A VISIT TO LORD AVERIL.
A few days progressed onwards, and another week was in. Every hour
brought to light more--what are we to call it--imprudence?--of Mr.
George Godolphin's. His friends termed it imprudence; his enemies
villainy. Thomas called it nothing: he never cast reproach on George by
a single word; he would have taken the whole odium upon himself, had it
been possible to take it. George's conduct was breaking his heart, was
driving him to his grave somewhat before his time; but Thomas never said
in the hearing of others--He has been a bad brother to me.
George Godolphin was not yet home again. It could not be said that he
was in concealment, as he was sometimes met in London by people visiting
it. Perhaps he carried his habitual carelessness so far as to the
perilling of his own safety; and his absence from Prior's Ash may have
been the result only of his distaste to meet that ill-used community.
Had he been sole partner, he must have been there to answer to his
bankruptcy; as it was, Thomas, hitherto, had answered all in his own
person.
But there came a day when Thomas could not answer it. Ill or well, he
rose now to the early breakfast-table: he had to hasten to the Bank
betimes, for there was much work there with the accounts; and one
morning when they were at breakfast, Bexley, his own servant, entered
with one or two letters.
They were speaking of Lady Godolphin. My lady was showing herself a true
friend. She had announced to them that it was her intention to resume
her residence at the Folly, that they "might not be separated from
Prior's Ash, the place of their birth and home." Of course it was an
intimation, really delicately put, that their future home must be with
her. "Never for me," Janet remarked: _her_ future residence would not be
at Prior's Ash; as far removed from it as possible.
Thomas had risen, and was at a distant table, opening his letters, when
a faint moan startled them. He was leaning back in his chair, seemingly
unconscious; his hands had fallen, his face was the hue of the grave.
Surely those dews upon it were not the dews of death?
Cecil screamed; Bessy flung open the door and called for help; Janet
only turned to them, her hands lifted to enjoin silence, a warning word
upon her lips. Bexley came running in, and looked at his master.
"He'll be better presently," he whispered.
"Yes, he will be better presently," assented Janet. "But I should like
Mr. Snow to be here."
Bexley was the only man-servant left at Ashlydyat. Short work is
generally made of the dispersion of a household when the means come to
an end, as they had with the Godolphins: and there had been no
difficulty in finding places for the excellent servants of Ashlydyat.
Bexley had stoutly refused to go. He didn't want wages, he said, but he
was not going to leave his master, so long as---- Bexley did not say so
long as what, but they had understood him. So long as his master was in
life.
Thomas began to revive. He slowly opened his eyes, and raised his hand
to wipe the moisture from his white face. On the table before him lay
one of the letters open. Janet recognized the handwriting as that of
George.
She spurned the letter from her. With a gesture of grievous vexation,
her hand pushed it across the table. "It is that which has affected
you!" she cried out, with a wail.
"Not so," breathed Thomas. "It was the pain here."
He touched himself below the chest; in the place where the pain had come
before. _Which_ pain had seized upon him?--the mental agony arising from
George's conduct, or the physical agony of his disease? Probably
somewhat of both.
He stretched out his hand towards the letter, making a motion that it
should be folded. Bexley, who could not have read a word without his
glasses had it been to save his life, took up the letter, folded it, and
placed it in its envelope. Thomas's mind then seemed at rest, and he
closed his eyes again.
Mr. Snow soon reached Ashlydyat. "Another attack, I hear," he began, in
his unceremonious salutation. "Bothered into it, no doubt. Bexley says
it came on when he was reading letters."
With the wan white look upon his face, with the moisture of pain still
upon his brow, lay Thomas Godolphin. He was on the sofa now; but he
partially rose from it and assumed a sitting posture when the surgeon
entered.
A few professional questions and answers, and then Mr. Snow began to
grumble. "Did I not warn you that you must have perfect tranquillity?"
cried he. "Rest of body and of mind."
"You did. But how am I to have it? Even now, I ought to be at the Bank,
facing the trouble there."
"Where's George?" sharply asked Mr. Snow.
"In London," replied Thomas Godolphin. But he said it in no complaining
accent: neither did his tone invite further comment.
Mr. Snow was one who did not wait for an invitation in such a cause ere
he spoke. "It is one of two things, Mr. Godolphin. Either George must
come back and face this worry, or else you'll die."
