by Ellen Wood
Reginald put on his cap to see her home, and they departed together, Reginald talking gaily, as if there were not such a thing as care in the world; Maria unable to answer him. The pain in her throat was worse than usual then. In turning out of the Rectory gate, whom should they come upon but old Jekyl, walking slowly along, nearly bent double with rheumatism. Reginald accosted him.
“Why, old Jekyl! it’s never you! Are you in the land of the living still?”
“Ay, it is me, sir. Old bones don’t get laid so easy; in spite, maybe, of their wishing it. Ma’am,” added the old man, turning to Maria, “I’d like to make bold to say a word to you. That sixty pound of mine, what was put in the Bank — you mind it?”
“Yes,” said Maria faintly.
“The losing of it’ll be just dead ruin to me, ma’am. I lost my bees last summer, as you heard on, and that bit o’ money was all, like, I had to look to. One must have a crust o’ bread and a sup o’ tea as long as it pleases the Almighty to keep one above ground: one can’t lie down and clam. Would you be pleased just to say a word to the gentlemen, that that trifle o’ money mayn’t be lost to me? Mr. Godolphin will listen to you.”
Maria scarcely knew what to answer. She had not the courage to tell him the money was lost; she did not like to raise delusive hopes by saying that it might be saved.
Old Jekyl wrongly interpreted the hesitation. “It was you yourself, ma’am, as advised my putting it there; for myself, I shouldn’t have had a thought on’t: surely you won’t object to say a word for me, that I mayn’t lose it now. My two sons, David and Jonathan, come home one day when they had been working at your house, and telled me, both of ‘em, that you recommended me to take my money to the Bank; it would be safe and sure. I can’t afford to lose it,” he added in a pitiful tone; “it’s all my substance on this side the grave.”
“Of course she’ll speak to them, Jekyl,” interposed Reginald, answering for Maria just as freely and lightly as he would have answered for himself. “I’ll speak to Mr. George Godolphin for you when he comes home; I don’t mind; I can say anything to him. It would be too bad for you to lose it. Good evening. Don’t go pitch-polling over! you haven’t your sea-legs on to-night.”
The feeble old man continued his way, a profusion of thanks breaking from him. They fell on Maria’s heart as a knell. Old Jekyl’s money had as surely gone as had the rest! And, but for her, it might never have been placed with the Godolphins.
When they arrived at the Bank, Reginald gave a loud and flourishing knock, pulled the bell with a peal that alarmed the servants, and then made off with a hasty good-night, leaving Maria standing there alone, in his careless fashion. At the same moment there advanced from the opposite direction a woman carrying a brown-paper parcel.
It was Margery. Detained where she had gone to meet her sister by that sister’s sudden illness, she had been unable to return until now. It had put Margery out considerably, and altogether she had come home in anything but a good humour.
“I knew there’d be no luck in the journey,” she cried, in reply to Maria’s salutation. “The night before I started I was in the midst of a muddy pool all night in my dream, and couldn’t get out of it.”
“Is your sister better?” asked Maria.
“She’s better: and gone on into Wales. But she’s the poorest creature I ever saw. Is all well at home, ma’am?”
“All well,” replied Maria, her tone subdued, as she thought how different it was in one sense from “well.”
“And how has Harriet managed with the child?” continued Margery in a tart tone, meant for the unconscious Harriet.
“Very well indeed,” answered Maria. “Quite well.”
The door had been opened, and they were then crossing the hall. Maria turned into the dining-room, and Margery continued her way upstairs, grumbling as she did so. To believe that Harriet, or any one else, herself excepted, could do “Quite well” by Meta, was a stretch of credulity utterly inadmissible to Margery’s biased mind. In the nursery sat Harriet, a damsel in a smart cap with flying pink ribbons.
“What, is it you?” was her welcome to Margery. “We thought you had taken up your abode yonder for good.”
“Did you?” said Margery. “What else did you think?”
“And your sister, poor dear!” continued Harriet, passing over the retort, and speaking sympathizingly, for she generally found it to her interest to keep friends with Margery. “Has she got well?”
“As well as she ever will be, I suppose,” was Margery’s crusty answer.
