by Ellen Wood
“Both. But I spoke more particularly of the disease. That in itself is a lingering death, and nothing less.”
“A lingering death is the most favoured death — as I regard it: a sudden death the most unhappy. See what time is given me to ‘set my house in order,’” he added, the sober, pleasant smile deepening. “I must not fail to do it well, must I?”
“And the pain, Thomas; that will be lingering, too.”
“I must bear it.”
He rose as he spoke, and put his arm within his brother’s. George seemed to him then the same powerful protector that he, Thomas, must have seemed to Sir George in that midnight walk at Broomhead. He stood a minute or two, as if gathering strength, and then walked forward, leaning heavily on George. It was the pain, the excessive agony that so unnerved him: a little while, and he would seem in the possession of his usual strength again.
“Ay, George, it will soon be yours. I shall not long keep you out of Ashlydyat. I cannot quite tell how you will manage alone at the Bank when I am gone,” he continued, in a more business tone. “I think of it a great deal. Sometimes I fancy it might be better if you took a staid, sober partner; one middle aged. A thorough man of business. Great confidence has been accorded me, you know, George. I suppose people like my steady habits.”
“They like you for your integrity,” returned George, the words seeming to break from him impulsively. “I shall manage very well, I dare say, when the time comes. I suppose I must settle down to steadiness also; to be more as you have been. I can,” he continued, as if in soliloquy. “I can, and I will.”
“And, George, you will be a good master,” continued Thomas. “Be a kind, considerate master to all who shall then be dependent on you. I have tried to be so: and, now that the end has come, it is, I assure you, a pleasant consciousness to possess — to look back upon. I have a few, very few, poor pensioners who may have been a little the better for me: those I shall take care of, and Janet will sometimes see them. But some of the servants lapse to you with Ashlydyat: I speak of them. Make them comfortable. Most of them are already in years: take care of them when they shall be too old to work.”
“Oh, I’ll do that,” said George. “I expect Janet — —”
George’s words died away. They had rounded the ash-trees, and were fronting the Dark Plain. White enough looked the plain that night; but dark was the Shadow on it. Yes, it was there! The dark, portentous, terrific Shadow of Ashlydyat!
They stood still. Perhaps their hearts stood still. Who can know? A man would rather confess to an unholy deed, than acknowledge his belief in a ghostly superstition.
“How dark it is to-night!” broke from George.
In truth, it had never been darker, never more intensely distinct. If, as the popular belief went, the evil to overtake the Godolphins was foreshadowed to be greater or less, according to the darker or lighter hue of the Shadow, then never did such ill fall on the Godolphins, as was to fall now.
“It is black, not dark,” replied Thomas, in answer to George’s remark. “I never saw it so black as it is now. Last night it was comparatively light.”
George turned his gaze quickly upwards to the moon, searching in the aspect of that luminary a solution to the darker shade of to-night. “There’s no difference!” he cried aloud. “The moon was as bright as this, last night, but not brighter. I don’t think it could be brighter. You say the Shadow was there last night, Thomas?”
“Yes. But not so dark as now.”
“But, Thomas! you were ill last night; you could not see it.”
“I came as far as the turnstile here with Lord Averil. He called at Ashlydyat after leaving Lady Godolphin’s Folly. I was better then, and strolled out of the house with him.”
“Did he see the Shadow?”
“I don’t know. It was there; but not very distinct. He did not appear to see it. We were passing quickly, and talking about my illness.”
“Did you give Averil any hint of what your illness may be?” asked George hastily.
“Not an indication of it. Janet, Snow, and you, are my only confidants as yet. Bexley is partially so. Were that Shadow to be seen by Prior’s Ash, and the fact of my illness transpired, people would say that it was a forewarning of my end,” he continued, with a grave smile, as he and George turned to pursue their road to Ashlydyat.
They reached the porch in silence. George shook hands with his brother. “Don’t attempt to come to business to-morrow,” he said. “I will come up in the evening, and see you.”