"I shall die, however it may be, Snow," was the reply of Thomas
Godolphin.
"So will most of us, I expect," returned the doctor. "But there's no
necessity for being helped on to it by others, ages before death would
come of itself. What's your brother at in London? Amusing himself, I
suppose. He must be got here."
Thomas shook his head. The action, as implying a negative, aroused the
wrath of Mr. Snow. "Do you want to die?" he asked. "One would think it,
by your keeping your brother away."
"There is no person who would more gladly see my brother here than I,"
returned Thomas Godolphin. "If--if it were expedient that he should
come."
"Need concealment be affected between us, Mr. Godolphin?" resumed the
surgeon, after a pause. "You must be aware that I have heard the rumours
afloat. A doctor hears everything, you know. You are uncertain whether
it would be safe for George to come back to Prior's Ash."
"It is something of that sort, Snow."
"But now, what is there against him--it is of no use to mince the
matter--besides those bonds of Lord Averil's?"
"There's nothing else against him. At least, in--in----" He did not go
on. He could not bring his lips to say of his brother--"from a criminal
point of view."
"Nothing else of which unpleasant legal cognizance can be taken," freely
interposed Mr. Snow. "Well, now, it is my opinion that there's not a
shadow of fear to be entertained from Lord Averil. He is your old and
firm friend, Mr. Godolphin."
"He has been mine: yes. Not so much George's. Most men in such a case
of--of loss, would resent it, without reference to former friendship. I
am not at any certainty, you see, and therefore I cannot take the
responsibility of saying to my brother, 'It is safe for you to return.'
Lord Averil has never been near me since. I argue ill from it."
"He has not been with you for the best of all possible reasons--that he
has been away from Prior's Ash," explained Mr. Snow.
"Has he been away? I did not know it."
"He has. He was called away unexpectedly by some relative's illness, a
day or two after your house was declared bankrupt. He may have refrained
from calling on you just at the time that happened, from motives of
delicacy."
"True," replied Thomas Godolphin. But his tone was not a hopeful one.
"When does he return?"
"He has returned. He came back last night."
There was a pause. Thomas Godolphin broke it. "I wish you could give me
something to avert or mitigate these sharp attacks of pain, Snow," he
said. "It is agony, in fact; not pain."
"I know it," replied Mr. Snow. "Where's the use of my attempting to give
you anything? You don't take my prescriptions."
Thomas lifted his eyes in some surprise. "I have taken all that you have
desired me."
"No, you have not. I prescribe tranquillity of mind and body. You take
neither."
Thomas Godolphin leaned a little nearer to the doctor, and paused before
he answered. "Tranquillity of mind for me has passed. I can never know
it again. Were my life to be prolonged, the great healer of all things,
Time, might bring it me in a degree: but, for that, I shall not live.
Snow, you must know this to be the case, under the calamity which has
fallen upon my head."
"It ought to have fallen upon your brother's head, not upon yours," was
the rejoinder of the surgeon, spoken crossly, in his inability to
contradict Mr. Godolphin's words. "At any rate, you cannot go on any
longer facing this business in person."
"I must indeed. There is no help for it."
"And suppose it kills you?" was the retort.
"If I could help going, I would," said Thomas. "But there is no
alternative. One of us must be there; and George cannot be. You are not
ignorant of the laws of bankruptcy."
"It is another nail in your coffin," growled Mr. Snow, as he took his
leave.
He went straight to the Bank. He asked to see Mrs. George Godolphin.
Maria, in her pretty morning dress of muslin, was seated with Meta on
her knees. She had been reading the child a Bible story, and was now
talking to her in a low voice, her own face, so gentle, so pure, and so
sad, bent towards the little one's upturned to it.
"Well, young lady, and how are all the dolls?" was the surgeon's
greeting. "Will you send her away to play with them, Mrs. George?"
Meta ran off. She intended to come bustling down again with her arms
full. Mr. Snow took his seat opposite Maria.
"Why does your husband not come back?" he abruptly asked.
The question seemed to turn Maria's heart to sickness. She opened her
lips to answer, but stopped in hesitation. Mr. Snow resumed:
"His staying away is killing Thomas Godolphin. I prescribe tranquillity
for him; total rest: instead of which, he is obliged to come here day
after day, and be in a continuous scene of worry. Your husband must
return, Mrs. George Godolphin."