She sat down, untied her bonnet and threw it off, and unpinned her shawl. Harriet snuffed the candle and resumed her work, which appeared to be sewing tapes on a pinafore of Meta’s.
“Has she torn ’em off again?” asked Margery, her eyes following the progress of the needle.
“She’s always tearing ’em off,” responded Harriet, biting the end of her thread.
“And how’s things going on here?” demanded Margery, her voice assuming a confidential tone, as she drew her chair nearer to Harriet’s. “The Bank’s not opened again, I find, for I asked so much at the station.”
“Things couldn’t be worse,” said Harriet. “It’s all a smash together. The house is bankrupt.”
“Lord help us!” ejaculated Margery.
Harriet let her work fall on the table, and leant her head towards Margery’s, her voice dropped to a whisper.
“I say! We have a man in here!”
“In here!” breathlessly rejoined Margery.
Harriet nodded. “Since last Tuesday. There’s one stopping here, and there’s another at Ashlydyat. Margery, I declare to you when they were going through the house, them creatures, I felt that sick, I didn’t know how to bear it. If I had dared I’d have upset a bucket of boiling water over the lot as they came up the stairs.”
Margery sat, revolving the news, a terribly blank look upon her face. Harriet resumed.
“We shall all have to leave, every soul of us: and soon, too, we expect. I don’t know about you, you know. I am so sorry for my mistress!”
“Well!” burst forth Margery, giving vent to her indignation; “he has brought matters to a fine pass!”
“Meaning master?” asked Harriet.
“Meaning nobody else,” was the tart rejoinder.
“He just has,” said Harriet. “Prior’s Ash is saying such things that it raises one’s hair to hear them. We don’t like to repeat them again, only just among ourselves.”
“What’s the drift of ‘em?” inquired Margery.
“All sorts of drifts. About his having took and made away with the money in the tills: and those bonds of my Lord Averil’s, that there was so much looking after — it was he took them. Who’d have believed it, Margery, of Mr. George Godolphin, with his gay laugh and his handsome face?”
“Better for him if his laugh had been a bit less gay and his face less handsome,” was the sharp remark of Margery. “He might have been steadier then.”
“Folks talk of the Verralls, and that set, up at Lady Godolphin’s Folly,” rejoined Harriet, her voice falling still lower. “Prior’s Ash says he has had too much to do with them, and — —”
“I don’t want that scandal repeated over to me,” angrily reprimanded Margery. “Perhaps other people know as much about it as Prior’s Ash; they have eyes, I suppose. There’s no need for you to bring it up to one’s face.”
“But they talk chiefly about Mr. Verrall,” persisted Harriet, with a stress upon the name. “It’s said that he and master have had business dealings together of some sort, and that that’s where the money’s gone. I was not going to bring up anything else. The man downstairs — and upon my word, Margery, he’s a decent man enough, if you can only forget who he is — says that there are thousands and thousands gone into Verrall’s pockets, which ought to be in master’s.”
“They’d ruin a saint, and I have always said it,” was Margery’s angry remark. “See her tearing about with her horses
and her carriages, in her feathers and her brass; and master after her! Many’s the time I’ve wondered that Mr. Godolphin has put up with it. I’d have given him a word of a sort, if I had been his brother.”
“I should if I’d been his wife — —” Harriet was beginning, but Margery angrily arrested her. Her own tongue might be guilty of many slips in the heat of argument; but it was high treason for Harriet to lapse into them.
“Hold your sauce, girl! How dare you bring your mistress’s name up in any such thing? I don’t know what you mean, for my part. When she complains of her husband, it will be time enough then for you to join in the chorus. Could you wish to see a better husband, pray?”
“He is quite a model husband to her face,” replied saucy Harriet. “And the old saying’s a true one: What the eye don’t see, the heart won’t grieve. Where’s the need for us to quarrel over it?” she added, taking up her work again. “You have your opinion and I have mine, and if they were laid side by side, it’s likely they’d not be far apart from each other. But let them be bad or good, it can’t change the past. What’s done, is done: and the house is broken up.”
