The Shadow of Ashlydyat

Grace’s temper was sharp: her sense of right and wrong cynically keen: the Rector had had the same sharp temper in his youth, but he had learned to control it; Grace had not. She turned her flashing eyes, her flaming cheeks, on George Godolphin.

“Do you hear?—the pain has killed her. Who brought that pain upon her? Mr. George Godolphin, I wish you joy of your conscience! I almost seemed to foresee it—I almost seemed to foresee this,” she passionately cried, “ere ever my sister married you.”

“Don’t, Grace!” wailed Maria, a faint cry of fear escaping her; a sudden terror taking possession of her raised face. “George, George!” She held out her hands yearningly to him, as if she would shield him, or as if she wanted him to shield her from the sharp words. George crossed over to her with his protecting presence, and bent to catch her whisper, praying him for peace.

“You forget your sister’s state when you thus speak, Mrs. Akeman,” he gravely said. “Say anything you please to me later; you shall have the opportunity if you desire it; but in my wife’s presence there must be peace.”

Grace flung off the shawl which she had worn, and stood beating the toe of her foot upon the fender, her throat swelling with the effort to subdue her emotion. What with her anger in the past, her grief in the present, she had well-nigh burst into sobs.

“I think I could drink some tea,” said Maria. “Could we not have it together; here; for the last time? You will make it, Grace?”

Poor, weak, timid heart! Perhaps she only so spoke as an incentive to keep that “peace” for which she tremblingly yearned; which was essential to her, as to all, in her dying hour. George rang the bell and Margery came in.

It was done as she seemed to wish. The small round table was drawn to the fire, and Grace sat at it, making the tea. Maria turned her face and asked for Meta: Margery answered that she was coming in by-and-by. Very little was said. George drew a chair near Maria and leaned upon the arm of the sofa. The tea, so far as she went, was a mockery: George put a teaspoonful into her mouth, but she with difficulty swallowed it, and shook her head when he would have given her more. It did not seem to be much else than a mockery for the others: Grace’s tears dropped into hers, and George suffered his to grow cold and then swallowed it at a draught, as if it was a relief to get rid of it. Margery was called again to take the things away, and Maria, who was leaning back on the sofa with closed eyes, asked again for Meta to come in.

Then Margery had to confess that Miss Meta was not at home to come in. She had gone out visiting. The facts of the case were these. Lord Averil, after quitting the house, had returned to it to say a word to George which he had forgotten: but finding George had gone into his wife’s room, he would not have him disturbed. It was just at the moment that Margery had carried out Meta, and the young lady was rather restive at the proceedings, crying loudly. His lordship proposed to carry her off to Ashlydyat. Margery seized upon the offer. She took down a woollen shawl and the child’s garden-hat that were hanging on the pegs, and enveloped her in them without ceremony. “They’ll do as well as getting out her best things, my lord, if you won’t mind them: and it will be almost dusk by the time you get to Ashlydyat.”

It was quite the same to Lord Averil, whether the young lady was bundled up as she was now, or decked out in a lace frock and crinoline. He led her down the path, talking pleasantly; but Meta’s breath was caught up incessantly with sobbing sighs. Her heart was full, imperfect as her idea of the calamity overshadowing her necessarily was.

Thus it happened that Miss Meta was not at hand when Maria asked for her. Whether it was from this, or from causes wholly unconnected with it, in a short time Maria grew restless: restless, as it seemed, both in body and mind, and it was deemed advisable that she should not sit up longer.

“Go for Meta while they get me into bed, George,” she said to him. “I want her to be near me.”

He went out at once. But he did not immediately turn to Ashlydyat: with hasty steps he took the road to Mr. Snow’s. There had been a yearning on George Godolphin’s mind, ever since he first saw his wife in the afternoon, to put the anxious question to one or both of the medical men: “Can nothing be done to prolong her life, even for the shortest space of time?”

