The Shadow of Ashlydyat Part 68

"It could not have been done effectually," was Bessy's answer. "Papa must have had lazy men at work, who left the roots in. I would dig it all up and make a ploughed field of it."

"Did he do any other harm--that Wicked G.o.dolphin?" asked Maria.

"He! Other harm!" reiterated Janet, something like indignation at Maria's question mingling with surprise in her tone. "Don't you know that it was he who gambled away Ashlydyat? After that second marriage of his, he took to worse and worse courses. It was said that his second wife proved a match for him, and they lived together like two evil demons. All things considered, it was perhaps a natural sequence that they should so live," added Janet, severely. "And in the end he cut off the entail and gambled away the estate. Many years elapsed before the G.o.dolphins could recover it."

Maria was longing to put a question. She had heard that there were other superst.i.tious marvels attaching to Ashlydyat, but she scarcely liked to mention them to the Miss G.o.dolphins. George never would explain anything: he always turned it off, with laughing raillery.

"You--think--that Ashlydyat will pa.s.s away from the G.o.dolphins, Janet?"

Janet shook her head. "We have been reared in the belief," she answered.

"That the estate is to pa.s.s finally away from them, the G.o.dolphins have been taught to fear ever since that unhappy time. Each generation, as they have come into possession, have accepted it as an uncertain tenure: as a thing that might last them for their time, or might pa.s.s away from them ere their earthly sojourn was completed. The belief was; nay, the tradition was; that so long as a reigning G.o.dolphin held by Ashlydyat, Ashlydyat would hold by him and his. My father was the first to break it."

Janet had taken up her dress, and sat down on a dusty, faded bench, the only article of furniture of any description that the square room contained. That strangely speculative look--it was scarcely an earthly one--had come into her eyes: and though she answered when spoken to, she appeared to be lost in sad, inward thought. Maria, somewhat awed with the turn the conversation had taken, with the words altogether, stood against the opposite window, her delicate hands clasped before her, her face slightly bent forward, pale and grave.

"Then, do you fear that the end for the G.o.dolphins is at hand?"

"I seem to _see_ that it is," replied Janet. "I have looked for it ever since my father left Ashlydyat. I might say--but that I should be laughed at more than I am for an idealist--that the strangers to whom he resigned it in his place, would have some bearing upon our fall, would in some way conduce to it. I think of these things ever," continued Janet, almost as if she would apologize for the wildness of the confession. "They seem to unfold themselves to me, to become clear and more clear: to be no longer fanciful fears darting across the brain, but realities of life."

Maria's lips slightly parted as she listened. "But the Verralls have left Ashlydyat a long while?" she presently said.

"I know they have. But they were usurpers here for the time. Better--as I believe--that my father had shut it up: better, far better, that he had never left it! He knew it also: and it preyed upon him on his death-bed."

"Oh, Janet! the ill may not come in our time!"

"It may not. I am anxious to believe it may not, in defiance of the unalterable conviction that has seated itself within me. Let it pa.s.s, Maria; talking of it will not avert it: indeed, I do not know how I came to be betrayed into speaking of it openly."

"But you have not told me about the sounds in the pa.s.sages?" urged Maria, as Janet rose from her dusty seat.

"There is nothing more to tell. Peculiar sounds, as if caused by the wind, are heard. Moaning, sighing, rus.h.i.+ng--the pa.s.sages at times seem alive with them. It is said to come as a reminder to the G.o.dolphins of a worse sound that will sometime be heard, when Ashlydyat shall be pa.s.sing away from them."

"But you don't believe that?" uttered Maria.

"Child, I can scarcely tell you what I believe," was Janet's answer. "I can only pray that the one-half of what my heart prompts me to fear, may never take place in reality. That the noise does come, and without any apparent cause, is not a matter of belief, or disbelief: it is a fact, patent to all who have inhabited Ashlydyat. The Verralls can tell you so: they have had their rest broken by it."

"And it is not caused by the wind?"

Janet shook her head in dissent. "It has come on the calmest and stillest night, when there has not been a breath of air to move the leaves of the ash-trees."

Bessy turned from her pastime of watching Charlotte Pain: she had taken little part in the conversation.

"I wonder at you, Janet. You will be setting Maria against Ashlydyat.

She will be frightened to come into it, should it lapse to George."

Maria looked at her with a smile. "I should have no fear with him, superst.i.tious or otherwise. If George took me to live in the catacombs, I could be brave with him."

Ever the same blind faith; the unchanged love for her husband. Better, far better, that it should be so!

"For my part, I am content to take life and its good as I find it, and not waste my time in unprofitable dreams," was the practical remark of Bessy. "If any ill is to come, it must come; but there's no need to look out for it beforehand."

"There must be dreamers and there must be workers," answered Janet, picking her way down the winding stairs. "We were not all born into the world with minds similarly const.i.tuted, or to fulfil the same parts in life."

