The Shadow of Ashlydyat

They were enjoying a quarrel. Strange that they should leave the house and come to this lonely spot in the grounds of Ashlydyat to hold it! Charlotte was evidently in one of her tempers. She paced to and fro under the archway, something like a restrained tiger, pouring forth a torrent of sharp words and reproaches, all in a suppressed tone.

“I’ll tell you what it is,” were the first distinct words of anger George caught. But her companion interrupted her, his tone one of sadness and humility.

“I’ll tell you what it is, Charlotte–”

The start made by George Godolphin at the tones of the voice, the involuntary sound of utter astonishment that escaped him, disturbed them. Charlotte, with a cry of terror, darted one way, her companion another.

But the latter was not quick enough to elude George Godolphin. Springing forward, George caught him in his powerful grasp, really to assure himself that it was no ghost, but genuine flesh and blood. Then George turned the face to the starlight, and recognized the features of the dead-and-gone Mr. Rodolf Pain.

The return of a husband, popularly supposed to be dead and out of the way for good, may be regarded by the wife as a blessing from some special providence, or as a source of annoying embarrassment, according to the lady’s own feeling on the subject. Undoubtedly, Charlotte Pain looked upon it, and most unmistakably so, in the latter light. Charlotte knew, better than the world, that Mr. Rodolf Pain was not dead; but she had believed him to be as surely out of her way as though death and some safe metropolitan cemetery had irrevocably claimed him. Whatever trifling accident might have happened to put Mr. Rodolf Pain and the British criminal law at issue, Charlotte, at any rate, had assumed it one not to be easily got over, except by the perpetual exile of the gentleman from the British shores. When the little affair had occurred, and Mr. Rodolf had saved himself and his liberty by only a hair’s-breadth, choosing a foreign exile and a false name in preference to some notoriety at a certain court (a court which does not bear a pleasant sound, and rises ominous and dark and gloomy in the heart of the city), it had pleased Charlotte and those connected with her to give out that Mr. Rodolf Pain had died. In Mr. Rodolf Pain’s going out of the world by death, there was certainly no disgrace, provided that he went out naturally; that is, without what may be called malice prepense on his own part. But, for Mr. Rodolf Pain to be compelled to make his exit from London society after another fashion, was quite a different affair—an affair which could never have been quite tolerated by Charlotte: not on his score, but on her own. Any superfluous consideration for him, Charlotte had never been troubled with. Before her marriage she had regarded him in the light of a nonentity; since that ceremony, as an incumbrance. Therefore, on the whole, Charlotte was tolerably pleased to get rid of him, and she played her rôle of widow to perfection. No inconvenient disclosure, as to the facts of his hasty exit, had come out to the public, for it had fortunately happened that the transaction, or transactions, which led to it, had not been done in his own name. To describe Charlotte’s dismay when he returned, and she found her fond assumption of his perpetual exile to have been a false security, would take a cleverer pen than mine. No other misfortune known to earth, could have been looked upon by Charlotte as so dire a calamity. Had Prior’s Ash been blown up, herself included, by some sprung mine, or swallowed down by an earthquake, it would have been little, in comparison.

It certainly was not pleasant to be startled by a faint tap at the unscreened window, while she sat under the chandelier, busy at what she so rarely attempted, some useless fancy-work. Yet that was the unceremonious manner in which her husband made his return known to her. Charlotte was expecting no visitors that night. It was the night of George Godolphin’s dinner-party, at which Mr. Verrall had not appeared, having started for London instead. When the tapping came, Charlotte turned her head towards the window in surprise. No one was in the habit of entering that way, save free-and-easy George Godolphin; he would now and then do so; sometimes Mr. Verrall. But Charlotte knew of George’s dinner party, and Mr. Verrall was away. She could see nothing of the intruder: the room was ablaze with light; outside, it was, comparatively speaking, dark; and the window was also partially shaded by its lace curtains. Charlotte thought she must have been mistaken, and went on unravelling her crochet mat.

The tapping came again. “Very odd!” thought Charlotte. “Come in,” she called out.

No one came in. There was no response at all for a minute or two. Then there came another timid tapping.