Mr. Snow was out: the surgery boy did not know where: “Paying visits,” he supposed, and George turned his steps to Dr. Beale’s, who lived now in Prior’s Ash, though he used not to live in it. Dr. Beale’s house was ablaze with light, and Dr. Beale was at home, the servant said, but he had a dinner-party.

How the words seemed to grate on his ear! A dinner-party!—gaiety, lights, noise, mirth, eating and drinking, when his wife was dying! But the next moment reflection came to him: the approaching death of a patient is not wont to cast its influence on a physician’s private life.

He demanded to see Dr. Beale in spite of the dinner-party. George Godolphin forgot recent occurrences, exacting still the deference paid to him all his life, when Prior’s Ash had bowed down to the Godolphins. He was shown into a room, and Dr. Beale came out to him.

But the doctor, though he would willingly have smoothed matters to him, could not give him hope. George asked for the truth, and he had it—that his wife’s life now might be counted by hours. He went out and proceeded towards Ashlydyat, taking the near way down Crosse Street, by the Bank—the Bank that once was: it would lead him through the dull Ash-tree Walk with its ghostly story; but what cared George Godolphin?

Did a remembrance of the past come over him as he glanced up at the Bank’s well-known windows?—a remembrance that pricked him with its sharp sting? He need never have left that house; but for his own recklessness, folly, wickedness—call it what you will—he might have been in it still, one of the honoured Godolphins, heir to Ashlydyat, his wife well and happy by his side. Now!—he went striding on with wide steps, and he took off his hat and raised his burning brow to the keen night air. You may leave the house behind you, George Godolphin, and so put it out of your sight, but you cannot blot out your memory.

Grace had remained with Maria. She was in bed now, but the restlessness seemed to continue. “I want Meta; bring Meta.”

“Dear Maria, your husband has but just gone for her,” breathed Grace. “She will soon be here.”

It seemed to satisfy her. She lay still, looking upwards, her breath, or Mrs. Akeman fancied it, growing shorter. Grace, hot tears blinding her eyes, bent forward to kiss her wasted cheek.

“Maria, I was very harsh to you,” she whispered. “I feel it now. I can only pray God to forgive me. I loved you always, and when that dreadful trouble came, I felt angry for your sake. I said unkind things to you and of you, but in the depth of my heart there lay the pain and the anger because you suffered. Will you forgive me?”

She raised her feeble hand and laid it lovingly on the cheek of Grace. “There is nothing to forgive, Grace,” she murmured. “What are our poor little offences one against the other? Think how much Heaven has to forgive us all. Oh, Grace, I am going to it! I am going away from care.”

Grace stood up to dash away her tears; but they came faster and faster. “I would ask you to let me atone to you, Maria,” she sobbed—“I would ask you to let me welcome Meta to our home. We are not rich, but we have enough for comfort, and I will try to bring her up a good woman; I will love her as my own child.”

“She goes to Cecil.” There was no attempt at thanks in words—Maria was growing beyond it; nothing but the fresh touch of the hand’s loving pressure. And that relaxed with the next moment and fell upon the bed.

Grace felt somewhat alarmed. She cleared the mist from her eyes and bent them steadily on Maria’s face. It seemed to have changed. “Do you feel worse?” she softly asked.

Maria opened her lips, but no sound came from them. She attempted to point with her finger to the door; she then threw her eyes in the same direction; but why or what she wanted it was impossible to tell. Grace, her heart beating wildly, flew across the little hall to the kitchen.

“Oh, Margery, I think she is sinking! Come you and see.”

Margery hastened in. Her mistress evidently was sinking, and was conscious of it. The eager, anxious look upon her face and her raised hand proved that she was wanting something.

“Is it my master?—Is it the child?” cried Margery, bending over her. “They won’t be long, ma’am.”

It was Margery’s habit to soothe the dying, even if she had to do it at some little expense of veracity. She knew that her master could not go to Ashlydyat and be home just yet: she did not know of his visits to the houses of the doctors: but if she had known it she would equally have said, “They won’t be long.”

But the eager look continued on Maria’s face, and it became evident to experienced Margery that her master and Meta were not the anxious point. Maria’s lips moved, and Margery bent her ear.

