by Ellen Wood
“Why do you think he has gone to London?” she asked.
“I know he has,” replied Charlotte. “He told me he was going there.”
“But he told me he was only going with Captain St. Aubyn,” returned Maria, a doubtful sound in her voice.
“Oh, my dear, gentlemen do not find it always convenient to keep their wives au courant of their little affairs.”
Had it been salvation to her, Charlotte could not have helped launching that shaft at Maria Godolphin. No; not even regard for George’s secrets stopped her. She had done the mischief by speaking to Isaac, and this opportunity was too glorious to be missed, so she braved it out. Had Charlotte dared — for her own sake — she could have sent forth an unlimited number of poisoned arrows daily at George Godolphin’s wife: and she would have relished the sport amazingly. She sailed off: a curiously conspicuous smile of triumph in her eyes as they were bent on Maria, her parting movement being a graciously condescending nod to the child.
Maria was recalled to her senses by Margery. The woman was gazing after Charlotte with a dark, strange look: a look that Maria understood as little as she understood Charlotte’s triumphant one. Margery caught the eye of her mistress upon her, and smoothed her face with a short cough.
“I’m just taking the pattern of her jacket, ma’am. It matches so bravely with the hat. I wonder what the world will come to next? The men will take to women’s clothes, I suppose, now the women have taken to men’s.”
Mr. George — as you may remember — missed his train. And Mr. George debated whether he should order a special. Two reasons withheld him. One was, that his arriving at Prior’s Ash by a special train might excite comment; the other, that a special train was expensive; and of late Mr. George Godolphin had not had any too much ready money to spare. He waited for the next ordinary train, and that deposited him at Prior’s Ash at seven o’clock.
He proceeded home at once. The Bank was closed for the evening. Pierce admitted his master, who went into the dining-room. No sign of dinner; no signs of occupation.
“My mistress is at Ashlydyat, sir. She went up this morning with Miss Meta and Margery. You would like dinner, sir, would you not?”
“I don’t much care for it,” responded George. “Anything will do. Has Mr. Godolphin been at the Bank to-day?”
“Yes, sir. He has been here all day, I think?”
George went into the Bank parlour, then to other of the business rooms. He was looking about for letters: he was looking at books: altogether he seemed to be busy. Presently he came out and called Pierce.
“I want a light.”
Pierce brought it. “I shall be engaged here for half an hour,” said his master. “Should any one call, I cannot be disturbed: under any pretence, you understand.”
“Very well, sir,” replied Pierce, as he withdrew. And George locked the intervening door between the house and the Bank, and took out the key.
He turned into a passage and went diving down a few stairs, the light in his hand; selected one of several keys which he had brought with him, and opened the door of a dry-vaulted room. It was the strong-room of the Bank, secure and fireproof.
“Safe number three, on right,” he read, consulting a bit of paper on which he had copied down the words in pencil upstairs. “Number three? Then it must be this one.”
Taking another of the keys, he put it into the lock. Turned it, and turned it, and — could not open the lock. George snatched it out, and read the label. “Key of safe number two.”
“What an idiot I am! I have brought the wrong key!”
He went up again, grumbling at his stupidity, opened the cupboard where the keys were kept, and looked for the right one. Number three was the one he wanted. And number three was not there.
George stood transfixed. He had custody of the keys. No other person had the power of approaching the place they were guarded in: except his brother. Had the Bank itself disappeared, George Godolphin could not have been much more astonished than at the disappearance of this key. Until this moment, this discovery of its absence, he would have been ready to swear that there it was, before all the judges in the land.
He tossed the keys here; he tossed them there; little heeding how he misplaced them. George became convinced that the Fates were dead against him, in spiriting away, just because he wanted it, this particular key. That no one could have touched it except Thomas, he knew: and why he should have done so, George could not imagine. He could not imagine where it was, or could be, at the present moment. Had Thomas required it to visit the safe, he was far too exact, too methodical, not to return it to its place again.
A quarter of an hour given to hunting, to thinking — and the thinking was not entirely agreeable thinking — and George gave it up in despair.
“I must wait until to-morrow,” was his conclusion. “If Thomas has carried it away with him, through forgetfulness, he will find it out and replace it then.”
He was closing the cupboard door, when something arrested it on its lower shelf, so that it would not close. Bringing the light inside he found — the missing key. George himself must have dropped it there on first opening the cupboard. With a suppressed shout of delight he snatched it up. A shout of delight! Better that George Godolphin had broken into a wail of lamentation! Another moment, and he was going down the stairs to the strong-room, key in hand.
Safe number three, on the right, was unlocked without trouble now. In that safe there were some tin boxes, on one of which was inscribed “Lord Averil.” Selecting another and a smaller key from those he held, George opened this.
It was full of papers. George looked them rapidly over with the quick eye of one accustomed to the work, and drew forth one of them. Rather a bulky parcel, some writing upon it. This he thrust into his pocket, and began putting the rest in order. Had a mirror been held before him at that moment, it would have reflected a face utterly colourless. He returned to the office.