Margery flung off her shawl just as Charlotte Pain had flung off hers the previous Monday morning in the breakfast-room, and a silence ensued.
“Perhaps the house may go on again?” said Margery, presently, in a dreamy tone.
“Why, how can it?” returned Harriet, looking up from her work at the pinafore, which she had resumed. “All the money’s gone. A bank can’t go on without money.”
“What does he say to it?” very sharply asked Margery.
“What does who say to it?”
“Master. Does he say how the money comes to be gone? How does he like facing the creditors?”
“He is not here,” said Harriet. “He has not been home since he left last Saturday. It’s said he is in London.”
“And Mr. Godolphin?”
“Mr. Godolphin’s here. And a nice task he has of it every day with the angry creditors. If we have had one of the bank creditors bothering at the hall-door for Mr. George, we have had fifty. At first, they wouldn’t believe he was away, and wouldn’t be got rid of. Creditors of the house, too, have come, worrying my mistress out of her life. There’s a sight of money owing in the town. Cook says she wouldn’t have believed there was a quarter of the amount only just for household things, till it came to be summed up. Some of them downstairs are wondering if they will get their wages. And — I say, Margery, have you heard about Mr. Hastings?”
“What about him?” asked Margery.
“He has lost every shilling he had. It was in the Bank, and — —”
“He couldn’t have had so very much to lose,” interposed Margery, who was in a humour to contradict everything. “What can a parson save? Not much.”
“But it is not that — not his money. The week before the Bank went, he had lodged between nine and ten thousand pounds in it for safety. He was left trustee, you know, to dead Mr. Chisholm’s children, and their money was paid to him, it turns out, and he brought it to the Bank. It’s all gone.”
Margery lifted her hands in dismay. “I have heard say that failures are like nothing but a devouring fire, for the money they swallow up,” she remarked. “It seems to be true.”
“My mistress has looked so ill ever since! And she can eat nothing. Pierce says it would melt the heart of a stone to see her make believe to eat before him, waiting at dinner, trying to get a morsel down her throat, and not able to do it. My belief is, that she’s thinking of her father’s ruin night and day. Report is, that master took the money from the Rector, knowing it would never be paid back again, and used it for himself.”
Margery got up with a jerk. “If I stop here I shall be hearing worse and worse,” she remarked. “This will be enough to kill Miss Janet. That awful Shadow hasn’t been on the Dark Plain this year for nothing. We might well notice that it never was so dark before!”
Perching her bonnet on her head, and throwing her shawl over her arm, Margery lighted a candle and opened a door leading from the room into a bed-chamber. Her own bed stood opposite to her, and in a corner at the opposite end was Miss Meta’s little bed. She laid her shawl and bonnet on the drawers, and advanced on tiptoe, shading the light with her hand.
Intending to take a fond look at her darling. But, like many more of us who advance confidently on some pleasure, Margery found nothing but disappointment. The place where Meta ought to have been was empty. Nothing to be seen but the smooth white bed-clothes, laid ready open for the young lady’s reception. Did a fear dart over Margery’s mind that she must be lost? She certainly flew back as if some such idea occurred to her.
“Where’s the child?” she burst out.
“She has not come home yet,” replied Harriet, with composure. “I was waiting here for her.”
“Come home from where? Where is she?”
“At Lady Godolphin’s Folly. But Mrs. Pain has never kept her so late as this before.”
“She’s there! With Mrs. Pain?” shrieked Margery.
“She has been there every day this week. Mrs Pain has either come or sent for her. Look there,” added Harriet, pointing to a collection of toys in a corner of the nursery. “She has brought home all those things. Mrs. Pain loads her with them.”
Margery answered not a word. She blew out her candle, and went downstairs to the dining-room. Maria, her things never taken off, was sitting just as she had come in, apparently lost in thought. She rose up when Margery entered, and began untying her bonnet.
“Harriet says that the child’s at Mrs. Pain’s: that she has been there all the week,” began Margery, without circumlocution.
“Yes,” replied Maria. “I cannot think why she has not come home. Mrs. Pain — —”
“And you could let her go there, ma’am!” interrupted Margery’s indignant voice, paying little heed or deference to what her mistress might be saying. “There! If anybody had come and told it to me before this night, I would not have believed it.”
