Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  It was close upon ten when Charlotte rose to depart, which she persisted in doing alone, in spite of George’s remonstrance. Charlotte had no fear of being in the streets alone: she would as soon go through them by night as by day.

  As a proof of this, she did not proceed directly homewards, but turned up a road that led to the railway station. She had no objection to a stroll that moonlight night, and she had a fancy for seeing what passengers the ten-o’clock train brought, which was just in.

  It brought none. None that Charlotte could see: and she was preparing to turn back on the dull road, when a solitary figure came looming on her sight in the distance. He was better than no one, regarding him from Charlotte’s sociable point of view: but he appeared to be advanced in years. She could see so much before he came up.

  Charlotte strolled on, gratifying her curiosity by a good stare. A tall, portly man, with a fresh colour and snow-white hair. She was passing him, when he lifted his face, which had been bent, and turned it towards her. The recognition was mutual, and she darted up to him, and gave his hand a hearty shake. It was Mr. Crosse.

  “Good gracious me! We thought you never meant to come back again!”

  “And I would rather not have come back, Mrs. Pain, than come to hear what I am obliged to hear. I went streaming off from Pau, where I was staying, a confounded, senseless tour into Spain, leaving no orders for letters to be sent to me; and so I heard nothing. What has brought about this awful calamity?”

  “What calamity?” asked Charlotte — knowing perfectly well all the while.

  “What calamity!” repeated Mr. Crosse, who was rapid in speech and hot in temper. “The failure of the Bank — the Godolphins’ ruin. What else?”

  “Oh, that!” slightingly returned Charlotte. “That’s stale news now. Folks are forgetting it. Queen Anne’s dead.”

  “What brought it about?” reiterated Mr. Crosse, neither words nor tone pleasing him.

  “What does bring such things about?” rejoined Charlotte. “Want of money, I suppose. Or bad management.”

  “But there was no want of money; there was no bad management in the Godolphins’ house,” raved Mr. Crosse, becoming excited. “I wish you’d not play upon my feelings, Mrs. Pain.”

  “Who is playing upon them?” cried Charlotte. “If it was not want of money, if it was not bad management, I don’t know what else it was.”

  “I was told in London, as I came through it, that George Godolphin had been playing up old Rosemary with everything, and that Verrall has helped him,” continued Mr. Crosse.

  “Folks will talk,” said bold Charlotte. “I was told — it was the current report in Prior’s Ash — that the stoppage had occurred through Mr. Crosse withdrawing his money from the concern.”

  “What an unfounded assertion,” exclaimed that gentleman in choler. “Prior’s Ash ought to have known better.”

  “So ought those who tell you rubbish about George Godolphin and Verrall,” coolly affirmed Charlotte.

  “Where’s Thomas Godolphin?”

  “At Ashlydyat. He’s in luck. My Lord Averil has bought it all in as it stands, and Mr. Godolphin remains in it.”

  “He is ill, I hear?”

  “Pretty near dead, I hear,” retorted Charlotte. “My lord is to marry Miss Cecilia.”

  “And where’s that wicked George?”

  “If you call names, I won’t answer you another word, Mr. Crosse.”

  “I suppose you don’t like to hear it,” he returned in so pointed a manner that Charlotte might have felt it as a lance-shaft. “Well, where is he?”

  “Just gone into lodgings with his wife and Margery and Meta. I have been taking tea with them. They left the Bank to-day.”

  Mr. Crosse stood, nodding his head in the moonlight, and communing aloud with himself. “And so — and so — it is all a smash together! It is as bad as was said.”

  “It couldn’t be worse,” cried Charlotte. “Prior’s Ash won’t hold up its head for many a day. It’s no longer worth living in. I leave it for good to-morrow.”

  “Poor Sir George! It’s a good thing he was in his grave. Lord Averil could have prosecuted George, I hear.”

  “Were I to hear to-morrow that I could be prosecuted for standing here and talking to you to-night, it wouldn’t surprise me,” was the answer.

  “What on earth did he do with the money? What went with it?”

