The Shadow of Ashlydyat Part 27

"I must go in alone."

He pa.s.sed 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 G.o.dolphin 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, wis.h.i.+ng to let himself out. But Elizabeth had heard his steps, and was already at the door. "Good night, Elizabeth,"

he said, as he pa.s.sed 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! n.o.body 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."

CHAPTER XIV.

GONE ON BEFORE.

Thomas G.o.dolphin 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 G.o.d in all things. If Mrs. G.o.dolphin had imbued him with superst.i.tious feelings, she had also implanted within him something better: and a more entire trust in G.o.d it was perhaps impossible for any one to feel, than was felt by Thomas G.o.dolphin. 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d!--but his sun of happiness in this world had set for ever.

Thomas G.o.dolphin might have been all the better for a little sun then--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 s.h.i.+ning 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 G.o.dolphin 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 G.o.dolphin. "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 G.o.dolphin, 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 G.o.dolphin. "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 G.o.dolphin. "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 succ.u.mbed to it: this one had recovered: or, at least, had appeared to be recovering.

"I thought John was getting better," observed Thomas G.o.dolphin.

"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, G.o.dolphin, Crosse, and G.o.dolphin having been amongst its most liberal contributors; and to Thomas G.o.dolphin'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 G.o.dolphin.

"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 G.o.dolphin. "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 G.o.dolphin observed it as he pa.s.sed. 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 gla.s.s 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 p.r.o.nounced it to be fever, though she was almost beyond speaking then, 'you will write to Thomas G.o.dolphin.' I never supposed but that my lady did it. Your sister, Miss G.o.dolphin, 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 to give. As did Dr. Beale. G.o.dolphin,"--raising his quick dark eyes, flas.h.i.+ng then with a peculiar light--"she was ready to go. Let it be your consolation."

Thomas G.o.dolphin 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."