“But, Margery, it has done her no harm. There’s a pinafore or two torn, I believe, and that’s the worst. Mrs. Pain has been exceedingly kind. She has kept her dogs shut up all the week.”
Margery’s face was working ominously. It bore the sign of an approaching storm.
“Kind! She!” repeated Margery, almost beside herself. “Why, then, if it’s come to this pass, you had better have your eyes opened, ma’am, if nothing else will stop the child’s going there. Your child at Mrs. Charlotte Pain’s! Prior’s Ash will talk more than it has talked before.”
“What has Prior’s Ash said?” asked Maria, an uncomfortable feeling stealing over her.
“It has wondered whether Mrs. George Godolphin has been wholly blind or only partially so; that’s what it has done, ma’am” returned Margery, quite forgetting herself in her irritation. “And the woman coming here continually with her bold face! I’d rather see Meta — —”
Margery’s eloquence was brought to a summary end. A noise in the hall was followed by the boisterous entrance of the ladies in question, Miss Meta and Mrs. Charlotte Pain. Charlotte — really she was wild at times — had brought Meta home on horseback. Late as it was, she had mounted her horse to give the child pleasure, had mounted the child on the saddle before her, and so they had cantered down, attended by a groom. Charlotte wore her habit, and held her whip in her hand. She came in pretending to beat an imaginary horse, for the delectation of Meta. Meta was furnished with a boy’s whip, a whistle at one end, a lash at the other. She was beating an imaginary horse too, varying the play with an occasional whistle. What with the noise, the laughing, the lashes, and the whistle, it was as if Bedlam had broken loose. To crown the whole, Meta’s brown-holland dress was wofully torn, and the brim of her straw hat was almost separated from the crown.
Meta caught sight of Margery and flew to her. But not before Margery had made a sort of grab at the child. Clasping her in her arms, she held her there, as if she
would protect her from some infection. To be clasped in arms, however, and thus deprived of the delights of whip-smacking and whistling, did not accord with Miss Meta’s inclinations, and she struggled to get free.
“You’d best stop here and hide yourself, poor child!” cried Margery in a voice excessively pointed.
“It’s not much,” said Charlotte, supposing the remark applied to the damages. “The brim is only unsewn, and the blouse is an old one. She did it in swinging.”
“Who’s talking of that?” fiercely responded Margery to Mrs. Pain. “If folks had to hide their faces for nothing worse than torn clothes, it wouldn’t be of much account.”
Charlotte did not like the tone. “Perhaps you will wait until your opinion’s asked for,” said she, turning haughtily on Margery. There had been incipient warfare between those two for years: and they both were innately conscious of it.
A shrill whistle from Meta interrupted the contest. She had escaped and was standing in the middle of the room, her legs astride, her damaged hat set rakishly on the side of her head, her attitude altogether not unlike that of a man standing to see a horse go through his paces. It was precisely what the young lady was imitating: she had been taken by Charlotte to the stable-yard that day, to witness the performance.
Clack, clack! “Lift your feet up, you lazy brute!” Clack, clack, clack! “Mamma, I am making a horse canter.”
Charlotte looked on with admiring ecstasy, and clapped her hands. Maria seemed bewildered: Margery stood with dilating eyes and open mouth. There was little doubt that Miss Meta, under the able tuition of Mrs. Pain, might become an exceedingly fast young lady in time.
“You have been teaching her that!” burst forth Margery to Mrs. Pain in her uncontrollable anger. “What else might you have been teaching her? It’s fit, it is, for you to be let have the companionship of Miss Meta Godolphin!”
Charlotte laughed in her face defiantly — contemptuously — with a gleeful, merry accent. Margery, perhaps distrustful of what she might be further tempted to say herself, put an end to the scene by catching up Meta and forcibly carrying her off, in spite of rebellious kicks and screams. In her temper, she flung the whip to the other end of the hall as she passed through it. “They’d make you into a boy, and worse, if they had their way. I wish Miss Janet had been here to-night!”