"Y--es," she faintly answered, lacking the courage to say that
considerations for his personal security might forbid it.
"Murder will not mend these unhappy matters, Mrs. George Godolphin; nor
would it be a desirable ending to them. And it will be nothing less than
murder if he does not return, for Mr. Godolphin will surely die."
All Maria's pulses seemed to beat the quicker. "Is Mr. Godolphin worse?"
she asked.
"He is considerably worse. I have been called in to him this morning. My
last orders to him were, not to attempt to come to the Bank. His answer
was, that he must come: there was no help for it. I believe there is no
help for it, George being away. You must get him home, Mrs. George."
She looked sadly perplexed. Mr. Snow read it correctly.
"My dear, I think there would be no danger. Lord Averil is a personal
friend of Mr. Godolphin's. I think there's none for another reason: if
the viscount's intention had been to stir unpleasantly in the affair, he
would have stirred in it before this."
"Yes--I have thought of that," she answered.
"And now I must go again," he said, rising. "I wish to-day was
twenty-four hours long, for the work I have to do in it; but I spared a
few minutes to call in and tell you this. Get your husband here, for the
sake of his good brother."
The tears were in Maria's eyes. She could scarcely think of Thomas
Godolphin and his unmerited troubles without their rising. Mr. Snow saw
the wet eyelashes, and laid his hand on the smoothly-parted hair.
"You have your share of sorrow just now, child," he said; "more than you
ought to have. It is making you look like a ghost. Why does he leave you
to battle it out alone?" added Mr. Snow, his anger mastering him, as he
gazed at her pale face, her rising sobs. "Prior's Ash is crying shame
upon him. Are you and his brother of less account than he, in his own
eyes, that he should abandon you to it?"
She strove to excuse her husband--he _was_ her husband, in spite of that
cruel calumny divulged by Margery--but Mr. Snow would not listen. He was
in a hurry, he said, and went bustling out of the door, almost upsetting
Meta, with her dolls, who was bustling in.
Maria sent the child to the nursery again after Mr. Snow's departure,
and stood, her head pressed against the frame of the open window,
looking unconsciously on to the terrace, revolving the words recently
spoken. "It is killing Thomas Godolphin. It will be nothing less than
murder, if George does not return."
Every fibre of her frame was thrilling to it in answer: every generous
impulse of her heart was stirred to its depths. He _ought_ to be back.
She had long thought so. For her sake--but she was nothing; for Thomas
Godolphin's; for her husband's own reputation. Down deep in her heart
she thrust that dreadful revelation of his falsity, and strove to bury
it as an English wife and gentlewoman has no resource but to do. Ay! to
bury it; and to keep it buried! though the concealment eat away her
life--as that scarlet letter A, you have read of, ate into the bosom of
another woman renowned in story. It seemed to Maria that the time was
come when she must inquire a little into the actual state of affairs,
instead of hiding her head and spending her days in the indulgence of
her fear and grief. If the whole world spoke against him,--if the whole
world had cause to speak,--she was his wife still, and his interests and
welfare were hers. Were it possible that any effort she could make would
bring him back, she must make it.
The words of Mr. Snow still rang in her ears. How was she to set about
it? A few minutes given to reflection, her aching brow pressed to the
cold window-frame, and she turned and rang the bell. When the servant
appeared, she sent him into the Bank with a request that Mr. Hurde would
come and speak with her for five minutes.
Mr. Hurde was not long in obeying the summons. He appeared with a pen
behind his ear, and his spectacles pushed up on his brow.
It was not a pleasant task, and Maria had to swallow a good many lumps
in her throat before she could make known precisely what she wanted.
"Would Mr. Hurde tell her the exact state of things? What there was, or
was not, against her husband."
Mr. Hurde gave no very satisfactory reply. He took off his glasses and
wiped them. Maria had invited him to a chair, and sat near him, her
elbow leaning on the table, and her face slightly bent. Mr. Hurde did
not know what Mrs. George Godolphin had or had not heard, or how far it
would be expedient for him to speak. She guessed at his dilemma.
"Tell me all, Mr. Hurde," she said, lifting her face to his with
imploring eagerness. "It is well that you should, for nothing can be
more cruel than the uncertainty and suspense I am in. I know about Lord
Averil's bonds."
"Ay?" he replied. But he said no more.
