“Thomas, my son, I must go home. I don’t want to die away from Ashlydyat!”
A dull pain shot across Thomas Godolphin’s heart at the words. Did he think of the old superstitious tradition—that evil was to fall upon the Godolphins when their chief should die, and not at Ashlydyat? At Ashlydyat his father could not die; he had put that out of his power when he let it to strangers: in its neighbourhood, he might.
“The better plan, sir, will be for you to return to the Folly, as you seem to wish it,” said Thomas. “You will soon be strong enough to undertake the journey.”
The decaying knight was sitting on a sofa in his bedroom. His second fainting-fit had lasted some hours—if that, indeed, was the right name to give to it—and he had recovered, only to be more and more weak. He had grown pretty well after the first attack—when Margery had found him in his chamber on the floor, the day Lady Godolphin had gone to pay her visit to Selina. The next time, he was on the lawn before the house, talking to Charlotte Pain, when he suddenly fell to the ground. He did not recover his consciousness until evening; and nearly the first wish he expressed was a desire to see his son Thomas. “Telegraph for him,” he said to Lady Godolphin.
“But you are not seriously ill, Sir George,” she had answered.
“No; but I should like him here. Telegraph to him to start by first train.”
And Lady Godolphin did so, accordingly, sending the message that angered Miss Godolphin. But, in this case, Lady Godolphin did not deserve so much blame as Janet cast on her: for she did debate thepoint with herself whether she should say Sir George was ill, or not. Believing that these two fainting-fits had proceeded from want of strength only, that they were but the effect of his long previous illness, and would lead to no bad result, she determined not to speak of it. Hence the imperfect message.
Neither did Thomas Godolphin see much cause for fear when he arrived at Broomhead. Sir George did not look better than when he had left Prior’s Ash, but neither did he look much worse. On this, the second day, he had been well enough to converse with Thomas upon business affairs: and, that over, he suddenly broke out with the above wish. Thomas mentioned it when he joined Lady Godolphin afterwards. It did not meet with her approbation.
“You should have opposed it,” said she to him in a firm, hard tone.
“But why so, madam?” asked Thomas. “If my father’s wish is to return to Prior’s Ash, he should return.”
“Not while the fever lingers there. Were he to take it—and die—you would never forgive yourself.”
Thomas had no fear of the fever on his own score, and did not fear it for his father. He intimated as much. “It is not the fever that will hurt him, Lady Godolphin.”
“You have no right to say that. Lady Sarah Grame, a month ago, might have said she did not fear it for Sarah Anne. And now Sarah Anne is dying!”
“Or dead,” put in Charlotte Pain, who was leaning listlessly against the window frame devoured with ennui.
“Shall you be afraid to go back to Prior’s Ash?” he asked of Maria Hastings.
“Not at all,” replied Maria. “I should not mind if I were going to-day, as far as the fever is concerned.”
“That is well,” he said. “Because I have orders to convey you back with me.”
Charlotte Pain lifted her head with a start. The news aroused her. Maria, on the contrary, thought he was speaking in jest.
“No, indeed I am not,” said Thomas Godolphin. “Mr. Hastings made a request to me, madam, that I should take charge of his daughter when I returned,” continued he to Lady Godolphin. “He wants her at home, he says.”
“Mr. Hastings is very polite!” ironically replied my lady. “Maria will go back when I choose to spare her.”
“I hope you will allow her to return with me—unless you shall soon be returning yourself,” said Thomas Godolphin.
“It is not I that shall be returning to Prior’s Ash yet,” said my lady. “The sickly old place must give proof of renewed health first. You will not see either me or Sir George there on this side Christmas.”
“Then I think, Lady Godolphin, you must offer no objection to my taking charge of Maria,” said Thomas courteously, but firmly, leaving the discussion of Sir George’s return to another opportunity. “I passed my word to Mr. Hastings.”
Charlotte Pain, all animation now, approached Lady Godolphin. She was thoroughly sick and tired of Broomhead: since George Godolphin’s departure, she had been projecting how she could get away from it. Here was a solution to her difficulty.
“Dear Lady Godolphin, you must allow me to depart with Mr. Godolphin—whatever you may do with Maria Hastings,” she exclaimed. “I said nothing to you—for I really did not see how I was to get back, knowing you would not permit me to travel so far alone—but Mrs. Verrall is very urgent for my return. And now that she is suffering from this burn, as Mr. Godolphin has brought us news, it is the more incumbent upon me to be at home.”
Which was a nice little fib of Miss Charlotte’s. Her sister had never once hinted that she wished her home again; but a fib or two more or less was nothing to Charlotte.
“You are tired of Broomhead,” said Lady Godolphin.
Charlotte’s colour never varied, her eye never drooped, as she protested that she should not tire of Broomhead were she its inmate for a twelvemonth; that it was quite a paradise upon earth. Maria kept her head bent while Charlotte said it, half afraid lest unscrupulous Charlotte should call upon her to bear testimony to her truth. Only that very morning she had protested to Maria that the ennui of the place was killing her.
“I don’t know,” said Lady Godolphin shrewdly. “Unless I am wrong, Charlotte, you have been anxious to leave. What was it that Mr. George hinted at—about escorting you young ladies home—and I stopped him ere it was half spoken? Prior’s Ashwouldtalk if I sent you home under his convoy.”
“Mr. Godolphin is not George,” rejoined Charlotte.
“No, he is not,” replied my lady significantly.
The subject of departure was settled amicably; both the young ladies were to return to Prior’s Ash under the charge of Mr. Godolphin. There are some men, single men though they be, and not men in years, whom society is content to recognize as entirely fit escorts. Thomas Godolphin was one of them. Had my lady despatched the young ladies home under Mr. George’s wing, she might never have heard the last of it from Prior’s Ash: but the most inveterate scandalmonger in it would not have questioned the trustworthiness of his elder brother. My lady was also brought to give her consent to her own departure for it by Christmas, provided Mr. Snow would assure her that the place was “safe.”
