to pass.”
“I did not bring it upon them, Grace,” was Maria’s scarcely-breathed answer.
“Yes, you did. Maria, I have come here to speak my mind, and I must speak it. I may seem hard, but I can’t help it. How could you, for shame, let papa pay in that money, the nine thousand pounds? If you and George Godolphin must have flaunted your state and your expense in the eyes of the world, and ruined people to do it, you might have spared your father and mother.”
“Grace, why do you blame me?”
Mrs. Akeman rose from her chair, and began pacing the room. She did not speak in a loud tone; not so much in an angry one, as in a clear, sharp, decisive one. It was just the tone used by the Rector of All Souls’ when in his cynical moods.
“He has been a respected man all his life; he has kept up his position — —”
“Of whom do you speak?” interrupted Maria, really not sure whether she was applying the words satirically to George Godolphin.
“Of whom do I speak!” retorted Grace. “Of your father and mine. I say he has been respected all his life; has maintained his position as a clergyman and a gentleman, has reared his children suitably, has exercised moderate hospitality at the Rectory, and yet was putting something by that we might have a few pounds each, at his death, to help us on in the world. Not one of his children but wants helping on: except the grand wife of Mr. George Godolphin.”
“Grace! Grace!”
“And what have you brought him to?” continued Grace, lifting her hand in token that she would have out her say. “To poverty in his old age — he is getting old, Maria — to trouble, to care, to privation: perhaps to disgrace as a false trustee. I would have sacrificed my husband, rather than my father.”
Maria lifted her aching head. The reproaches were cruel, and yet they told home. It was her husband who had ruined her father: and it may be said, ruined him deliberately. Grace resumed, answering the last thought almost as if she had divined it.
“If ever a shameless fraud was committed upon another, George Godolphin wilfully committed it when he took that nine thousand pounds. Prior’s Ash may well be calling him a swindler!”
“Oh, Grace, don’t!” she said imploringly. “He could not have known that it was unsafe to take i
t.”
“Could not have known!” indignantly returned Grace. “You are either a fool, Maria, or you are deliberately saying what you know to be untrue. You must be aware that he never entered it in the books — that he appropriated it to his own use. He is a heartless, bad man! He might have chosen somebody else to prey upon, rather than his wife’s father. Were I papa, I should prosecute him.”
“Grace, you are killing me,” wailed Maria. “Don’t you think I have enough to bear?”
“I make no doubt you have. I should be sorry to have to bear the half. But you have brought it upon yourself, Maria. What though George Godolphin was your husband, you need not have upheld him in his course. Look at the ruin that has fallen upon Prior’s Ash. I can tell you that your name and George Godolphin’s will be remembered for many a long day. But it won’t be with a blessing!”
“Grace,” she said, lifting her streaming eyes, for tears had at length come to her relief, “have you no pity for me?”
“What pity have you had for others?” was Grace Akeman’s retort. “How many must go down to their graves steeped in poverty, who, but for George Godolphin’s treachery, would have passed the rest of their lives in comfort! You have been a blind simpleton, and nothing else. George Godolphin has lavished his money and his attentions broadcast elsewhere, and you have looked complacently on. Do you think Prior’s Ash has had its eyes closed, if you have?”
“What do you mean, Grace?”
“Never mind what I mean,” was Grace’s answer. “I am not going to tell you what you might have seen for yourself. It is all of a piece. If people will marry gay and attractive men, they must pay for it.”
Maria remained silent. Grace also for a time. Then she ceased her walking, and sat down opposite her sister.
“I came to ask you whether it is not your intention to go down and see mamma. She is in bed. Suffering from a violent cold, she says. I know; suffering from anguish of mind. If you would not add ingratitude to what has passed, you will pay her a visit to-day. She wishes to see you.”
“I will go,” said Maria. But as she spoke the words, the knowledge that it would be a fearful trial — showing herself in the streets of the town — was very present to her. “I will go to-day, Grace.”
“Very well,” said Grace, rising; “that’s all I came for.”
“Not quite all, Grace. You came, I think, to make me more unhappy than I was.”
“I cannot gloss over facts; it is not in my nature to do so,” was the reply of Grace. “If black is black, I must call it black; and white, white. I have not said all I could say, Maria. I have not spoken of our loss; a very paltry one, but a good deal to us. I have not alluded to other and worse rumours, touching your husband. I have spoken of the ruin brought on our father and mother, and I hold you nearly as responsible for it as George Godolphin. Where’s Meta?” she added, after a short pause.
“At Lady Godolphin’s Folly. Mrs. Pain has been very kind — —”
Grace turned sharply round. “And you can let her go there!”
“Mrs. Pain has been kind, I say, in coming for her. This is a dull house now for Meta. Margery went out on Monday, and has been detained by her sister’s illness.”
“Let Meta come to me, if you want to get rid of her,” returned Grace in a tone more stern than any that had gone before it. “If you knew the comments indulged in by the public, you would not let a child of yours be at Lady Godolphin’s Folly, while Charlotte Pain inhabits it.”
Somehow, Maria had not the courage to inquire more particularly as to the “comments:” it was a subject that she shrank from, though vague and uncertain at the best. Mrs. Akeman went out; and Maria, the strings of her grief loosened, sat down and cried as if her heart would break.