"I will tell you why I ask," said Maria. "Mr. Snow has been here, and he
informs me that coming to the Bank daily and the worry are killing Mr.
Godolphin. He says Mr. George ought to be back in his brother's place. I
think if he can come, he ought to do so."
"I wish he could," returned Mr. Hurde, more quickly and impressively
than he usually spoke. "It _is_ killing Mr. Godolphin--that, and the
bankruptcy together. But I don't know that it would be safe for him, on
account of these very bonds of Lord Averil's."
"What else is there against him?" breathed Maria.
"There's nothing else."
"Nothing else?" she echoed, a shade of hope lighting up her face and her
heart.
"Nothing else. That is, nothing that he can be made _criminally_
responsible for," added the old clerk, with marked emphasis, as if he
thought that there was a great deal more, had the law only taken
cognizance of it. "If Lord Averil should decline to prosecute, he might
return to-morrow. He must be back soon, whether or not, to answer to his
bankruptcy; or else----"
"Or else--what?" asked Maria falteringly, for Mr. Hurde had stopped.
"Speak out."
"Or else never come back at all; never be seen, in fact, in England
again. That's how it is, ma'am."
"Would it not be well to ascertain Lord Averil's feelings upon the
subject, Mr. Hurde?" she rejoined, breaking a silence.
"It would be very well, if it could be done. But who is to do it?"
Maria was beginning to think that she would do it. "You are sure there
is nothing else against him?" she reiterated.
"Nothing, ma'am, that need prevent his returning to Prior's Ash."
There was no more to be answered, and Mr. Hurde withdrew. Maria lost
herself in thought. Could she dare to go to Lord Averil and beseech his
clemency? Her brow flushed at the thought. But she had been inured to
humiliation of late, and it would be only another drop in the cup of
pain. Oh, the relief it would be, could the dreadful suspense, the
uncertainty, end! The suspense was awful. Even if it ended in the worst,
it would be almost a relief. If Lord Averil should intend to prosecute,
who knew but he might forego the intention at her prayers? If so--if
so--why, she should ever say that God had sent her to him.
There was the reverse side of the picture. A haughty reception of
her--for was she not the wife of the man who had wronged him?--and a
cold refusal. How she should bear that, she did not like to think.
Should she go? Could she go? Even now her heart was failing her----
What noise was that? A sort of commotion in the hall. She opened the
dining-room door and glanced out. Thomas Godolphin had come, and was
entering the Bank, leaning on his servant Bexley's arm, there to go
through his day's work, looking more fit for his coffin. It was the
turning of the scale.
"I _will_ go to him!" murmured Maria to herself. "I will go to Lord
Averil, and hear all there may be to hear. Let me do it! Let me do
it!--for the sake of Thomas Godolphin!" And she prepared herself for the
visit.
This proposed application to Lord Averil may appear but a very slight
affair to the careless and thoughtless: one of those trifling annoyances
which must occasionally beset our course through life. Why should Maria
have shrunk from it with that shiveringly sensitive dread?--have set
about it as a forced duty, with a burning cheek and failing heart?
Consider what it was that she undertook, you who would regard it
lightly; pause an instant and look at it in all its bearings. Her
husband, George Godolphin, had robbed Lord Averil of sixteen thousand
pounds. It is of no use to mince the matter. He had shown himself
neither more nor less than a thief, a swindler. He, a man of the same
social stamp as Lord Averil, moving in the same sphere of county
society, had fallen from his pedestal by his own fraudulent act, to a
level (in crime) with the very dregs of mankind. Perhaps no one in the
whole world could ever feel it in the same humiliating degree as did his
wife--unless it might be Thomas Godolphin. Both of them, unfortunately
for them--yes, I say it advisedly--unfortunately for them in this bitter
storm of shame--both of them were of that honourable, upright,
ultra-refined nature, on which such a blow falls far more cruelly than
death. Death! death! If it does come, it brings at least one recompense:
the humiliation and the trouble, the bitter pain and the carking care
are escaped from, left behind for ever in the cruel world. Oh! if these
miserable ill-doers could but bear in their own person all the pain and
the shame!--if George Godolphin could only have stood out on a pinnacle
in the face of Prior's Ash and expiated his folly alone! But it could
not be. It never can or will be. As the sins of the people in the
Israelitish camp were laid upon the innocent and unhappy scape-goat, so
the sins which men commit in the present day are heaped upon unconscious
and guileless heads. As the poor scape-goat wandered with his hidden
burden into the remote wilderness, away from the haunts of man, so do
these other heavily-laden ones stagger away with their unseen load, only
striving to hide themselves from the eyes of men--anywhere--in patience
and silence--praying to die.