The day pa.s.sed on. Thomas G.o.dolphin came home in the evening to dinner, and said George had not returned. Maria wondered. It grew later. Margery went home with Meta: who thought she was very hardly used at having to go home before her mamma.

"I had rather you would stay, Maria," Thomas said to her. "I particularly wish to say a word to George to-night, on business-matters: if he finds you are here when he returns, he will come up."

George did find so--as you already know. And when he left Mrs. Charlotte Pain, her torn dress and her other attractions, he bent his steps towards Ashlydyat. But, instead of going, the most direct road to it, he took his way through the thicket where he had had the encounter an hour ago with Charlotte. There was a little spice of mystery about it which excited Mr. George's curiosity. That someone had parted from her he felt convinced, in spite of her denial. And that she was in a state of excitement, of agitation, far beyond anything he had ever witnessed in Charlotte Pain, was indisputable. George's thoughts went back, naturally, to the previous night: to the figure he had seen, and whom his eyes, his conviction, had told him was Charlotte. She had positively denied it, had said she had not quitted the drawing-room: and George had found her there, apparently composed and stationary. Nevertheless, though he had then yielded to her word, he began now to suspect that his own conviction had been correct: that the dark and partially disguised figure had been no other than Charlotte herself. It is probable that, however powerful was the hold Charlotte's fascinations may have taken upon the senses of Mr. George G.o.dolphin, his _trust_ in her, in her truth and single-heartedness, was not of the most perfect nature. What mystery was connected with Charlotte, or whom she met in the thicket, or whether she met any one or no one, she best knew. George's curiosity was sufficiently excited upon the point to induce him to walk with a slow step and searching eyes, lest haply he might come upon some one or something which should explain the puzzle.

How runs the old proverb? "A watched-for visitor never comes." In vain George halted and listened; in vain he peered into every part of the thicket within view. Not a step was to be heard, not a creature to be seen: and he emerged from the trees ungratified. Crossing the open gra.s.s by the turnstile he turned round by the ash-trees, to the Dark Plain.

Turned and started. George G.o.dolphin's thoughts had been on other things than the Shadow. The Shadow lay there, so pre-eminently dark, so menacing, that George positively started. Somehow--fond as he was of ignoring the superst.i.tion--George G.o.dolphin did not like its look to-night.

Upon entering Ashlydyat, his first interview was with Thomas. They remained for a few minutes alone. Thomas had business affairs to speak of: and George--it is more than probable--made some good excuse for his day's absence. That it would be useless to deny he had been to London, he knew. Charlotte had put him on his guard. Janet and Bessy asked innumerable questions of him when he joined them, on the score of his absence; but he treated it in his usual light manner, contriving to tell them nothing. Maria did not say a word then: she left it till they should be alone.

"You will tell _me_, George, will you not?" she gently said, as they were walking home together.

"Tell you what, Maria?"

"Oh, George, you know what"--and her tone, as Mr. George's ears detected, bore its sound of pain. "If you were going to London when you left me; why did you deceive me by saying you were going elsewhere?"

"You goose! Do you suppose I said it to deceive you?"

There was a lightness, an untruthfulness in his words, in his whole air and manner, which struck with the utmost pain upon Maria's heart. "Why did you say it?" was all she answered.

"Maria, I'll tell you the truth," said he, becoming serious and confidential. "I wanted to run up to town on a little pressing matter of business, and I did not care that it should become known in the Bank.

Had I known that I should be away for the day, of course I should have told Thomas: but I fully intended to be home in the afternoon: therefore I said nothing about it. I missed the train, or I should have been home in due time."

"You might have told me," she sighed. "I would have kept your counsel."

"So I would, had I thought you deemed it of any consequence," replied George.

Consequence! Maria walked on a few minutes in silence, her arm lying very spiritless within her husband's. "If you did not tell me," she resumed, in a low tone, "why did you tell Mrs. Pain?"

"Mrs. Pain's a donkey," was George's rejoinder. And it is probable Mr.

George at that moment was thinking her one: for his tone in its vexation, was real enough. "My business was connected with Verrall, and I dropped a hint, in the hearing of Mrs. Pain, that I might probably follow him to town. At any rate, I am safe home again, Maria, so no great harm has come of my visit to London," he concluded, in a gayer tone.

"What time did you get in?" she asked.

"By the seven o'clock train."

"The seven o'clock train!" she repeated in surprise. "And have only now come up to Ashlydyat!"

"I found a good many things to do after I got home," was the rejoinder.

"Did you see Meta? Margery took her home at eight o'clock."

Mr. George G.o.dolphin had not seen Meta. Mr. George could have answered, had it so pleased him, that before the child reached home, he had departed on his evening visit to Lady G.o.dolphin's Folly.