In a day or two Thomas Godolphin spoke to his father of his marriage arrangements. He had received a letter from Janet, written the morning after his departure, in which she agreed to the proposal that Ethel should be her temporary guest. This removed all barrier to the immediate union.
“Then you marry directly, if Sarah Anne lives?”
“Directly. In January, at the latest.”
“God bless you both!” cried the old knight. “She’ll be a wife in a thousand, Thomas.”
Thomas thought she would. He did not say it.
“It’s the best plan; it’s the best plan,” continued Sir George in a dreamy tone, gazing into the fire. “No use to turn the girls out of their home. It will not be for long; not for long. Thomas”—turninghis haggard, but still fine blue eye upon his son—“I wish I had never left Ashlydyat!”
Thomas was silent. None had more bitterly regretted the departure from it than he.
“I wish I could go back to it to die!”
“My dear father, I hope that you will yet live many years to bless us. If you can get through this winter—and I see no reason whatever why you should not, with care—you may regain your strength and be as well again as any of us.”
Sir George shook his head. “It will not be, Thomas; I shall not long keep you out of Ashlydyat. Mind!” he added, turning upon Thomas with surprising energy, “Iwillgo back before Christmas to Prior’s Ash. The last Christmas that I see shall be spent with my children.”
“Yes, indeed, I think you should come back to us,” warmly acquiesced Thomas.
“Therefore, if you find, when Christmas is close upon us, that I am not amongst you, that you hear no tidings of my coming amongst you, you come off at once and fetch me. Do you hear, Thomas? I enjoin it upon you now with a father’s authority; do not forget it, or disobey it. My lady fears the fever, and would keep me here: but I must be at Prior’s Ash.”
“I will certainly obey you, my father,” replied Thomas Godolphin.
Telegraphic despatches seemed to be the order of the day with Thomas Godolphin. They were all sitting together that evening, Sir George having come downstairs, when a servant called Thomas out of the room. A telegraphic message had arrived for him at the station, and a man had brought it over. A conviction of what it contained flashed over Thomas Godolphin’s heart as he opened it—the death of Sarah Anne Grame.
From Lady Sarah it proved to be. Not a much more satisfactory message than had been Lady Godolphin’s; for if hers had not been explanatory, this was incoherent.
“The breath has just gone out of my dear child’s body. I will write by next post. She died at four o’clock. How shall we all bear it?”
Thomas returned to the room; his mind full. In the midst of his sorrow and regret for Sarah Anne, his compassion for Lady Sarah—and he did feel all that with true sympathy—intruded the thought of his own marriage. It must be postponed now.
“What did Andrew want with you?” asked Sir George, when he entered.
“A telegraphic message had come for me from Prior’s Ash.”
“A business message?”
“No, sir. It is from Lady Sarah.”
By the tone of his voice, by the falling of his countenance, they could read instinctively what had occurred. But they kept silence, all,—waiting for him to speak further.
“Poor Sarah Anne is gone. She died at four o’clock.”
“This will delay your plans, Thomas,” observed Sir George, after some minutes had been given to expressions of regret.
“It will, sir.”
The knight leaned over to his son, and spoke in a whisper, meant for his ear alone: “I shall not be very long after her. I feel that I shall not. You may yet take Ethel home at once to Ashlydyat.”
Very early indeed did they start in the morning, long before daybreak. Prior’s Ash they would reach, all things being well, at nine at night. Margery was sent to attend them, a very dragon of a guardian, as particular as Miss Godolphin herself—had a guardian been necessary.
A somewhat weary day; a long one, at any rate; but at last their train steamed into the station at Prior’s Ash. It was striking nine. Mr. Hastings was waiting for Maria, and Mrs. Verrall’s carriage for Charlotte Pain. A few minutes were spent in collecting the luggage.
“Shall I give you a seat as far as the bank, Mr. Godolphin?” inquired Charlotte, who must pass it on her way to Ashlydyat.
“Thank you, no. I shall just go up for a minute’s call upon Lady Sarah Grame.”
Mr. Hastings, who had been placing Maria in a fly, heard the words. He turned hastily, caught Thomas Godolphin’s hand, and drew him aside.
“Are you aware of what has occurred?”
“Alas, yes!” replied Thomas. “Lady Sarah telegraphed to me last night.”
The Rector pressed his hand, and returned to his daughter. Thomas Godolphin struck into a by-path, a short cut from the station, which would take him to Grame House.
Six days ago, exactly, since he had been there before. The house looked precisely as it had looked then, all in darkness, excepting the faint light that burned from Sarah Anne’s chamber. It burnt there still. Then it was lighting the living; now——
Thomas Godolphin rang the bell gently.—Does any one like to do otherwise at a house in which death is an inmate? Elizabeth, as usual, opened the door, and burst into tears when she saw who it was. “I said it would bring you back, sir!” she exclaimed.
“Does Lady Sarah bear it pretty well?” he asked, as she showed him into the drawing-room.
“No, sir, not over well,” sobbed the girl. “I’ll tell my lady that you are here.”
He stood over the fire, as he had done the other night: it was low now, as it had been then. Strangely still seemed the house: he could almost have told that one was lying dead in it. He listened, waiting for Ethel’s step, hoping she would be the first to come to him.
Elizabeth returned. “My lady says would you be so good as to walk up to her, sir?”
Thomas Godolphin followed her upstairs. She made for the room to which he had been taken the former night—Sarah Anne’s chamber. In point of fact, the chamber of Lady Sarah, until it was given up to Sarah Anne for her illness. Elizabeth, with soft and stealthy tread, crossed the corridor to the door, and opened it.
Was she going to show him into the presence of the dead? He thought she must have mistaken Lady Sarah’s orders, and he hesitated on the threshold.
“Where is Miss Ethel?” he whispered.
“Who, sir?”
“Miss Ethel. Is she well?”
The girl stared, flung the door full open, and with a great cry flew down the staircase.
He looked after her in amazement. Had she gone crazy? Then he turned and walked into the room with a hesitating step.
Lady Sarah was coming forward to meet him. She was convulsed with grief. He took both her hands in his with a soothing gesture, essaying a word of comfort: not of inquiry, as to why she should have brought him to this room. He glanced to the bed, expecting to see the dead upon it. But the bed was empty. And at that moment, his eyes caught something else.