Every humiliation which George Godolphin has brought upon
himself,--every harsh word cast on him by the world,--every innate sense
of guilt and shame which must accompany such conduct, was being expiated
by his wife. Yes, it fell worst upon her: Thomas was but his brother;
she was part and parcel of himself. But that God's ways are not as our
ways, we might feel tempted to ask why it should be that these terrible
trials are so often brought upon the head of such women as Maria
Godolphin--timid, good, gentle, sensitive--the least of all able to bear
them. That such is frequently the case, is indisputable. In no way was
Maria fitted to cope with this. Many might have felt less this very
expedition to Lord Averil: to her it was as the very bitterest
humiliation. She had hitherto met Lord Averil as an equal--she had
entertained him at her house as such--she had stood before him always in
her calm self-possession, with a clear face and a clear conscience; and
now she must go to him a humble petitioner--bow before him in all her
self-conscious disgrace--implore him to save her husband from the
consequences of his criminal act; standing at the felon's bar, and its
sequel--transportation. She must virtually ask Lord Averil to put up
quietly with the loss of the sixteen thousand pounds, and to make no
sign.
With a cheek flushed with emotion,--with a heart sick unto
faintness,--Maria Godolphin stepped out of her house in the full blaze
of the midday sun. A gloomy day, showing her less conspicuously to the
curious gazers of Prior's Ash, had been more welcome to her. She had
gone out so rarely since the crash came--but that once, in fact, when
she went to her mother--that her appearance was the signal for a
commotion. "There's Mrs. George Godolphin!" and Prior's Ash flocked to
its doors and its windows, as if Mrs. George Godolphin had been some
unknown curiosity in the animal world, never yet exhibited to the eyes
of the public. Maria shielded her burning face from observation as well
as she could with her small parasol, and passed on.
Lord Averil, she had found, was staying with Colonel Max, and her way
led her past the Rectory of All Souls', past the house of Lady Sarah
Grame. Lady Sarah was at the window, and Maria bowed. The bow was not
returned. It was not returned! Lady Sarah turned away with a haughty
movement, a cold glance. It told cruelly upon Maria: had anything been
wanted to prove to her the estimation in which she was now held by
Prior's Ash, that would have done it.
The distance from her own house to that of Colonel Max was about two
miles. Rather a long walk for Maria at the present time, for she was not
in a condition of health to endure fatigue. It was a square,
moderate-sized, red-brick house, standing considerably back from the
high-road; and as Maria turned into its avenue of approach, what with
the walk, and what with the dread apprehension of the coming interview,
the faintness at her heart had begun to show itself upon her face. The
insult offered her (could it be called anything less?) by Lady Sarah
Grame, had somehow seemed an earnest of what she might expect from Lord
Averil. Lady Sarah had not a tenth of the grievance against the Bank
that the viscount had.
No one ever approached the colonel's house without having their ears
saluted with the baying and snarling of his fox-hounds, whose kennels
were close by. In happier days--days so recently past, that they might
almost be counted as present--when Maria had gone to that house to
dinner-parties, she had drawn closer to George in the carriage, and
whispered how much she should dislike it if _he_ kept a pack of
fox-hounds near their dwelling-place. Never, never should she drive to
that house in state again, her husband by her side. Oh! the contrast it
presented--that time and this! Now she was approaching it like the
criminal that the world thought her, shielding her face with her veil,
hiding herself, so far as she might, from observation.
She reached the door, and paused ere she rang: her pulses were throbbing
wildly, her heart beat as if it would burst its bounds. The nearer the
interview, the more formidable did it appear, the less able herself to
face it. The temptation came over her to go back. It assailed her very
strongly, and she might have yielded to it, but for the thought of
Thomas Godolphin.
She rang at the bell; a timid ring. One of those rings that seem to
announce the humble applicant--and who was the wife of George Godolphin
now, that she should proclaim herself with pomp and clatter? A man
settling himself into his green livery coat opened the door.
"Is Lord Averil within?"
"No."