Charlotte’s dress was half covered with cotton. She rose, shook it, let the cotton and the mat (what remained of it) fall to the ground, walked to the window, and opened it.

At the first moment she could see nothing. It was bright moonlight, and she had come from the blazing light within, beside which that outer light was so cold and pure. Not for that reason could she see nothing, but because there appeared to be nothing to see. She ranged her eyes in vain over the terrace, over the still landscape beyond.

“Charlotte!”

It was the faintest possible voice, and close to her. Faint as it was though, there was that in its tone which struck on every fibre of Charlotte’s frame with dismay. Gathered against the walls of the Folly, making a pretence to shelter himself beyond a brilliant cape-jessamine which was trained there, was the slight figure of a man. A mere shred of a man, with a shrinking, attenuated frame: the frame of one who has lived in some long agony, bodily or mental: and a white face that shivered as he stood.

Not more white, not more shivering than Charlotte’s. Her complexion—well, you have heard of it, as one too much studied to allow vulgar changes to come upon it, in a general way. But there are moments in a lifetime when Nature asserts herself, and Art retires before her. Charlotte’s face turned to the hue of the dead, and Charlotte’s dismay broke forth in a low passionate wail. It was Rodolf Pain.

A moment of terrified bewilderment; a torrent of rapid words; not of sympathy, or greeting, but of anger; and Charlotte was pushing him away with her hands, she neither knew nor cared whither. It was dangerous for him to be there, she said. He must go.

“I’ll go into the thicket, Charlotte,” he answered, pointing to the trees on the left. “Come to me there.”

He glided off as he spoke, under cover of the walls. Charlotte, feeling that she should like to decline the invitation had she dared, enveloped her head and shoulders in a black shawl, and followed him. Nothing satisfactory came of the interview—except recrimination. Charlotte was in a towering passion that he should have ventured back at all; Rodolf complained that between them all he had been made the scapegoat. In returning home, she caught sight of George Godolphin approaching the house, just as she was about to steal across the lawn. Keeping under cover of the trees, she got in by a back entrance, and sat down to her work in the drawing-room, protesting to George, when he was admitted, that she had not been out. No wonder her face looked strange in spite of its embellishments!

Her interviews with Rodolf Pain appeared to be ill chosen. On the following night she met him in the same place: he had insisted upon it, and she did not dare refuse. More recrimination, more anger; in the midst of which George Godolphin again broke upon them. Charlotte screamed aloud in her terror, and Rodolf ran away. But that Charlotte laid detaining hands upon George, the returned man might have been discovered then, and that would not have suited Charlotte.

A few more days and that climax was to arrive. The plantation appearing unsafe, Rodolf Pain proposed the archway. There they should surely be unmolested: the ghostly fears of the neighbourhood and of Ashlydyat kept every one away from the spot. And there, two or three times, had Charlotte met him, quarrelling always, when they were again intruded upon, and again by George. This time to some purpose.

George Godolphin’s astonishment was excessive. In his wildest flights of fancy he had never given a thought to the suspicion that Rodolf Pain could be alive. Charlotte had not been more confidential with George than with the rest of the world. Making a merit of what could not well be avoided, she now gave him a few particulars.

For when she looked back in her flight and saw that Rodolf Pain was fairly caught, that there was no further possibility of the farce of his death being kept up to George, she deemed it well to turn back again. Better bring her managing brains to the explanation, than leave it to that simple calf, whom she had the honour of calling husband. The fact was, Rodolf Pain had never been half cunning enough, half rogue enough, for the work assigned him by Mr. Verrall. He—Mr. Verrall—had always said that Rodolf had brought the trouble upon himself, in consequence of trying to exercise a little honesty. Charlotte agreed with the opinion: and every contemptuous epithet cast by Mr. Verrall on the unfortunate exile, Charlotte had fully echoed.

George was some little time before he could understand as much as was vouchsafed him of the explanation. They stood in the shadow of the archway, Charlotte keeping her black shawl well over her head and round her face; Rodolf, his arms folded, leaning against the inner circle of the stonework.

“What, do you say? sent you abroad?” questioned George, somewhat bewildered.

“It was that wretched business of Appleby’s,” replied Rodolf Pain. “You must have heard of it. The world heard enough of it.”