Seated by the fire in an invalid chair, surrounded with pillows, covered with shawls, with a wan, attenuated face, and eyes that seemed to have a glaze over them, was—who?
Sarah Anne?It certainlywasSarah Anne, and in life still. For she feebly held out her hand in welcome, and the tears suddenly gushed from her eyes. “I am getting better, Mr. Godolphin.”
Thomas Godolphin—Thomas Godolphin—how shall I write it? For one happy minute he was utterly blind to what it could all mean: his whole mind was a chaos of wild perplexity. And then, as the dreadful truth burst upon him, he staggered against the wall, with a wailing cry of agony.
It was Ethel who had died.
Yes. It was Ethel who had died.
Thomas Godolphin leaned against the wall in his agony. It was one of those moments that can fall only once in a lifetime; in many lives never; when the greatest limit of earthly misery bursts upon the startled spirit, shattering it for all time. Were Thomas Godolphin to live for a hundred years, he never could know another moment like this: the power so to feel would have left him.
It had not left him yet. Nay, it had scarcely come to him in its full realization. At present he was half stunned. Strange as it may seem, the first impression upon his mind, was—that he was so much nearer to the next world. How am I to define this “nearer?” It was not that he was nearer to it by time; or in goodness: nothing of that sort.Shehad passed within its portals; and the great gulf, which divides time from eternity, seems to be only a span now to Thomas Godolphin: it was as if he, in spirit, had followed her in. From being a place far, far off, vague, indefinite, indistinct, it had been suddenly brought to him, close and palpable: or he to it: Had Thomas Godolphin been an atheist, denying a hereafter,—Heaven in its compassion have mercy upon all such!—that one moment of suffering would have recalled him to a sense of his mistake. It was as if he looked above with the eyeof inspiration and saw the truth; it was as a brief, passing moment of revelation from God. She, with her loving spirit, her gentle heart, her simple trust in God, had been taken from this world to enter upon a better. She was as surely living in it, had entered upon its mysteries, its joys, its rest, as that he was living here; she, he believed, was as surely regarding him now and his great sorrow, as that he was left alone to battle with it. From henceforth Thomas Godolphin possessed a lively, ever-present link with that world; and knew that its gates would, in God’s good time, be opened for him.
These feelings, impressions, facts—you may designate them as you please—took up their place in his mind all in that first instant, and seated themselves there for ever. Not yet very consciously. To his stunned senses, in his weight of bitter grief, nothing could be to him very clear: ideas passed through his brain quickly, confusedly; as the changing scenes in a phantasmagoria. He looked round as one bewildered. The bed, prepared for occupancy, on which, on entering, he had expected to see the dead, but nother, was between him and the door. Sarah Anne Grame in her invalid chair by the fire, a table at her right hand, covered with adjuncts of the sick-room—a medicine-bottle with its accompanying wine-glass and tablespoon—jelly, and other delicacies to tempt a faded appetite—Sarah Anne sat there and gazed at him with her dark hollow eyes, from which the tears rolled slowly over her cadaverous cheeks. Lady Sarah stood before him; sobs choking her voice as she wrung her hands. Ay, both were weeping. But he——it is not in the presence of others that man gives way to grief: neither will tears come to him in the first leaden weight of anguish.
Thomas Godolphin listened mechanically, as one who cannot do otherwise, to the explanations of Lady Sarah. “Why did you not prepare me?—why did you let it come upon me with this startling shock?” was his first remonstrance.
“I did prepare you,” sobbed Lady Sarah. “I telegraphed to you last night, as soon as it had happened. I wrote the message with my own hand, and sent it off to the office before I turned my attention to any other thing.”
“I received the message. But you did not say—I thought it was,”—Thomas Godolphin turned his glance on Sarah Anne. He remembered her state, in the midst of his own anguish, and would not alarm her. “You did not mention Ethel’s name,” he continued to Lady Sarah. “How could I suppose you alluded to her? How could I suppose that she was ill?”
Sarah Anne divined his motive for hesitation. She was uncommonly keen in penetration: sharp, as the world says; and she had noted his words on entering, when he began to soothe Lady Sarah for the loss of a child; she had noticed his startled recoil, when his eyes fell on her. She spoke up with a touch of her old querulousness, the tears arrested, and her eyes glistening.
“You thought it was I who had died! Yes, you did, Mr. Godolphin, and you need not attempt to deny it. You would not have cared, so that it was not Ethel.”
Thomas Godolphin had no intention of contradicting her. Heturned from Sarah Anne in silence, to look inquiringly and reproachfully at her mother.
“Mr. Godolphin, I could not prepare you better than I did,” said Lady Sarah, “When I wrote the letter to you, telling of her illness——”
“What letter?” interrupted Thomas Godolphin. “I received no letter.”
“But you must have received it,” returned Lady Sarah in her quick, cross manner. Not cross with Thomas Godolphin, but from a rising doubt whether the letter had miscarried. “I wrote it, and I know that it was safely posted. You ought to have had it by last evening’s delivery, before you would receive the telegraphic despatch.”
“I never had it,” said Thomas Godolphin. “When I waited in your drawing-room now, I was listening for Ethel’s footsteps to come to me.”
Thomas Godolphin knew, later, that the letter had arrived duly and safely at Broomhead, at the time mentioned by Lady Sarah. Sir George Godolphin either did not open the box that night; or, if he opened it, had overlooked the letter for his son. Charlotte Pain’s complaint, that the box ought not to be left to the charge of Sir George, had reason in it. On the morning of his son’s departure with the young ladies, Sir George had found the letter, and at once despatched it back to Prior’s Ash. It was on its road at this same hour when he was talking with Lady Sarah. But the shock had come.