The servant was a stranger, and did not know her. He may have thought it
curious that a lady, who spoke in a low tone and scarcely raised her
eyes through her veil, should come there alone to inquire after Lord
Averil. He resumed, rather pertly:
"His lordship walked out an hour ago with the colonel. It's quite
unbeknown what time they may come in."
In her shrinking dread of the interview, it almost seemed a relief.
Strange to say, so fully absorbed had she been in the anticipated pain,
that the contingency of his being out had not crossed her mind. The man
stood with the door in his hand, half open, half closed; had he invited
her to walk in and sit down, she might have done so, for the sake of the
rest. But he did not.
Retracing her steps down the path, she branched off into a dark walk,
overshadowed by trees, just within the entrance-gate, and sat down upon
a bench. Now the reaction was coming; the disappointment: all that
mental agony, all that weary way of fatigue, and not to see him! It must
all be gone over again on the morrow.
She threw back her veil; she pressed her throbbing forehead against the
trunk of the old oak tree: and in that same moment some one entered the
gate on his way to the house, saw her, and turned round to approach her.
It was Lord Averil.
Had the moment really come? Every drop of blood in her body seemed to
rush to her heart, and send it on with a tumultuous bound; every sense
of the mind seemed to leave her; every fear that the imagination can
conjure up seemed to rise in menace. She rose to her feet and gazed at
him, her sight partially leaving her, her face changing to a ghastly
whiteness.
But when he hastened forward and caught her hands in the deepest respect
and sympathy; when he bent over her, saying some confused
words--confused to _her_ ear--of surprise at seeing her, of pity for her
apparent illness; when he addressed her with every token of the old
kindness, the consideration of bygone days, then the revulsion of
feeling overcame her, and Maria burst into a flood of distressing tears,
and sobbed passionately.
"I am fatigued with the walk," she said, with a lame attempt at apology,
when her emotion was subsiding. "I came over to speak to you, Lord
Averil. I--I have something to ask you."
"But you should not have walked," he answered in a kindly tone of
remonstrance. "Why did you not drop me a note? I would have come to
you."
She felt as one about to faint. She had taken off her gloves, and her
small white hands were unconsciously writhing themselves together in her
lap, showing how great was her inward pain; her trembling lips, pale
with agitation, refused to bring out their words connectedly.
"I want to ask you to be merciful to my husband. Not to prosecute him."
The words were breathed in a whisper; the rushing tide of shame changed
her face to crimson. Lord Averil did not for the moment answer, and the
delay, the fear of failure, imparted to her somewhat of courage.
"For Thomas's sake," she said. "I ask it for Thomas's sake."
"My dear Mrs. Godolphin," he was beginning, but she interrupted him, her
tone changing to one of desperate energy.
"Oh, be merciful, be merciful! Be merciful to my husband, Lord Averil,
for his brother's sake. Nay--for George's own sake; for my sake, for my
poor child's sake, Meta's. He can never come back to Prior's Ash, unless
you will be merciful to him: he cannot come now, and Thomas has to go
through all the worry and the misery, and it is killing him. Mr. Snow
came to me this morning and said it was killing him; he said that George
must return if he would save his brother's life: and I spoke to Mr.
Hurde, and he said there was nothing to prevent his returning, except
the danger from Lord Averil. And then I made my mind up to come to you."
"I shall not prosecute him, Mrs. George Godolphin. My long friendship
with his brother debars it. He may come back to-morrow, in perfect
assurance that he has nothing to fear from me."
"Is it true?--I may rely upon you?" she gasped.
"Indeed you may. I have never had a thought of prosecuting. I cannot
describe to you the pain that it has been to me; I mean the affair
altogether, not my particular loss: but that pain would be greatly
increased were I to bring myself to prosecute one bearing the name of
Godolphin. I am sorry for George; deeply sorry for him. Report says that
he has allowed himself to fall into bad hands, and could not extricate
himself."
The worst was over; the best known: and Maria leaned against the
friendly tree, untied her bonnet-strings, and wiped the moisture from
her now pallid face. Exhaustion was supervening. Lord Averil rose and
held out his arm to her.
"Let me take you to the house and give you a glass of sherry."
"I could not take it, thank you. I would rather not go to the house."
"Colonel Max will be very glad to see you. I have only just parted from
him. He went round by the stables."