“Appleby—Appleby? Yes, I remember,” remarked George. “A nice swindle it was. But what had you to do with it?”

“In point of fact, I only had to do with it at second-hand,” said Rodolf Pain, his tone one of bitter meaning. “It was Verrall’s affair—as everything else is. I only executed his orders.”

“But surely neither you nor Verrall had anything to do with that swindling business of Appleby’s?” cried George, his voice as full of amazement as the other’s was of bitterness.

Charlotte interposed, her manner so eager, so flurried, as to impart the suspicion that she must have some personal interest in it. “Rodolf, hold your tongue! Where’s the use of bringing up this old speculative nonsense to Mr. George Godolphin? He does not care to hear about it.”

“I would bring it up to all the world if I could,” was Rodolf’s answer, ringing with its own sense of injury. “Verrall told me in the most solemn manner that if things ever cleared, through Appleby’s death, or in any other way, so as to make it safe for me to return, that that hour he would send for me. Well: Appleby has been dead these six months; and yet he leaves me on, on, on, in the New World, without so much as a notice of it. Now, it’s of no use growing fierce again, Charlotte! I’ll tell Mr. George Godolphin if I please. I am not the patient slave you helped to drive abroad: the trodden worm turns at last. Do you happen to know, sir, that Appleby’s dead?”

“I don’t know anything about Appleby,” replied George. “I remember the name, as being owned by a gentleman who was subjected to some bad treatment in the shape of swindling, by one Rustin. But what had you or Verrall to do with it?”

“Psha!” said Rodolf Pain. “Verrall was Rustin.”

George Godolphin opened his eyes to their utmost width. “N—o!” he said, very slowly, certain curious ideas beginning to crowd into his mind. Certain remembrances also.

“He was.—Charlotte, I tell you it is of no use: I will speak. What does it matter, Mr. George Godolphin’s knowing it? Verrall was the real principal—Rustin, in fact; I, the ostensible one. And I had to suffer.”

“Did Appleby think you were Rustin?” inquired George, thoroughly bewildered.

“Appleby at one time thought I was Verrall. Oh, I assure you there were wheels within wheels at work there. Of course there had to be, to carry on such a concern as that. It is so still. Verrall, you know, could not be made the scapegoat, he takes care of that—besides, it would blow the whole thing to pieces, if any evil fell upon him. It fell upon me, and I had to suffer for it, and abroad I went. I did not grumble; it would have been of no use: had I stayed at home and braved it out, I should have been sent abroad, I suppose, at her Majesty’s cost–”

Charlotte interrupted, in a terrible passion. “Have you no sense of humiliation, Rodolf Pain, that you tell these strange stories? Mr. George Godolphin, I pray you do not listen to him!”

“I am safe,” replied George. “Pain can say what he pleases. It is safe with me.”

“As to humiliation, that does not fall so much to my share as it does to another’s, in the light I look at it. I was not the principal; I was only the scapegoat; principals rarely are made the scapegoats in that sort of business. Let it go, I say. I took the punishment without a word. But, now that the man’s dead, and I can come home with safety, I want to know why I was not sent for?”

“I don’t believe the man’s dead,” observed Charlotte.

“I am quite sure that he is dead,” said Rodolf Pain. “I was told it from a sure and certain source, some one who came out there, and who used to know Appleby. He said the death was in the Times, and he knew it for a fact besides.”

“Appleby? Appleby?” mused George, his thoughts going back to a long-past morning, when he had been an unseen witness to Charlotte’s interview with a gentleman giving that name—who had previously accosted him in the porch at Ashlydyat, mistaking it for the residence of Mr. Verrall. “I remember his coming down here once.”

“I remember it too,” said Rodolf Pain, significantly, “and the passion it put Verrall into. Verrall thought his address, down here, had oozed out through my carelessness. The trouble that we had with that Appleby, first and last! It went on for years. The bother was patched up at times, but only to break out again; and to send me into exile at last.”

“Does Verrall know of his death?” inquired George of Rodolf.

“There’s not a doubt that he must know of it. And Charlotte says she won’t ask Verrall, and won’t tell him I am here! My belief is that she knows Appleby’s dead.”

Charlotte had resumed her walk under the archway: pacing there—as was remarked before—like a restrained tiger. She took no notice of Rodolf’s last speech.

“Why not tell Verrall yourself that you are here?” was George’s sensible question.

“Well—you see, Mr. George Godolphin, I’d rather not, as long as there’s the least doubt as to Appleby’s death. I feel none myself: but if it should turn out to be a mistake, my appearance here would do good neither to me nor to Verrall. And Verrall’s a dangerous man to cross. He might kill me in his passion. It takes a good deal to put him into one, but when it does come, it’s like a tornado.”

“You acknowledge that there is a doubt as to Appleby’s death, then!” sarcastically cried Charlotte.

“I say that it’s just possible. It was not being fully certain that brought me back in this clandestine way. What I want you to do is to ask Verrall if Appleby’s dead. I believe he will answer ‘Yes.’ ‘Very well,’ then you can say, ‘Rodolf Pain’s home again.’ And if–”

“And if he says, ‘No, he is not dead,’ what then?” fiercely interrupted Charlotte.

“Then you can tell me privately, and I must depart the way I came. But I don’t depart without being satisfied of the fact,” pointedly added Mr. Pain, as if he had not entire and implicit reliance upon Charlotte’s word. “My firm belief is that he is dead, and that Verrall will tell you he is dead. In that case I am a free man to-morrow.”

Charlotte turned her head towards him, terrible anger in her tone, and in her face. “And how is your reappearance to be accounted for to those who look upon you as dead?”

“I don’t care how,” indifferently answered Rodolf. “I did not spread the report of my own death. If you did, you can contradict it.”

“If I did do it, it was to save your reputation,” returned Charlotte, scarcely able to speak in her passion.

“I know,” said Rodolf Pain. “You feared something or other might come out about your husband, and so you thought you’d kill me off-hand. Two for yourself and one for me, Charlotte.”

She did not answer.

“If my coming back is so annoying to you, we can live apart,” he resumed. “You pretty well gave me a sickener before I went away. As you know.”

“This must be an amusing dialogue to Mr. George Godolphin!” fumed Charlotte.

“May-be,” replied Rodolf Pain, his tone sad and weary. “I have been so hardly treated between you and Verrall, Charlotte, that I don’t care who knows it.”

“Where are you staying?” asked George, wondering whether the shady spots about Ashlydyat sheltered him by day as well as by night.

“Not far away, sir: at a roadside inn,” was the answer. “No one knew me much, about here, in the old days; but, to make assurance doubly sure, I only come out in the evening. Look here, Charlotte. If you refuse to ask Verrall, or to help me, I shall go to London, and obtain the information there. I am not quite without friends in the great city: they would receive me better than you have received me.”

“I wonder you did not go there at once,” said Charlotte, sharply.

“It was natural that I should go first where my wife was,” returned Rodolf Pain; “even though she had not been the most affectionate of wives to me.”

Charlotte was certainly not showing herself particularly affectionate then, whether she had, or had not, in the past days. Truth to say, whatever may have been her personal predilection or the opposite for the gentleman, his return had brought all her fears to the surface. His personal safety was imperilled; and, with that, disgrace loomed in ominous attendance; a disgrace which would be reflected upon Charlotte. Could she have sent Rodolf Pain flying on electric wires to the remotest region of the known or unknown globe, she would have done it then.

Leaving them to battle out their dispute alone, George Godolphin bent his steps to Lady Godolphin’s Folly, walking over the very Shadow, black as jet, treading in and out amid the dwarf bushes, which, when regarded from a distance, looked so like graves. He gained the Folly, and rang.

The servant admitted him to the drawing-room. It was empty as before. “Has Mr. Verrall not come in?” asked George.

“He has come in, sir. I thought he was here. I will look for him.”

George sat on alone. Presently the man returned. “My master has retired for the night, sir.”

“What! Gone to bed?” cried George.

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you tell him I had been here when he came in?”

“I told him you had been here, sir. In fact, I thought you were here still. I did not know you had left.”

“Did Mr. Verrall tell you now that he could see me?”

“He told me to say that he had retired for the night, sir.”

“Is he in bed?” questioned George.

The servant hesitated. “He spoke to me through the door, sir. He did not open it.”

George caught up his hat, the very movement of his hand showing displeasure. “Tell your master that I shall be here the first thing in the morning. I want to see him.”

He passed out, a conviction upon his mind—though he could scarcely tell why it should have arisen—that Mr. Verrall had not retired for the night, but that he had gone upstairs merely to avoid him. The thought angered him excessively. When he had gone some little distance beyond the terrace, he turned and looked at the upper windows of the house. There shone a light in Mr. Verrall’s chamber. “Not in bed, at any rate,” thought George. “He might have seen me if he would. I shall tell him–”

A touch upon George’s arm. Some one had glided silently up. He turned and saw Charlotte.

“You will not betray the secret that you have learnt to-night?” she passionately whispered.

“Is it likely?” he asked.

“He is only a fool, you know, at the best,” was her next complimentary remark. “But fools give more trouble sometimes than wise people.”

“You may depend upon me,” was George’s rejoinder. “Where is he?”

“Got rid of for the night,” said Charlotte, in a terrible tone. “Are you going in to see Verrall?”

“No. Verrall declines to see me. I am going home. Good night.”

“Declines to see you? He is tired, I suppose. Good night, George!”

George Godolphin walked away at a sober pace, reflecting on the events of the day—of the evening. That he had been intensely surprised by the resuscitation of Rodolf Pain was indisputable; but George had too much care upon him to give it more than a passing thought, now that the surprise was over. Rodolf Pain occupied a very small space in the estimation of George Godolphin. Charlotte had just said he was a fool: probably George shared in the opinion.

But, however much he felt inclined to dismiss the gentleman from his mind, he could not so readily dismiss a certain revelation made by him. That Rustin was Verrall. Whoever “Rustin” may have been, or what had been his influence on the fortunes, good or ill, of Mr. George Godolphin, it concerns us not very closely to inquire. That George had had dealings with this “Rustin”—dealings which did not bear for him any pleasant reminiscence—and that George had never in his life got to see this Rustin, are sufficient facts for us to know. Rustin was one of those who had contrived to ease George of a good deal of superfluous money at odd times, leaving only trouble in its place. Many a time had George prayed Verrall’s good offices with his friend Rustin, to hold over this bill; to renew that acceptance. Verrall had never refused, and his sympathy with George and abuse of Rustin were great, when his mediation proved—as was sometimes the case—unsuccessful. To hear that this Rustin was Verrall himself, opened out a whole field of suggestive speculation to George. Not pleasant speculation, you may be sure.

He sat himself down, in his deep thought, on that same spot where Thomas Godolphin had sat the evening of George’s dinner-party; the broken bench, near the turnstile. Should he be able to weather the storm that was gathering so ominously above his head? Was that demand of Lord Averil’s to-day the first rain-drop of the darkening clouds? In sanguine moments—and most moments are sanguine to men of the light temperament of George Godolphin—he felt not a doubt that he should weather it. There are some men who systematically fling care and gloom from them. They cannot look trouble steadily in the face: they glance aside from it; they do not see it if it comes: they clothe it with the rose-hues of hope: but look at it, they do not. Shallow and careless by nature, they cannot feel deep sorrow themselves, or be too cautious of any wrong they inflict on others. They may bring ruin upon the world, but they go jauntily on their way. George had gone on in his way, in an easy, gentlemanly sort of manner, denying himself no gratification, and giving little heed to the day of reckoning that might come.

But on this night his mood had changed. Affairs generally were wearing to him an aspect of gloom: of gloom so preternaturally dark and hopeless, that his spirits were weighed down by it. For one thing, this doubt of Verrall irritated him. If the man had played him false, had been holding the cards of a double game, why, what an utter fool he, George, had been! How long he sat on that lonely seat he never knew: as long as his brother had, that past night. The one had been ruminating on his forthcoming fate—death; the other was lost in the anticipation of a worse fate—disgrace and ruin. As he rose to pursue his way down the narrow and ghostly Ash-tree Walk, a low cry burst from his lips, sharp as the one that had been wrung from Thomas in his physical agony.