With quite a sick feeling of dread she dressed herself to go to the Rectory. But not until later in the day. She put it off, and put it off, with some faint wish, foolish and vain, that dusk would forestall its usual hour. The western sun, drawing towards its setting, streamed full on the street of Prior’s Ash as she walked down it. Walked down it, almost as a criminal, a black veil over her face, flushed with its sensitive dread. No one but herself knew how she shrank from the eyes of her fellow-creatures.
She might have ordered the close carriage and gone down in it — for the carriages and horses were yet at her disposal. But that, to Maria, would have been worse. To go out in state in her carriage, attended by her men-servants, would have seemed more defiant of public feelings than to appear on foot. Were these feelings ultra-sensitive? absurd? Not altogether. At any rate, I am relating the simple truth — the facts as they occurred — the feelings that actuated her.
“Look at her, walking there! She’s as fine as a queen!” The words, in an insolent, sneering tone, caught her ear as she passed a group of low people gathered at the corner of a street. They would not be likely to come from any other. That they were directed to her there was no doubt; and Maria’s ears tingled as she hastened on.
Was she so fine? she could not help asking herself. She had put on the plainest things she had. A black silk dress and a black mantle, a white silk bonnet and a black veil. All good things, certainly, but plain, and not new. She began to feel that reproaches were cast upon her which she did not deserve: but they were not the less telling upon her heart.
Did she dread going into the Rectory? Did she dread the reproaches she might be met with there? — the coldness? the slights? If so, she did not find them. She was met by the most considerate kindness, and perhaps it wrung her heart all the more.
They had seen her coming, and Rose ran forward to meet her in the hall, and kissed her; Reginald came boisterously out with a welcome; a chart in one hand, parallel-rulers and a pair of compasses in the other: he was making a pretence of work, was pricking off a ship’s place in the chart. The Rector and Isaac were not at home.
“Is mamma in bed?” she asked of Rose.
“Yes. But her cold is better this evening. She will be so glad to see you.”
Maria went up the stairs and entered the room alone. The anxious look of trouble on Mrs. Hastings’s face, its feverish hue, struck her forcibly, as she advanced with timidity, uncertain of her reception. Uncertain of the reception of a mother?? With an eagerly fond look, a rapid gesture of love, Mrs. Hastings drew Maria’s face down to her for an embrace.
It unhinged Maria. She fell on her knees at the side of the bed, and gave vent to a passionate flood of tears. “Oh mother, mother, I could not help it!” she wailed. “It has been no fault of mine.”
Mrs. Hastings did not speak. She put her arm round Maria’s neck, and let it rest there. But the sobs were redoubled.
“Don’t, child!” she said then. “You will make yourself ill. My poor child!”
“I am ill, mamma; I think I shall never be well again,” sobbed Maria, losing some of her reticence. “I feel sometimes that it would be a relief to die.”
“Hush, my love! Keep despair from you, whatever you do.”
“I could bear it better but for the thought of you and papa. That is killing me. Indeed, indeed I have not deserved the blame thrown upon me. I knew nothing of what was happening.”
“My dear, we have not blamed you.”
“Oh yes, every one blames me!” wailed Maria. “And I know how sad it is for you all — to suffer by us. It breaks my heart to think of it. Mamma, do you know I dreamt last night that a shower of gold was falling down to me, faster than I could gather it in my hands. I thought I was going to pay every one, and I ran away laughing, oh so glad! and held out some to papa. ‘Take them,’ I said to him, ‘they are slipping through my fingers.’ I fell down when I was near him, and awoke. I awoke — and — then” — she could scarcely speak for sobbing— “I remembered. Mamma, but for Meta I should have been glad in that moment to die.”
The emotion of both was very great, nearly overpowering Maria. Mrs. Hastings could not say much to comfort, she was too prostrated herself. Anxious as she had been to see Maria, fo
r she could not bear the thought of her being left alone and unnoticed in her distress — she almost repented having sent for her. Neither was strong enough to bear this excess of agitation.
Not a word was spoken of George Godolphin. Mrs. Hastings did not mention him; Maria could not. The rest of the interview was chiefly spent in silence, Maria holding her mother’s hand and giving way to a rising sob now and then. Into the affairs of the Bank Mrs. Hastings felt that she could not enter. There must be a wall of silence between them on that point, as on the subject of George.
At the foot of the stairs, as she went down, she met her father. “Oh, is it you, Maria?” he said. “How are you?”
His tone was kindly. But Maria’s heart was full, and she could not answer. He turned into the room by which they were standing, and she went in after him.
“When is your husband coming back? I suppose you don’t know?”
“No,” she answered, obliged to confess it.
“My opinion is, it would be better for him to face it, than to remain away,” said the Rector. “A more honourable course, at any rate.”
Still there was no reply. And Mr. Hastings, looking at his daughter’s face in the twilight of the evening, saw that it was working with emotion; that she was striving, almost in vain, to repress her feelings.
“It must be very dull for you at the Bank now, Maria,” he resumed in a gentle tone: “dull and unpleasant. Will you come to the Rectory for a week or two, and bring Meta?”
The tears streamed from her eyes then, unrepressed. “Thank you, papa! thank you for all your kindness,” she answered, striving not to choke. “But I must stay at home as long as I may.”