She shook her head. "I do not like to see any one now."
The subdued words, the saddened tone seemed to speak volumes. Lord
Averil glanced down at her compassionately. "This has been a grievous
trial to you, Mrs. Godolphin."
"Yes," she answered very quietly. Had she spoken but a word of what it
had really been to her, emotion might again have broken forth.
"But you must not let it affect you too greatly," he remonstrated. "As I
fear it is doing."
"I can't help it," she whispered. "I knew nothing of it, and it came
upon me as a thunderbolt. I never had so much as a suspicion that
anything was going wrong: had people asked me what Bank was the most
stable throughout the kingdom, I should have said ours. I never
suspected evil: and yet blame is being cast upon me. Lord Averil,
I--I--did not know about those bonds."
"No, no," he warmly answered. "You need not tell me that. I wish you
could allow the trouble to pass over you more lightly."
The trouble! She clasped her hands to pain. "Don't speak of it," she
wailed. "At times it seems more than I can bear. But for Meta, I should
be glad to die."
What was Lord Averil to answer? He could only give her the earnest
sympathy of his whole heart. "A man who can bring deliberately this
misery upon the wife of his bosom deserves hanging," was his bitter
thought.
"What are you going to do?" he asked. "Surely not to attempt to walk
back again?"
"I shall take my time over it," she answered. "It is not much of a
walk."
"Too much for you at present," he gravely said. "Let me send you home in
one of Colonel Max's carriages."
"No, oh no!" she quickly answered. "Indeed I have not miscalculated my
strength: I can walk perfectly well, and would prefer to do so."
"Then you will first come into the house and rest."
"I would rather not. Let me sit here a little longer; it is resting me."
"I will be back immediately," he said, walking from her very quickly,
and plunging into a narrow path which was a short cut to the house. When
he reappeared he bore a glass of wine and a biscuit on a plate.
She took the wine. The biscuit she put back with a shiver. "I never can
eat anything now," she said, lifting her eyes to his to beseech his
pardon.
When she at length rose, Lord Averil took her hand and laid it within
his arm. She supposed he meant to escort her to the gate.
"I have not said a word of thanks to you," she murmured, when they
reached it. "I am very, very grateful to you, very sensible of your
kindness; but I cannot speak of it. My heart seems broken."
She had halted and held out her hand in farewell. Lord Averil did not
release her, but walked on. "If you will walk home, Mrs. George
Godolphin, you must at least allow my arm to help you."
"I could not; indeed I could not," she said, stopping resolutely, though
the tears were dropping from her eyes. "I must go back alone: I would
rather."
Lord Averil partially yielded. The first part of the road was lonely,
and he must see her so far. "I should have called on Thomas Godolphin
before this, but I have been away," he remarked, as they went on. "I
will go and see him--perhaps this afternoon."
"He will be so thankful to hear this! It will be as a renewed lease of
life to him. They have been fearful at Ashlydyat."
An exceedingly vexed expression crossed Lord Averil's lips. "I thought
they had known me better at Ashlydyat," he said. "Thomas, at any rate.
Feared _me_!"
At length Maria would not allow him to go farther, and Lord Averil
clasped her hand in both his. "Promise me to try and keep up your
spirits," he said. "You should do so for your husband's sake."
"Yes; as well as I can," she replied in a broken tone. "Thank you! thank
you ever, Lord Averil!"
She called in at the Rectory as she passed, and sat for a while with her
father and mother; but it was pain to her to do so. The bitter wrong
inflicted on them by her husband was making itself heard in her heart in
loud reproaches. The bitter wrong of another kind dealt out to herself
by him, was all too present then. They knew how she had idolized him;
they must have known how blindly misplaced that idolatry was; and the
red flush mounted to Maria's brow at the thought.
Oh, if she could only redeem the past, so far as they were concerned! It
seemed that that would be enough. If she could only restore peace and
comfort to their home, refund to her father what he had lost, how
thankful she should be! She would move heaven and earth if that might
accomplish it,--she would spend her own days in the workhouse,--pass
them by a roadside hedge, and think nothing of it--if by those means she
could remove the wrong done. She lifted her eyes to the blue sky, almost
asking that a miracle might be wrought, to repair the injury which had
been dealt out to her father. Ah me! if Heaven repaired all the injuries
inflicted by man upon man, it would surely have no time for other works
of mercy!