  “Report runs that he founded a cluster of almhouses with it,” said Charlotte demurely. “Ten old women, who were to be found in coals and red cloaks, and half-a-crown a week.”

  The words angered him beyond everything. Nothing could have been more serious than his mood; nothing could savour of levity, of mockery, more than hers. “Report runs that he has been giving fabulous prices for horses to make presents of,” angrily retorted Mr. Crosse, in a tone of pointed significance.

  “Not a bit of it,” returned undaunted Charlotte. “He only gave bills.”

  “Good night to you, Mrs. Pain,” came the next words, haughtily and abruptly, and Mr. Crosse turned to continue his way.

  Leaving Charlotte standing there. No other passengers came down from the station: there were none to come: and she turned to retrace her steps to the town. She walked slowly and moved her head from side to side, as if she would take in all the familiar features of the landscape by way of farewell in anticipation of the morrow; the day that was to close her residence at Prior’s Ash for ever.

  PART THE THIRD.

  CHAPTER I. A MORNING CALL.

  Time elapsed. Autumn weather had come; and things were going on in their progression at Prior’s Ash as things always must go on. Be it slow or fast, marked or unmarked, the stream of life must glide forward; onwards, onwards; never turning from its appointed course that bears us straight towards eternity.

  In the events that concern us nothing had been very marked. At least, not outwardly. There were no startling changes to be recorded — unless, indeed, it was that noted change in the heart of the town. The Bank of which you have heard so much was no more; but in its stead flourished an extensive ironmongery establishment — which, it was to be hoped, would not come to the same ignoble end. The house had been divided into two dwellings: the one, accessible by the former private entrance, was let to a quiet widow lady and her son, a young man reading for the Church; the other had been opened in all the grandeur and glory of highly-polished steel and iron. Not one of the Godolphins could pass it without a keen heart-pang, but the general public were content to congregate and admire as long as the novelty lasted.

  The great crash, which had so upset the equanimity of Prior’s Ash, was beginning to be forgotten as a thing of the past. The bankruptcy was at an end — excepting some remaining formal proceedings which did not at all concern the general public, and not much the creditors. Compassion for those who had been injured by the calamity was dying out: many a home had been rendered needy — many desolate; but outside people do not make these uncomfortable facts any lasting concern of theirs. There were only two who did make them so, in regard to Prior’s Ash; and they would make them so as long as their lives should last.

  George Godolphin’s wife was lying in her poor lodgings, and Thomas was dying at Ashlydyat. Dying so slowly and imperceptibly that the passage to the grave was smoothed, and the town began to say that he might yet recover. The wrong inflicted upon others, however unwillingly on his own part, the distress rife in many a house around, was ever present to him. It was ever present to Maria. Some of those who had lost were able to bear it; but there were others upon whom it had brought privation, poverty, utter ruin. It was for these last that the sting was felt.

  A little boy had been born to Maria, and had died at the end of a few days. He was baptized Thomas. “Name him Thomas: it will be a remembrance of my brother,” George Godolphin had said. But the young Thomas died before the elder one. The same disorder which had taken off two of Maria’s other infants took him off — convulsions. “Best that it should be so,”
said Maria, with closed eyes and folded hands.

  Somehow she could not grow strong again. Lying in bed, sick and weak, she had time to ruminate upon the misfortunes which had befallen them: the bitter, hopeless reminiscence of the past, the trouble and care of the present, the uncertainty of the future. To dwell upon such themes is not good for the strongest frame; but for the weak it is worse than can be described. Whether it was that, or whether it was a tendency to keep ill, which might have arisen without any mental trouble at all, Maria did not grow strong. Mr. Snow sent her no end of tonics; he ordered her all kinds of dainties; he sat and chatted and joked with her by the half-hour together: and it availed not. She was about again, as the saying runs, but she remained lamentably weak. “You don’t make an effort to rouse yourself,” Mr. Snow would say, rapping his stick in displeasure upon the floor as he spoke. Well, perhaps she did not: the simple fact was, that there was neither health nor spirit within her to make the effort.