He took a seat by the table, and covered his eyes with his hand as Lady Sarah gave him a detailed account of the illness and death. Not all the account, that she or any one else could give, would take one iota from the dreadful fact staring him in the face. She was gone; gone for ever from this world; he could never again meet the glance of her eye, or hear her voice in response to his own. Ah, my readers, there are griefs that change all our after-life! rending the heart as an earthquake will rend the earth: and, all that can be done is, to sit down under them, and ask of Heaven strength to bear them. To bear them as we best may, until time shall in a measure bring healing upon its wings.
On the last night that Thomas Godolphin had seen her, Ethel’s brow and eyes were heavy. She had wept much in the day, and supposed the pain in her head to arise from that circumstance; she had given this explanation to Thomas Godolphin. Neither she, nor he, had had a thought that it could come from any other source. More than a month since Sarah Anne was taken with the fever; fears for Ethel had died out. And yet those dull eyes, that hot head, that heavy weight of pain, were only the symptoms of approaching sickness! A night of tossing and turning, snatches of disturbed sleep, of terrifying dreams, and Ethel awoke to the conviction that the fever was upon her. About the time that she generally rose, she rang her bell for Elizabeth.
“I do not feel well,” she said. “As soon as mamma is up, will you ask her to come to me? Do not disturb her before then.”
Elizabeth obeyed her orders. But Lady Sarah, tired and wearied out with her attendance upon Sarah Anne, with whom she had beenup half the night, did not rise until between nine and ten. Then the maid went to her and delivered the message.
“In bed still! Miss Ethel in bed still!” exclaimed Lady Sarah. She spoke in much anger: for Ethel was wont to be up betimes and in attendance upon Sarah Anne. It wasrequiredof her to be so.
Throwing on a dressing-gown, Lady Sarah proceeded to Ethel’s room. And there she broke into a storm of reproach and anger; never waiting to ascertain what might be the matter with Ethel, anything or nothing. “Ten o’clock, and that poor child to have lain until now with no one near her but a servant!” she reiterated. “You have no feeling, Ethel.”
Ethel drew the clothes from her flushed face, and turned her glistening eyes, dull last night, bright with fever now, upon her mother. “Oh, mamma, I am ill, indeed I am! I can hardly lift my head for the pain. Feel how it is burning! I did not think I ought to get up.”
“What is the matter with you?” sharply inquired Lady Sarah.
“I cannot quite tell,” answered Ethel. “I only know that I feel ill all over. I feel, mamma, as if I could not get up.”
“Very well! There’s that dear suffering angel lying alone, and you can think of yourself before you think of her! If you choose to remain in bed you must. But you will reproach yourself for your selfishness when she is gone. Another four and twenty hours and she may be no longer with us. Do as you think proper.”
Ethel burst into tears, and caught her mother’s robe as she was turning away. “Mamma, do not be angry with me! I trust I am not selfish. Mamma”—and her voice sank to a whisper—“I have been thinking that it may be the fever.”
The fever! For one moment Lady Sarah paused in consternation, but the next she decided there was no fear of it. She really believed so.
“The fever!” she reproachfully said. “Heaven help you for a selfish and a fanciful child, Ethel! Did I not send you to bed with headache last night, and what is it but the remains of that headache that you feel this morning? I can see what it is; you have been fretting after this departure of Thomas Godolphin! Get up and dress yourself, and come in and attend upon your sister. You know she can’t bear to be waited on by any one but you. Get up, I say, Ethel.”
Will Lady Sarah Grame remember that little episode until death shall take her? I should, in her place. She suppressed all mention of it to Thomas Godolphin. “The dear child told me she did not feel well, but I only thought she had a headache, and that she would perhaps feel better up,” were the words in which she related it to him. What sort of a vulture was gnawing at her heart as she spoke them? It was true that, in her blind selfishness for that one undeserving child, she had lost sight of the fact that illness could come to Ethel; she had not allowed herself to entertain its probability; she, who had accused of selfishness that devoted, generous girl, who was ready at all hours to sacrifice herself to her sister; who would have sacrificed her very life to save Sarah Anne’s.
Ethel got up. Got up as she best could; her limbs aching, her headburning. She went into Sarah Anne’s room, and did for her what she was able, gently, lovingly, anxiously, as of yore. Ah, child! let those, who are left, be thankful that it was so: it is well to be stricken down in the path of duty, working until we can work no more.
Shedid so. She stayed where she was until the day was half gone; bearing up, it was hard to say how. She could not touch breakfast; she could not take anything. None saw how ill she was. Lady Sarah was wilfully blind; Sarah Anne had eyes and thoughts for herself alone. “What are you shivering for?” Sarah Anne once fretfully asked her. “I feel cold, dear,” was Ethel’s unselfish answer: not a word said she further of her illness. In the early part of the afternoon, Lady Sarah was away from the room for some time upon domestic affairs; and when she returned to it Mr. Snow was with her. He had been prevented from calling earlier in the day. They found that Sarah Anne had dropped into a doze, and Ethel was stretched on the floor before the fire, moaning. But the moans ceased as they entered.
Mr. Snow, regardless of waking the invalid, strode up to Ethel, and turned her face to the light. “How long has she been like this?” he cried out, his voice shrill with emotion. “Child! child! why did they not send for me?”
Alas! poor Ethel was, even then, growing too ill to reply. Mr. Snow carried her to her room with his own arms, and the servants undressed her and laid her in the bed from which she was never more to rise. The fever attacked her violently: but not more so than it had attacked Sarah Anne; scarcely as badly; and danger, for Ethel, was not imagined. Had Sarah Anne not got over a similar crisis, they would have feared for Ethel: so are we given to judge by collateral circumstances. It was only on the third or fourth day that highly dangerous symptoms declared themselves, and then Lady Sarah wrote to Thomas Godolphin the letter which had not reached him. There was this much of negative consolation to be derived from its miscarriage: that, had it been delivered to him on the instant of its arrival, he could not have been in time to see her.
“You ought to have written to me as soon as she was taken ill,” he observed to Lady Sarah.
“I would have done so had I apprehended danger,” she repentantly answered. “But I never did apprehend it. Mr. Snow did not do so. I thought how pleasant it would be to get her safe through the danger and the illness, before you should know of it.”
“Did she not wish me to be written to?”