“Won’t you come in now, George?”
“Not now. Good night, Thomas. I heartily wish you better.”
George turned and retraced his steps, past the ash-trees, past the Dark Plain. Intensely black the Shadow certainly looked: darker even than when he had passed it just before — at least so it appeared to George’s eyes. He halted a moment, quite struck with the sombre hue. “Thomas said it appeared light last night,” he half muttered: “and for him death cannot be much of an evil. Superstitious Janet, daft Margery, would both say that the evil affects me: that I am to bring it!” he added, with a smile of mockery at the words. “Angry enough it certainly looks!”
It did look angry. But George vouchsafed it no further attention. He had too much on his mind to give heed to shadows, even though it were the ominous Shadow of Ashlydyat. George, as he had said to Charlotte Pain, was very nearly at his wits’ end. One of his minor perplexities was, how he should get to London. He had urgent necessity for proceeding in search of Mr. Verrall, and equally urgent was it that the expedition should be kept from Thomas Godolphin. What excuse could he invent for his absence?
Rapidly arranging his plans, he proceeded again to the Bell Inn, held a few minutes’ confidential conversation with Captain St. Aubyn, waking that gentleman out of his first sleep for it — not that he by any means enlightened him as to any trouble that might be running riot in his brain — and then went home. Maria came forward to meet him.
“How is poor Captain St. Aubyn, George? Very ill?”
“Very. How did you know anything about it, Maria?”
“Thomas told me you had been sent for. Thomas came to my sitting-room before he left, after the rest had gone. You have stayed a good while with him.”
“Ay. What should you say if I were to go back and stop the night with him?” asked George, half jokingly.
“Is he so ill as that?”
“And also to accompany him a stage or two on his journey to-morrow morning? He starts at six, and is about as fit to travel as an invalid just out of bed after a month’s illness.”
“Do you really mean that you are going to do all that, George?” she inquired, in surprise.
George nodded. “I do not fancy Thomas will be here to-morrow, Maria. Ask to speak to Isaac when he comes in the morning. Tell him that I shall be home some time in the afternoon, but I have gone out of town a few miles with a sick friend. He can say so if I am particularly inquired for.”
George went to his room. Maria followed him. He was changing his coat and waistcoat, and threw an overcoat upon his arm. Then he looked at his watch.
“What is the time?” asked Maria.
“Twenty minutes past eleven. Good night, my darling.”
She fondly held his face down to hers while he kissed her, giving him — as George had once saucily told her she would — kiss for kiss. There was no shame in it now; only love. “Oh, George, my dearest, mind you come back safe and well to me!” she murmured, tears filling her eyes.
“Don’t I always come back safe and well to you, you foolish child? Take care of yourself, Maria.”
Maria’s hand rested lingeringly in his. Could she have divined that Mr. George’s tender adieux sometimes strayed elsewhere! — that his confidences were given, but not to her! George went out, and the hall door closed upon him.
It was well Maria did not watch him away! Well for her astonishment. Instead of going to the Bell Inn, he turned short round to the left, and took the by
-way which led to the railway station, gaining it in time to catch the express train, which passed through Prior’s Ash at midnight for London.
CHAPTER VI. MR. VERRALL’S CHAMBERS.
In thoroughly handsome chambers towards the west-end of London, fitted up with costly elegance, more in accordance (one would think) with a place consecrated to the refinements of life, than to business, there sat one morning a dark gentleman, of staid and respectable appearance. To look at his clean, smoothly shaven face, his grey hair, his gold-rimmed spectacles, his appearance altogether, every item of which carried respectability with it, you might have trusted the man at a first glance. In point of fact, he was got up to be trusted. A fire was pleasant on those spring mornings, and a large and clear one flamed in the burnished grate. Miniature statues, and other articles possessing, one must suppose, some rare excellence, gave to the room a refined look; and the venerable gentleman (venerable in sober respectability, you must understand, more than from age, for his years were barely fifty) sat enjoying its blaze, and culling choice morsels from the Times. The money article, the price of stock, a large insolvency case, and other news especially acceptable to men of business, were being eagerly read by him.
An architect might have taken a model of these chambers, so artistically were they arranged. A client could pass into any one of the three rooms, and not come out by the same door; he might reach them by the wide, handsome staircase, descend by means of a ladder, and emerge in a back street. Not absolutely a ladder, but a staircase so narrow as almost to deserve the name. It did happen, once in a way, that a gentleman might prefer that means of exit, even if he did not of entrance. These chambers were, not to keep you longer in suspense, the offices of the great bill-discounting firm, Trueworthy and Co.
One peculiar feature in their internal economy was, that no client ever got to see Mr. Trueworthy. He was too great a man to stoop to business in his own proper person. He was taking his pleasure in the East; or he was on a visit to some foreign court, the especial guest of its imperial head; or sojourning with his bosom friend the Duke of Dorsetshire at his shooting-box; or reposing at his own country seat; or ill in bed with gout. From one or other of these contingencies Mr. Trueworthy was invariably invisible. It happened now and then that there was a disturbance in these elegant chambers, caused by some ill-bred and ill-advised gentleman, who persisted in saying that he had been hardly treated — in point of fact, ruined. One or two had, on these occasions, broadly asserted their conviction that there was no Mr. Trueworthy at all: but of course their ravings, whether on the score of their own wrongs, or on the non-existence of that estimable gentleman, whose fashionable movements might have filled a weekly column of the Court Circular, were taken for what they were worth.
In the years gone by — only a very few years, though — the firm had owned another head: at any rate, another name. A young, fair man, who had disdained the exclusiveness adopted by his successor, and deemed himself not too great a mortal to be seen of men. This unfortunate principal had managed his affairs badly. In some way or other he came to grief. Perhaps the blame lay in his youth. Some one was so wicked as to prefer against him a charge of swindling; and ill-natured tongues said it would go hard with him — fifteen years at least. What they meant by the last phrase, they best knew. Like many another charge, it never came to anything. The very hour before he would have been captured, he made his escape, and had never since been seen or heard of. Some surmised that he was dead, some that he was in hiding abroad: only one thing was certain — that into this country he could not again enter.
All that, however, was past and gone. The gentleman, Mr. Brompton, sitting at his ease over his newspaper, his legs stretched out to the blaze, was the confidential manager and head of the office. Half the applicants did not know but that he was its principal: strangers, at first, invariably believed that he was so. A lesser satellite, a clerk, or whatever he might be, sat in an outer room, and bowed in the clients, his bow showing far more deference to this gentleman than to the clients themselves. How could the uninitiated suppose that he was anything less than the principal?
On this morning there went up the broad staircase a gentleman whose remarkably good looks drew the eyes of the passers-by towards him, as he got out of the cab which brought him. The clerk took a hasty step forward to arrest his progress, for the gentleman was crossing the office with a bold step: and all steps might not be admitted to that inner room. The gentleman, however, put up his hand, as if to say, Don’t you know me? and went on. The clerk, who at the first moment had probably not had time to recognize him, threw open the inner door.
“Mr. George Godolphin, sir.”
Mr. George Godolphin strode on. He was evidently not on familiar terms with the gentleman who rose to receive him, for he did not shake hands with him. His tone and manner were courteous.
“Is Mr. Verrall here?”
“He is not here, Mr. Godolphin. I am not sure that he will be here to-day.”
“I must see him,” said George, firmly. “I have followed him to town to see him. You know that he came up yesterday?”
“Yes. I met him last night.”
“I should suppose, as he was sent for unexpectedly — which I hear was the case — that he was sent for on business; and therefore that he would be here to-day,” pursued George.
“I am not sure of it. He left it an open question.”
George looked uncommonly perplexed. “I must see him, and I must be back at Prior’s Ash during business hours to-day. I must catch the eleven down-train if possible.”
“Can I do for you as well as Mr. Verrall?” asked Mr. Brompton, after a pause.