  Circumstances were cruelly against her. She might have battled with the bankruptcy — with the shock and the disgrace; she might have battled with the discomforts of their fallen position, with the painful consciousness of the distress cast upon many a home, with the humiliation dealt out to herself as her own special portion by the pious pharisees around; she might have battled with the vague prospects of the future, hopeless though they looked: women equally sensitive, good, refined as Maria, have had to contend with all this, and have survived it. But what Maria could not battle with; what had told upon her heart and her spirit more than all the rest, was that dreadful shock touching her husband. She had loved him passionately, she had trusted him wholly; in her blind faith she had never cast as much as a thought to the possibility that he could be untrue to his allegiance: and she had been obliged to learn that — infidelity forms part of a man’s frail nature. It had dashed to the ground the faith and love of years; it had outraged every feeling of her heart; it seemed to have destroyed her trust in all mankind. Implicit faith! pure love! trust that she had deemed stronger than death! — all had been rent in one moment, and the shock had been greater than was her strength to endure. It was just as when one cuts a cord asunder. Anything, anything but this! She could have borne with George in his crime and disgrace, and clung to him when the world shunned him; had he been sent out to Van Diemen’s Land, the felon that he might have been, she could have crept by his side and loved him still. But this was different. To a woman of refined feeling, as was Maria, loving trustingly, it was as the very sharpest point of human agony. It must be so. She had reposed calmly in the belief that she was all in all to him: and she awoke to find that she was no more to him than were others. They had lived, as she fondly thought, in a world of their own, a world of tenderness, of love, of unity; she and he alone; and now she learnt that his world at least had not been so exclusive. Apart from more sacred feelings that were outraged, it brought to her the most bitter humiliation. She seemed to have sunk down to a level she scarcely knew with what. It was not the broad and bare infidelity: at that a gentlewoman scarcely likes to glance; but it was the fading away of all the purity and romance which had enshrined them round, as with a halo, they alone, apart from the world. In one unexpected moment, as a flash of lightning will blast a forest tree and strip it of its foliage, leaving it bare — withered — helpless — so had that blow rent the heart’s life of Maria Godolphin. And she did not grow strong.

  Yes. Thomas Godolphin was dying at Ashlydyat, Maria was breaking her heart in her lonely lodgings, Prior’s Ash was suffering in its homes; but where was the cause of it all — Mr. George? Mr. George was in London. Looking after something to do, he told Maria. Probably he was. He knew that he had his wife and child upon his hands, and that something must be done, and speedily, or the wolf would come to the door. Lord Averil, good and forgiving as was Thomas Godolphin, had promised George to try and get him some post abroad — for George had confessed to him that he did not care to remain in England. But the prospect was a remote one at best: and it was necessary that George should exert himself while it came. So he was in town looking after the something, and meanwhile not by any means breaking his heart in regrets, or living as an anchorite up in a garret. Maria heard from him, and of him. Once a week, at least, he wrote to her, sometimes oftener; affectionate and gay letters. Loving words to herself, kisses and stories for Meta, teasings and jokes for Margery. He was friendly with the Verralls — which Prior’s Ash wondered at; and would now and then be seen riding in the Park with Mrs. Charlotte Pain — the gossip of which was duly chronicled to Maria by her gossiping acquaintance. Maria was silent on the one subject, but she did write a word of remonstrance to him about his friendship with Mr. Verrall. It was scarcely seemly, she intimated, after what people had said. George wrote her word back that she knew nothing about it; that people had taken up a false notion altogether. Verrall was a good fellow at heart; what had happened was not his fault, but the fault of certain men with whom he, Verrall, had been connected; and Verrall was showing himself a good friend now, and he did not know what he should do without him.

  “A warm bright day like this, and I find you moping and stewing on that sofa! I’ll tell you what it is, Mrs. George Godolphin, you are trying to make yourself into a chronic invalid.”

  Mr. Snow’s voice, in its serio-comic accent, might be heard at the top of the house as he spoke. It was his way.

  “I am better than I was,” answered Maria. “I shall get well some time.”

  “Some time! It’s to be hoped you will. But you are not doing much yourself towards it. Have the French left you a cloak and bonnet, pray?”