The question was put firmly, abruptly, after the manner of one who will not be cheated of his answer. Lady Sarah dared not evade it. How could she equivocate, with her child lying dead in the house.
“It is true. She did wish it. It was on the first day of her illness that she spoke. ‘Write, and tell Thomas Godolphin.’ She never said it but that once.”
“And you did not do so?” he returned, his voice hoarse with pain.
“Do not reproach me! do not reproach me!” cried Lady Sarah, clasping her hands in supplication, while the tears fell in showers from her eyes. “I did it for the best. I never supposed there was danger:I thought what a pity it was to bring you back, all that long journey: putting you to so much unnecessary trouble and expense.”
Trouble and expense, in such a case! She could speak of expense to Thomas Godolphin! But he remembered how she had had to battle both with expense and trouble her whole life long; that for her these must wear a formidable aspect: and he remained silent.
“I wish now I had written,” she resumed, in the midst of her choking sobs. “As soon as Mr. Snow said there was danger, I wished it. But”—as if she would seek to excuse herself—“what with the two upon my hands, she upstairs, Sarah Anne here, I had not a moment for proper reflection.”
“Did you tell her you had not written?” he asked. “Or did you let her lie waiting for me, hour after hour, day after day, blaming me for my careless neglect?”
“She never blamed any one; you know she did not,” wailed Lady Sarah: “and I believe she was too ill to think even of you. She was only sensible at times. Oh, I say, do not reproach me, Mr. Godolphin! I would give my own life to bring her back again! I never knew her worth until she was gone. I never loved her as I love her now.”
There could be no doubt that Lady Sarah Grame was reproaching herself far more bitterly than any reproach could tell upon her from Thomas Godolphin. An accusing conscience is the worst of all evils. She sat there, her head bent, swaying herself backwards and forwards on her chair, moaning and crying. It was not a time, as Thomas Godolphin felt, to say a word of her past heartless conduct, in forcing Ethel to breathe the infection of Sarah Anne’s sick-room. And, all that he could say, all the reproaches, all the remorse and repentance, would not bring Ethel back to life.
“Would you like to see her?” whispered Lady Sarah, as he rose to leave.
“Yes.”
She lighted a candle, and preceded him upstairs. Ethel had died in her own room. At the door, Thomas Godolphin took the candle from Lady Sarah.
“I must go in alone.”
He passed on into the chamber, and closed the door. On the bed, laid out in her white night-dress, lay what remained of Ethel Grame. Pale, still, pure, her face was wonderfully like what it had been in life, and a calm smile rested upon it.—But Thomas Godolphin wished to be alone.
Lady Sarah stood outside, leaning against the opposite wall, and weeping silently, the glimmer from the hall-lamp below faintly lighting the corridor. Once she fancied that a sound, as of choking sobs, struck upon her ears, and she caught up a small black shawl that she wore, for grief had chilled her, flung it over her shoulders, and wept the faster.
He came out by-and-by, calm and quiet as he ever was. He did not perceive Lady Sarah standing there in the shade, and went straight down, the wax-light in his hand. Lady Sarah caught him up at the door of Sarah Anne’s room, and took the light from him.
“She looks very peaceful, does she not?” was her whisper.
“She could not look otherwise.”
He went on down alone, wishing to let himself out. But Elizabeth had heard his steps, and was already at the door. “Good night, Elizabeth,” he said, as he passed her.
The girl did not answer. She slipped out into the garden after him. “Oh, sir! and didn’t you know of it?” she whispered.
“No.”
“If anybody was ever gone away to be an angel, sir, it’s that sweet young lady,” continued Elizabeth, letting her tears and sobs come forth as they would. “She was just one here! and she’s gone to her own fit place above.”
“Ay. It is so.”
“You should have been in this house throughout the whole of the illness, to have see the difference between them, sir! Nobody would believe it. Miss Grame, angry and snappish, and not caring who suffered, or who was ill, or who toiled, so that she was served: Miss Ethel, lying like a tender lamb, patient and meek, thankful for all that was done for her. It does seem hard, sir, that we should lose her for ever.”
“Not for ever, Elizabeth,” he answered.
“And that’s true, too! But, sir, the worst is, one can’t think of that sort of consolation just when one’s troubles are fresh. Good night to you, sir.”
“No, no,” he murmured to himself; “not for ever.”
Thomas Godolphin walked on, leaving the high-road for a less-frequented path, the one by which he had come. About midway between this and the railway station, a path, branching to the right, would take him into Prior’s Ash. He went along, musing. In the depth of his great grief, there was no repining. He was one to trace the finger of God in all things. If Mrs. Godolphin had imbued him with superstitious feelings, she had also implanted within him something better: and a more entire trust in God it was perhaps impossible for any one to feel, than was felt by Thomas Godolphin. It was what he lived under. He could not see why Ethel should have been taken; why this great sorrow should fall upon him: but that it must be for the best, he implicitly believed. The best: for God had done it. How he was to live on without her, he knew not. How he could support the lively anguish of the immediate future, he did not care to think about. All his hope in this life gone! all his plans, his projects, uprooted by a single blow! never, any of them, to return. He might still look for the bliss of a hereafter—ay! that remains even for the most heavy-laden, thank God!—but his sun of happiness in this world had set for ever.
Thomas Godolphin might have been all the better for a little sunthen—not speaking figuratively. I mean the good sun that illumines our daily world; that would be illumining my pen and paper at this moment, but for an envious fog, which obscures everything but itself. The moon was not shining as it had shone the last night he left Lady Sarah’s, when he had left his farewell kiss—oh that he could have known it was the last!—on the gentle lips of Ethel. There was no moon yet; the stars were not showing themselves, for a black cloud enveloped the skies like a pall, fitting accompaniment to his blasted hopes; and his path altogether was dark. Little wonder then, that Thomas Godolphin all but fell over some dark object, crouching in his way: he could only save himself by springing back. By dint of peering, he discovered it to be a woman. She was seated on the bare earth; her hands clasped under her knees, which were raised almost level with her chin which rested on them, and was swaying herself backwards and forwards as one does in grief; as Lady Sarah Grame had done not long before.