“Papa! Is it time?”

“It’s the Sacrament she’s thinking of,” whispered Margery to Mrs. Akeman: “or else that she wants to take leave of him. The Rector was to come at eight o’clock; he told me so when he called in again this afternoon. What is to be done, ma’am?”

“And it is only half-past six! We must send to him at once.”

Margery seemed in some uncertainty. “Shall you be afraid to stay here alone, ma’am, if I go?”

“Why! where is Jean?”

Jean, one of the old servants of Ashlydyat, discharged with the rest when the bankruptcy had come, but now in service there again under Lord and Lady Averil, had been with Margery all day. She had now been sent out by the latter for certain errands wanted in the town.

A tremor came over Mrs. Akeman at Margery’s question, as to whether she would be afraid to stay there alone. To one not accustomed to it, it does require peculiar courage to remain with the dying. But Grace could call up a brave spirit at will, and she no longer hesitated, when she saw the continued eager look on her sister’s face.

“Make haste, Margery. I shall not mind. Mrs. James is in the house, and I can call her if I see a necessity for doing so. Margery!”—following her outside the door to whisper it—“do you see that strange look in her face? Is it death?”

She was trembling all over, as she spoke, in nervous trepidation. It was to be a memorable night, that, what with one emotion and another, in the memory of Grace Akeman. Margery’s answer was characteristic. “It does look like it, ma’am; but I have seen them like this, and then rally again. Anyhow, it can’t be far off. Mrs. Akeman, it seems to me that all the good ones are leaving the world. First Mr. Godolphin, and now her!”

Margery had scarcely been gone five minutes when Lord Averil came back with Meta. They had not met George. It was not likely that they had, seeing that he was going to Ashlydyat by a different route. In point of fact, at that moment George was about turning into Crosse Street, passing his old house with those enlivening reminiscences of his. Grace explained why she was alone, and Lord Averil took off his hat and great-coat to remain.

Maria asked for him. He went up to the bed and she smiled at him and moved her hand. Lord Averil took it between his, the tears gathering in his earnest eyes as he saw the change in her.

“She has been as happy as possible with us all the evening,” he gently said, alluding to the child. “We will do all we can for her always.”

“Tell Cecil—to bring—her up—for God.”

She must have revived a little or she could not have spoken the words. By-and-by, Margery was heard to enter, panting with the speed she had made, and Mr. Hastings was not far behind.

As the clergyman approached the gate, he saw a man leaning over it, in the light cast by the white snow of the winter’s night. It was David Jekyl.

“I thought I’d ask how the young missis was, sir, as I went home, but it might be disturbing of ’em to go right up to the door,” he said, drawing back to make way for the Rector. “It were said in the town, as I come along, that she was worse.”

“Yes, David, she is worse; as ill as she can be. I have just had a message.”

David twirled his grey felt hat awkwardly round on his hand, stroking its napless surface with his other arm. He did not raise his eyes as he spoke to the Rector.

“Might be, you’d just say a word to her about that money, sir, asking of her not to let it worry her mind. It is said as them things have worried her more nor need be. If you could say a word for us, sir, that we don’t think of it any more, it might comfort her like.”

“The trouble for her has passed, David: to say this to her might bring her thoughts back to it. Heaven is opening to her, earth is closing. Thank you for your thoughtfulness.”

The Reverend Mr. Hastings continued his way slowly up the path, whence the snow had been swept away. Illness was upon him, and he could not walk quickly. It was a dull night, and yet there was that peculiar light in the atmosphere, often seen when the earth is covered with snow. The door was held open, awaiting him; and the minister uncovered his head, and stepped in with his solemn greeting:

“Peace be to this house and to all that dwell in it!”

There could be no waiting for George Godolphin: the spirit might be on its wing. They gathered in the room, Grace, Margery, and Viscount Averil: and, the stillness broken only by the hushed sobs of Grace, Mr. Hastings administered the last rite of our religion to his dying child.