Enclosing the packet in a stout envelope, which he directed, he went out, and dropped it into the post-office at the opposite corner of Crosse Street. Very soon he was on his way to Lady Godolphin’s Folly, bearing with him the small parcel sent by Mrs. Verrall — a sufficient excuse for calling there, had George required an excuse. Which he did not.
It was a light night; as it had been the previous night, though the moon was not yet very high. He gained the turnstile at the end of the Ash-tree Walk — where he had been startled by the apparition of Thomas, and where Isaac Hastings had seen Charlotte Pain that morning — and turned into the open way to the right. A few paces more, and he struck into the narrow pathway which would lead him through the grove of trees, leaving Ashlydyat and its approaches to the left.
Did George Godolphin love the darkness, that he should choose that way? Last night and again to-night he had preferred it. It was most unusual for any one to approach the Folly by that obscure path. A few paces round, and he would have skirted the thicket, would have gone on to the Folly in the bright, open moonlight. Possibly George scarcely noticed that he chose it: full of thought, was he, just then.
He went along with his head down. What were his reflections? Was he wishing that he could undo the deeds of the last hour — replace in that tin case what he had taken from it? Was he wishing that he could undo the deeds of the last few years — be again a man without a cloud on his brow, a heavier cloud on his heart? It was too late: he could recall neither the one nor the other. The deed was already on its way to London; the years had rolled into the awful Past, with its doings, bad and good, recorded on high.
What was that? George lifted his head and his ears. A murmur of suppressed voices, angry voices, too, sounded near him, in one of which George thought he recognized the tones of Charlotte Pain. He went through to an intersecting path, so narrow that one person could with difficulty walk down it, just as a scream rang out on the night air.
Panting, scared, breathless, her face distorted with fear or passion, as much as George could see o
f it in the shaded light, her gauze dress torn by every tree with which it came in contact, flying down the narrow pathway, came Charlotte Pain. And — unless George Godolphin was strangely mistaken — some one else was flying in equal terror in the opposite direction, as if they had just parted.
“Charlotte! What is it? Who has alarmed you?”
In the moment’s first impulse he caught hold of her to protect her; in the second, he loosed his hold, and made after the other fugitive. The impression upon George’s mind was, that some one, perhaps a stranger, had met Charlotte, and frightened her with rude words.
But Charlotte was as swift as he. She flung her hands around George, and held him there. Strong hands they always were: doubly strong in that moment of agitation. George could not unclasp them: unless he had used violence.
“Stay where you are! Stay where you are, for the love of Heaven!” she gasped. “You must not go.”
“What is all this? What is the matter?” he asked in surprise.
She made no other answer. She clung to him with all her weight of strength, her arms and hands straining with the effort, reiterating wildly, “You must not go! you must not go!”
“Nay, I don’t care to go,” replied George: “it was for your sake I was following. Be calm, Charlotte: there’s no necessity for this agitation.”
She went on, down the narrow pathway, drawing him with her. The broader path gained — though that also was but a narrow one — she put her arm within his, and turned towards the house. George could see her white frightened face better now, and all the tricks and cosmetics invented could not hide its ghastliness; he felt her heaving pulses; he heard her beating heart.
Bending down to her, he spoke with a soothing whisper. “Tell me what it was that terrified you.”
She would not answer. She only pressed his arm with a tighter pressure, lest he might break from her again in pursuit; she hurried onwards with a quicker step. Skirting round the trees, which before the house made a half circle, Charlotte came to the end, and then darted rapidly across the lawn to the terrace and into the house by one of the windows. He followed her.
Her first movement was to close the shutters and bar them: her next to sit down on the nearest chair. Ill as she looked, George could scarcely forbear a smile at her gauze dress: the bottom of its skirt was in shreds.
“Will you let me get you something, Charlotte? Or ring for it?”
“I don’t want anything,” she answered. “I shall be all right directly. How could you frighten me so?”
“I frighten you!” returned George. “It was not I who frightened you.”
“Indeed it was. You and no one else. Did you not hear me scream?”
“I did.”
“It was at you, rustling through the trees,” persisted Charlotte. “I had gone out to see if the air would relieve this horrid headache, which has been upon me since last night and won’t go away. I strolled into the thicket, thinking all sorts of lonely things, never suspecting that you or any one else could be near me. I wonder I did not faint, as well as scream.”
“Charlotte, what nonsense! You were whispering angrily with some one; some one who escaped in the opposite direction. Who was it?”
“I saw no one; I heard no one. Neither was I whispering.”
He looked at her intently. That she was telling an untruth he believed, for he felt positive that some second person had been there. “Why did you stop me, then, when I would have gone in pursuit?”
“It was your fault for attempting to leave me,” was Charlotte’s answer. “I would not have remained alone for a house full of gold.”
“I suppose it is some secret. I think, whatever it may be, Charlotte, you might trust me.” He spoke significantly, a stress on the last word. Charlotte rose from her seat.
“So I would,” she said, “were there anything to confide. Just look at me! My dress is ruined.”
“You should take it up if you go amidst clumsy trees, whose rough trunks nearly meet.”