“Why do you sit here?” cried Thomas Godolphin. “I nearly fell over you.”
“Little matter if ye’d fell over me and killed me,” was the woman’s response, given without raising her head, or making any change in her position. “’Twould only have been one less in an awful cold world, as seems made for nothing but trouble. If the one half of us was out of it, there’d be room perhaps for them as was left.”
“Is it Mrs. Bond?” asked Thomas Godolphin, as he caught a glimpse of her features.
“Didn’t you know me, sir? I know’d you by the voice as soon as you spoke. You have got trouble too, I hear. The world’s full of nothing else. Why does it come?”
“Get up,” said Thomas Godolphin. “Why do you sit there? Why are you here at all at this hour of the night?”
“It’s where I’m going to stop till morning,” returned the woman, sullenly. “There shall be no getting up for me.”
“What is the matter with you?” he resumed.
“Trouble,” she shortly answered. “I’ve been toiling up to the work’us, asking for a loaf, or a bit o’ money: anything they’d give to me, just to keep body and soul together for my children. They turned me back again. They’ll give me nothing. I may go into the union with the children if I will, but not a stiver of help’ll they afford me out of it. Me, with a corpse in the house, and a bare cubbort.”
“A corpse!” involuntarily repeated Thomas Godolphin. “Who is dead!”
“John.”
Curtly as the word was spoken, the tone yet betrayed its own pain. This John, the eldest son of the Bonds, had been attacked with the fever at the same time as the father and brother. They had succumbed to it: this one had recovered: or, at least, had appeared to be recovering.
“I thought John was getting better,” observed Thomas Godolphin.
“He might ha’ got better, if he’d had things to make him better! Wine and meat, and all the rest of it. He hadn’t got ’em; and he’s dead.”
Now a subscription had been entered into for the relief of the poor sufferers from the fever, Godolphin, Crosse, and Godolphin having been amongst its most liberal contributors; and to Thomas Godolphin’s certain knowledge, a full share, and a very good share, had been handed to the Bonds. Quite sufficient to furnish proper nourishment for John Bond for some time to come. He did not say to the woman, “You have had enough: where has it gone to? it has been wasted in riot.” That it had been wasted in riot and improvidence, there was no doubt, for it was in the nature of the Bonds so to waste it; but to cast reproach in the hour of affliction was not the religion of everyday life practised by Thomas Godolphin.
“Yes, they turned me back,” she resumed, swaying herself nose and knees together, as before. “They wouldn’t give me as much as a bit o’ bread. I wasn’t going home without taking something to my famished children; and I wasn’t going to beg like a common tramp. So I just sat myself down here; and I shan’t care if I’m found stark and stiff in the morning!”
“Get up, get up,” said Thomas Godolphin. “I will give you something for bread for your children to-night.”
In the midst of his own sorrow he could feel for her, improvident old sinner though she was, and though he knew her to be so. He coaxed and soothed, and finally prevailed upon her to rise, but she was in a reckless, sullen mood, and it took him a little effort before it was effected. She burst into tears when she thanked him, and turned off in the direction of the Pollard cottages.
The reflection of Mr. Snow’s bald head was conspicuous on the surgery blind: he was standing between the window and the lamp. Thomas Godolphin observed it as he passed. He turned to the surgery door, which was at the side of the house, opened it, and saw that Mr. Snow was alone.
The surgeon turned his head at the interruption, put down a glass jar which he held, and grasped his visitor’s hand in silence.
“Snow! why did you not write for me?”
Mr. Snow brought down his hand on a pair of tiny scales, causing them to jangle and rattle. He had been bottling up his anger against Lady Sarah for some days now, and this was his first explosion.
“Because I understood that she had done so. I was present when that poor child asked her to do it. I found her on the floor in Sarah Anne’s chamber. On the floor, if you’ll believe me! Lying there, because she could not hold her aching head up. My lady had dragged her out of bed in the morning, ill as she was, and forced her to attend as usual upon Sarah Anne. I got it all out of Elizabeth. ‘Mamma,’ she said, when I pronounced it to be fever, though she was almost beyond speaking then, ‘you will write to Thomas Godolphin.’ I never supposed but that my lady did it. Your sister, Miss Godolphin, inquired if you had been written for, and I told her yes.”
“Snow,” came the next sad words, “could you not have saved her?”
The surgeon shook his head and answered in a quiet tone, looking down at the stopper of a phial, which he had taken up and was turning about listlessly in his fingers.
“Neither care nor skill could save her. I gave her the best I had togive. As did Dr. Beale. Godolphin,”—raising his quick dark eyes, flashing then with a peculiar light—“she was ready to go. Let it be your consolation.”
Thomas Godolphin made no answer, and there was silence for a time. Mr. Snow resumed. “As to my lady, the best consolation I wish her, is, that she may have her heart wrung with remembrance for years to come! I don’t care what people may preach about charity and forgiveness; I do wish it. But she’ll be brought to her senses, unless I am mistaken: she has lost her treasure and kept her bane. A year or two more, and that’s what Sarah Anne will be.”
“She ought to have written for me.”
“She ought to do many things that she does not do. She ought to have sent Ethel from the house, as I told her, the instant the disorder appeared in it. Not she. She kept her in her insane selfishness: and now I hope she’s satisfied with her work. When alarming symptoms showed themselves in Ethel, on the fourth day of her illness, I think it was, I said to my lady, ‘It is strange what can be keeping Mr. Godolphin!’ ‘Oh,’ said she, ‘I did not write to him.’ ‘Not write!’ I answered: and I fear I used an ugly word to my lady’s face. ‘I’ll write at once,’ returned she humbly. ‘Of course,’ cried I, ‘when the steed’s stolen we shut the stable-door.’ It’s the way of the world.”
Another pause. “I would have given anything to take Ethel from the house at the time; to take her from the town,” observed Thomas Godolphin in a low tone. “I said so then. But it could not be.”