“No, you can’t. Verrall I must see. It is very strange that you don’t know whether he is to be here or not.”
“It happens to-day that I do not know. Mr. Verrall left it last night, I say, an open question.”
“It is the loss of time that I am thinking of,” returned George. “You see if I go down now to his residence, he may have left it to come up here; and we should just miss each other.”
“Very true,” asserted Brompton.
George stood for a moment in thought, and then turned on his heel, and departed. “Do you know whether Mr. Verrall will be up this morning?” he asked of the clerk, as he passed through the outer room.
The clerk shook his head. “I am unable to say, sir.”
George went down to the cab, and entered it. “Where to, sir?” asked the driver, as he closed the door.
“The South-Western Railway.”
As the echo of George’s footsteps died away on the stairs, Mr. Brompton, first slipping the bolt of the door which led into the clerk’s room, opened the door of another room. A double door, thoroughly well padded, deadened all sound between the apartments. It was a larger and more luxurious room still. Two gentlemen were seated in it by a similarly bright fire: though, to look at the face of the one — a young man, whose handkerchief, as it lay carelessly on the table beside him, bore a viscount’s coronet — no one would have thought any fire was needed. His face was glowing, and he was talking in angry excitement, but with a tone and manner somewhat subdued, as if he were in the presence of a master, and dared not put forth his metal. In short, he looked something like a caged lion. Opposite to him, listening with cold, imperturbable courtesy, his face utterly impassive, as it ever was, his eyes calm, his yellow hair in perfect order, his moustache trimmed, his elbows resting on the arms of his chair, and the tips of his fingers meeting, on one of which fingers shone a monster diamond of the purest water, was Mr. Verrall. Early as the hour was, glasses and champagne stood on the table.
Mr. Brompton telegraphed a sign to Mr. Verrall, and he came out, leaving the viscount to waste his anger upon air. The viscount might rely on one thing: that it was just as good to bestow it upon air as upon Mr. Verrall, for all the impression it would make on the latter.
“Godolphin has been here,” said Mr. Brompton, keeping the doors, carefully closed.
>
“He has followed me to town, then! I thought he might do so. It is of no use my seeing him. If he won’t go deeper into the mire, why, the explosion must come.”
“He must go deeper into it,” remarked Mr. Brompton.
“He holds out against it, and words seem wasted on him. Where’s he gone now?”
“Down to your house, I expect. He says he must be back home to-day, but must see you first. I thought you would not care to meet him, so I said I didn’t know whether you’d be here or not.”
Mr. Verrall mused. “Yes, I’ll see him. I can’t deal with him altogether as I do with others. And he has been a lucky card to us.”
Mr. Verrall went back to his viscount, who by that time was striding explosively up and down the room. Mr. Brompton sat down to his paper again, and his interesting news of the Insolvency Court.
In one of the most charming villas on the banks of the Thames, a villa which literally lacked nothing that money could buy, sat Mrs. Verrall at a late breakfast, on that same morning. She jumped up with a little scream at the sight of George Godolphin crossing the velvet lawn.
“What bad news have you come to tell me? Is Charlotte killed? Or is Lady Godolphin’s Folly on fire?”
“Charlotte was well when I left her, and the Folly standing,” replied George, throwing care momentarily to the winds, as he was sure to do in the presence of a pretty woman.
“She will be killed, you know, some day with those horses of hers,” rejoined Mrs. Verrall. “What have you come for, then, at this unexpected hour? When Verrall arrived last night, he said you were giving a dinner at Prior’s Ash.”
“I want to see Verrall. Is he up yet?”
“Up! He was up and away ages before I awoke. He went up early to the office.”
George paused. “I have been to the office, and Mr. Brompton said he did not know whether he would be there to-day at all.”
“Oh, well, I don’t know,” returned Mrs. Verrall, believing she might have made an inconvenient admission. “When he goes up to town, I assume he goes to the office; but he may be bound to the wilds of Siberia for anything I can tell.”