  Maria smiled at his joke. She knew he alluded to the bankruptcy commissioners. When Mr. Snow was a boy, the English and French were at war, and he generally used the word French in a jesting way to designate enemies.

  “They left me all,” she said.

  “Then be so good as to put them on. I don’t terminate this visit until I have seen you out of doors.”

  To contend would be more trouble than to obey. She wrapped herself up and went out with Mr. Snow. Her steps were almost too feeble to walk alone.

  “See the lovely day it is! And you, an invalid, suffering from nothing but dumps, not to be out in it! It’s nearly as warm as September. Halloa, young lady! are you planting cabbages?”

  They had turned an angle and come upon Miss Meta. She was digging away with a child’s spade, scattering mould over the path; her woollen shawl, put on for warmth, had turned round, and her hat had fallen back, with the ardour of her labours. David Jekyl, who was digging to more purpose close by, was grumbling at the scattered mould on his clean paths.

  “I’ll sweep it up, David: I’ll sweep it up!” the young lady said.

  “Fine sweeping it ‘ud be!” grunted David.

  “I declare it’s as warm as summer in this path!” cried Mr. Snow. “Now mind, Mrs. George, you shall stay here for half an hour; and if you grow tired there’s a bench to sit upon. Little damsel, if mamma goes indoors, you tell me the next time I come. She is to stay out.”

  “I’ll not tell of mamma,” said Meta, throwing down her spade and turning her earnest eyes, her rosy cheeks, full on Mr. Snow.

  He laughed as he walked away. “You are to stay out for the half-hour, mind you, Mrs. George. I insist upon it.”

  Direct disobedience would not have been expedient, if only in the light of example to Meta; but Maria had rather been out on any other day, or been ordered to any other path. This was the first time she had seen David Jekyl since the Bank had failed, and his father’s loss was very present to her.

  “How are you, David?” she inquired.

  “I’m among the middlins,” shortly answered David.

  “And your father? I heard he was ill.”

  “So he is ill. He couldn’t be worser.”

  “I suppose the coming winter is against him?”

  “Other things are again him as well as the coming winter,” returned David. “Fretting, f
or one.”

  Ah, how bitter it all was! But David did not mean to allude in any offensive manner to the past, or to hurt the feelings of George Godolphin’s wife. It was his way.

  “Is Jonathan better?” she asked.

  “He isn’t of much account, since he got that hurt,” was David’s answer. “Doing about three days’ work in a week! It’s to be hoped times ‘ll mend.”

  Maria walked slowly to and fro in the sunny path, saying a word or two to David now and then, but choosing safer subjects; the weather, the flowers under his charge, the vegetables already nipped with frost. She looked very ill. Her face thin and white, her soft sweet eyes larger and darker than was natural. Her hands were wrapped in the cloak for warmth, and her steps were unequal. Crusty David actually ventured on a little bit of civility.

  “You don’t seem to get about over quick, ma’am.”

  “Not very, David. But I feel better than I did.”

  She sat down on the bench, and Meta came flying to her, spade in hand. Might she plant a gooseberry-tree, and have all the gooseberries off it next year for herself?

  Maria stroked the child’s hair from her flushed face as she answered. Meta flew off to find the “tree;” and Maria sat on, plunged in a train of thought which the question had led to. Where should they be at the gooseberry season next year? In that same dwelling? Would George’s prospects have become more certain then?

  “Now then! Is that the way you dig?”

  The sharp words came from Margery, who had looked out at the kitchen window and caught sight of Miss Meta rolling in the mould. The child jumped up laughing, and ran into the house for her skipping-rope.

  “Have I been out half an hour, do you think, David?” Maria asked by-and-by.

  “Near upon ‘t,” said David, without lifting his eyes.

  She rose to pursue her way slowly indoors. She was so fatigued — and there had been, so to say, no exertion — that she felt as if she could never stir out again. Merely putting on and taking off her cloak was almost beyond her. She let it fall from her shoulders, took off her bonnet, and sank into an easy-chair.