“I should have done it, in your place,” said Mr. Snow. “If my lady had said no, I’d have carried her off in the face of it. Not married, you say? Rubbish! Every one knows she’d have been safe with you. And you would have been married as soon as was convenient. What are forms and ceremonies and carping tongues, in comparison with a girl’s life? A life, precious as was Ethel’s!”
Thomas Godolphin leaned his forehead in his hand, lost in retrospect. Oh, that hehadtaken her! that he had set at nought what he had then bowed to, theconvenancesof society! She might have been by his side now, in health and life, to bless him! Doubting words interrupted the train of thought.
“And yet I don’t know,” the surgeon was repeating, in a dreamy manner. “What is to be, will be. We look back, all of us, and say, ‘If I had acted thus, if I had done the other, so and so would not have happened; events would have turned out differently.’ But who is to be sure of it? Had you taken Ethel out of harm’s way—as we might have thought it—there’s no telling but she’d have had the fever just the same: her blood might have become infected before she left the house. There’s no knowing, Mr. Godolphin.”
“True. Good evening, Snow.”
He turned suddenly and hastily to the outer door, but the surgeon caught him before he passed its threshold, and touched his arm to detain him. They stood there in the obscurity, their faces shaded in the dark night.
“She left you a parting word, Mr. Godolphin.”
“Ah?”
“An hour before she died she was calm and sensible, though fearfully weak. Lady Sarah had gone to her favourite, and I was alone with Ethel. ‘Has he not come yet?’ she asked me, opening her eyes. ‘My dear,’ I said, ‘he could not come; he was never written for.’ For I knew she alluded to you, and was determined to tell her the truth, dying though she was. ‘What shall I say to him for you?’ I continued. She put up her hand to motion my face nearer hers, for her voice was growing faint. ‘Tell him, with my dear love, not to grieve,’ she whispered, between her panting breath. ‘Tell him that I have gone on before.’ I think they were almost the last words she spoke.”
Thomas Godolphin leaned against the modest post of the surgery door, and eagerly drank in the words. Then he wrung the doctor’s hand, and departed, hurrying along the street as one who shrank from observation: for he did not care, just then, to encounter the gaze of his fellow-men.
Coming with a quick step up the side street, in which the entrance to the surgery was situated, was the Reverend Mr. Hastings. He stopped to accost the surgeon.
“Was that Mr. Godolphin?”
“Ay. This is a blow for him.”
Mr. Hastings’s voice insensibly shrank to a whisper. “Maria tells me that he did not know of Ethel’s death or illness. Until they arrived here to-night, they thought it was Sarah Anne who died. He went up to Lady Sarah’s after the train came in, thinking so.”
“Lady Sarah’s a fool,” was the complimentary rejoinder of Mr. Snow.
“She is, in some things,” warmly assented the Rector. “The telegraphic message she despatched to Scotland, telling of the death, was so obscurely worded as to cause them to assume that it alluded to Sarah Anne.”
“Ah well! she’s only heaping burdens on her conscience,” rejoined Mr. Snow in a philosophic tone. “She has lost Ethel through want of care (as I firmly believe) in not keeping her out of the way of infection; she prevented their last meeting, through not writing to him; she——”
“He could not have saved her, had he been here,” interrupted Mr. Hastings.
“No one said he could. There would have been satisfaction in it for him, though. And for her too, poor child.”
Mr. Hastings did not contest the point. He was so very practical a man (in contradistinction to an imaginative one) that he saw little use in “last” interviews, unless they produced actual good. Turning away, he walked home at a brisk pace. Maria was alone when he entered. Mrs. Hastings and Grace were out of the room, talking to some late applicant: a clergyman’s house, like a parish apothecary’s, is never free long together. Divested of her travelling cloaks and seated before the fire in her quiet merino dress, Maria looked as much at home as if she had never left it. The blaze, flickering on her face, betrayed to the keen glance of the Rector that her eyelashes were wet.
“Grieving after Broomhead already, Maria?” asked he, his tone a stern one.
“Oh, papa, no! I am glad to be at home. I was thinking of poor Ethel.”
“She is better off. The time may come, Maria—we none of us know what is before us—when some of you young ones who are left may wish you had died as she has. Many a one, battling for very existence with the world’s cares, wails out a vain wish that he had been taken early from the evil to come.”
“It must be so dreadful for Thomas Godolphin!” Maria resumed, looking straight into the fire, and speaking as if in commune with herself, more than to her father.
“Thomas Godolphin must find another love.”
It was one of those phrases, spoken in satire only, to which the Rector of All Souls’ was occasionally given. He saw so much to condemn in the world, things which grated harshly on his advanced mind, that his speech had become imbued with a touch of gall, and he would often give utterance to cynical remarks, uncalled for at the moment.
Maria took up the words literally. She turned to Mr. Hastings; her cheek flushed, her hands clasped; altogether betraying vivid emotion. “Oh, papa! another love! You should not say it of Thomas Godolphin. Love, such as his, is not for a week or a year: it is for all time.”
The Rector paused a moment in his reply. His penetrating gaze was fixed upon his daughter. “May I inquire whence you have derived your knowledge of ‘love,’ Miss Maria Hastings?”
Her eyes drooped, her face turned crimson, her manner grew confused. She turned her countenance from that of her father, and stammered forth some lame excuse. “Every one knows, papa, that Thomas Godolphin was fond of Ethel.”
“Possibly. But every one does not know that Maria Hastings deems herself qualified to enlarge upon the subject,” was the Rector’s reply. And Maria shrank into silence.
There came a day, not many days afterwards, when Maria Hastings, her sisters, and two of her brothers, were gathered in sombre silence around the study window of the Rectory. The room was built out at the back of the house, over the kitchen, and its side window commanded a full view of the churchyard of All Souls’, and of the church porch. Grace, who constituted herself mistress of the others a great deal more than did Mrs. Hastings herself, allowed the blind to be drawn up about two inches at the bottom of the window; and Maria, Isaac, Harry, and Rose, kneeling down for convenience sake, brought their faces into contact with it, as the mob outside the churchyard gate did there. Human nature is the same everywhere, whether in the carefully-trained children of a Christian gentleman, or in those who know no training but what the streets have given.