“I had it up — until you came,” returned Charlotte, jumping upon a chair that she might survey it in one of the side glasses. “You startled me so that I dropped it. I might have it joined, and a lace flounce put upon it,” she mused. “It cost a great deal of money, did this dress, I can tell you, Mr. George.”
She jumped off the chair again, and George produced the packet confided to him by Mrs. Verrall.
“I promised her that you should have it to-night,” he said. “Hence my unfortunate appearance here, which it seems has so startled you.”
“Oh, that’s over now. When did you get back again?”
“By the seven o’clock train. I saw Verrall.”
“Well?”
“It’s not well. It’s ill. Do you know what I begin to suspect at times? — That Verrall and every one else is playing me false. I am sick of the world.”
“No, he is not, George. If I thought he were, I’d tell you so. I would, on my sacred word of honour. It is not likely that he is. When we are in a bilious mood, everything wears to us a jaundiced tinge. You are in one to-night.”
CHAPTER VIII. THE TRADITION OF THE DARK PLAIN.
It is the province of little demoiselles to be naughty: it is their delight to make promises and then break them, all false and fearless — as they may do over other affairs in later life. Miss Meta Godolphin was no exception to the rule. She had gravely promised her uncle Thomas to be a good girl, and not run away to be lost in unfrequented passages; yet no sooner had the young lady arrived at Ashlydyat that morning, and been released of her out-door things by Margery, than with a joyously defiant laugh that would have rejoiced the heart of Charlotte Pain, she flew off to that forbidden spot — the unused passages. Had the little lady’s motive been laid bare, it might have been found to consist simply in the enjoyment of a thing forbidden. Truth to say, Miss Meta was very prone to be disobedient to all persons, excepting one. That one was her mother. Maria had never spoken a sharp word to the child in her life, or used a sharp tone: but she had contrived to train the little one to obey, as well as to love. George, Margery, Mrs. Hastings, Miss Meta would openly disobey, and laugh in their faces while she did it: her mother, never. Meta remembered a scolding she received on the last visit she had paid to Ashlydyat, touching the remote passages — she had never found them out until then — and apparently the reminiscence of the scolding was so agreeable that she was longing to have it repeated.
“Now,” said Margery, as she concluded the young lady’s toilette, “you’ll not go up to those old rooms and passages to-day, mind, Miss Meta!”
For answer, Miss Meta shook out her golden curls, laughed triumphantly, and started off to the passages then and there. Maria had never said to her, “You must not go near those passages;” and the commands of the rest of the world went for nothing. Margery remained in blissful ignorance of the disobedience. She supposed the child had run to her mother and the Miss Godolphins. The objection to Meta’s being in the passages alone had no mysterious element in it. It proceeded solely from a regard to her personal safety. The staircase leading to the turret was unprotected; the loopholes in the turret were open, and a fall from either might cost the young lady her life. These places, the unfrequented passages at the back of the second storey, and the staircase leading to the square turret above them, were shut in by a door, which separated them from the inhabited part of the house. This door Miss Meta had learned to open; and away she went, as fancy led her.
Maria was in Miss Godolphin’s room, talking to that lady and to Bessy, when a sound overhead caused them to pause.
“Where’s Meta?” cried Janet, hastening from the room. “She cannot have gone upstairs again! Margery! Where’s the child?”
Margery at that moment happened to be putting the finishing touches to her own toilette. She came flying without her cap out of one of the many narrow passages and windings which intersected each other on that floor. “The child went off to you, ma’am, as soon as I had put on her pinafo
re.”
“Then, Margery, she has gone up into the turret. She never came to us.”
Up to the turret hastened Janet; up to the turret followed Margery. Bessy and Maria traversed the passage leading to the turret-stairs, and stood there, looking upwards. Maria, had she been alone, could not have told which of the passages would lead her to the turret-stairs; and she could not understand why so much commotion need be made, although Meta had run up there. Strange as it may seem, Maria Godolphin, though so many years George’s wife, and the presumptive mistress of Ashlydyat, had never passed beyond that separating door. Miss Godolphin had never offered to take her to the unused rooms and the turret; and Maria was of too sensitively refined a nature to ask it of her own accord.
Janet appeared, leading the rebel; Margery, behind, was scolding volubly. “Now,” said Janet, when they reached the foot, “tell me, Meta, how it was that you could behave so disobediently, and go where you had been expressly told not to go?”
Meta shook back her golden curls with a laugh, sprang to Maria, and took refuge in her skirts. “Mamma did not tell me not to go,” said she.
Janet looked at Maria: almost as if she would say, Can it be true that you have not done so?
“It is true,” said Maria, answering the look. “I heard something about her running into the turret the last time she was here: I did not know it was of any consequence.”
“She might fall through the loopholes,” replied Janet. “Nothing could save her from being dashed to pieces.”
Maria caught the child to her with an involuntary movement. “Meta, darling, do you hear? You must never go again.”
Meta looked up fondly, serious now. Maria bent her face down on the little upturned one.
“Never again, darling; do not forget,” she murmured. “Does Meta know that if harm came to her, mamma would never look up again? She would cry always.”