The funeral, even now, was inside the church: it had been inside so long that those eager watchers, estimating time by their impatience, began to think it was never coming out again. A sudden movement in the church porch reassured them, and Grace knelt down and made one with the rest.
Slowly—slowly—on it came. The Reverend Mr. Hastings first, in his white robes; the coffin next; Thomas Godolphin last, with a stranger by his side. Nothing more, except some pall-bearers in theirwhite scarfs, and the necessary attendants. It was a perfectly simple funeral: according well with what the dead had been in her simple life.
The appearance of this stranger took the curious gazers by surprise. Who was he? A spare man, past middle age, with a red nose and an unmistakable wig on his head. Rumours circulating in Prior’s Ash had said that Thomas Godolphin would be sole mourner. Lady Sarah Grame’s relatives—and she could not boast of many—lived far north of Aberdeen. “Who can he be?” murmured Grace Hastings.
“Why, don’t you girls know? That’s through your having stuck yourselves in the house all the morning, for fear you should lose the funeral. If you had gone out, you’d have heard who he is.” The retort came from Harry Hastings. Let it be a funeral or a wedding, that may be taking place under their very eyes, boys must be boys all the world over. And so they ever will be.
“Who is he, then?” asked Grace.
“He is Ethel’s uncle,” answered Harry. “He arrived by train this morning. The Earl of Macsomething.”
“The Earl of Macsomething!” repeated Grace.
Harry nodded. “Mac begins the name, and I forget the rest. Lady Sarah was his sister.”
“Is, you mean,” said Grace. “It must be Lord Macdoune.”
The church porch was opposite the study window. The grave had been dug in a line between the two, very near to the family vault of the Godolphins and to the entrance gate of the churchyard. On it came, crossing the broad churchyard path which wound round to the road, treading between mounds and graves. The clergyman took his place at the head, the mourners near him, the rest disposing themselves decently around.
“Grace,” whispered Isaac, “if we had the window open an inch, we should hear.” And Grace was pleased to accord her sanction, and they silently raised it.
“Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.”
The children—indeed they were little more—hushed their breath and listened, and looked at Thomas Godolphin. Thomas Godolphin stood there, his head bowed, his face still, the gentle wind stirring his thin dark hair. It was probably a marvel to himself in after-life, how he had contrived, in that closing hour, to retain his calmness before the world.
“The coffin’s lowered at last!” broke out Harry, who had been more curious to watch the movements of the men, than the aspect of Thomas Godolphin.
“Hush, sir!” sharply rebuked Grace. And the minister’s voice again stole over the silence.
“Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear sister here departed, we therefore commit her body to the ground; earth to earth ... ashes to ashes ... dust to dust ... in sure and certain hope of the resurrectionto eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change our vile body, that it may be like unto his glorious body, according to the mighty working, whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself.”
Every word came home to Thomas Godolphin’s senses; every syllable vibrated upon his heartstrings. That sure and certain hope laid hold of his soul, never again to quit it. It diffused its own holy peace and calm into his troubled mind: and never, until that moment, had he fully realized the worth, the truth, of her dying legacy: “Tell him that I have gone on before.” A few years—God, now present with him, alone knew how few or how many—and Thomas Godolphin would have joined her in eternal life.
But why had Mr. Hastings come to a temporary pause? Because his eye had fallen upon one, then gliding up from the entrance of the churchyard to take his place amidst the mourners. One who had evidently arrived in a hurry. He wore neither scarf nor hatband, neither cloak nor hood: nothing but a full suit of plain black clothes.
“Look, Maria,” whispered Grace.
It was George Godolphin. He fell quietly in below his brother, his hat carried in his hand, his head bowed, his fair curls waving in the breeze. It was all the work of an instant: and the minister resumed:
“I heard a voice from heaven, saying unto me, Write, From henceforth blessed are the dead which die in the Lord: even so saith the Spirit; for they rest from their labours.”
And so went on the service to the end.
The beadle, with much bustle and a liberal use of his staff, scattered and dispersed the mob from the gates, to clear a passage. Two mourning coaches were in waiting. Thomas Godolphin came forth, leaning on his brother’s arm, both of them bare-headed still. They entered one; Lord Macdoune stepped into the other.
“Thomas!” cried George Godolphin, leaning forward and seizing his brother’s hand impulsively, as the mourning-coach paced slowly on: “I should have been here in good time, but for a delay in the train.”
“How did you hear of it? I did not know where to write to you,” was Thomas’s reply, spoken calmly.
“I heard of it at Broomhead. I went back there, and then I came off at once. Thomas, could they not save her?”
A slight negative movement was all Thomas Godolphin’s answer. “How did you find your father, George?”
“Breaking. Breaking fast. Thomas, all his talk is, that he must come home to die.”
“To Ashlydyat. I know. How is he to come to it? The Folly is not Ashlydyat. He has desired me to see that he is at Prior’s Ash before Christmas, and I shall do so.”
George looked surprised. “Desired you to see that he is?”
“If he is not back speedily, I am to go to Broomhead.”
“Oh, I see. That your authority, upholding his, may be pitted against my lady’s. Take care, Thomas: she may prove stronger than both of you put together.”
“I think not,” replied Thomas quietly; and he placed his elbow onthe window frame, and bent his face upon his hand, as if wishing for silence.
Meanwhile the Reverend Mr. Hastings had passed through the private gate to his own garden; and half a dozen men were shovelling earth upon the coffin, sending it with a rattle upon the bright plate, which told who was mouldering within:
“Ethel Grame.Aged twenty years.”
Thomas Godolphin sat in his place at the bank, opening the morning letters. It was some little time after the interment of Ethel Grame, and the second week in December was already on the wane. In two days more it was his intention to start for Broomhead: for no tidings arrived of the return of Sir George. The very last of the letters he came upon, was one bearing the Scotch post-mark. A poor little note with a scrawled address: no wonder the sorting-clerk had placed it last of all! It looked singularly obscure, in comparison with those large blue letters and their business hands.
Thomas Godolphin knew the writing. It was Margery’s. And we may as well read the contents with him,verbatim: