Works of Ellen Wood, page 299
“When do you expect him home?” asked George.
“I did not ask him,” carelessly replied Mrs. Verrall. “It may be to-day, or it may be next month. What will you take for breakfast?”
“I will not take anything,” returned George, holding out his hand to depart.
“But you are not going again in this hasty manner! What sort of a visit do you call this?”
“A hasty one,” replied George. “I must be at Prior’s Ash this afternoon. Any message to Charlotte?”
“Why — yes — I have,” said Mrs. Verrall, with some emphasis. “I was about to despatch a small parcel this very next hour to Charlotte, lay post. But — when shall you see her? To-night?”
“I can see her to-night if you wish it.”
“It would oblige me much. The truth is, it is something I ought to have sent yesterday, and I forgot it. Be sure and let her have it to-night.”
Mrs. Verrall rang, and a small packet, no larger than a bulky letter, was brought in. George took it, and was soon being whirled back to London.
He stepped into a cab at the Waterloo Station, telling the man he should have double pay if he drove at double speed: and it conveyed him to Mr. Verrall’s chambers.
George went straight to Mr. Brompton’s room, as before. That gentleman had finished his Times, and was buried deep in a pile of letters. “Is Mr. Verrall in now?” asked George.
“He is here now, Mr. Godolphin. He was here two minutes after you departed: it’s a wonder you did not meet.”
George knew the way to Mr. Verrall’s room, and was allowed to enter. Mr. Verrall, alone then, turned round with a cordial grasp.
“Holloa!” said he. “We somehow missed this morning. How are you?”
“I say, Verrall, how came you to play me such a trick as to go off in that clandestine manner yesterday?” remonstrated George. “You know the uncertainty I was in: that if I did not get what I hoped for, I should be on my beam ends?”
“My dear fellow, I supposed you had got it. Hearing nothing of you all day, I concluded it had come by the morning’s post.”
“It had not come then,” returned George, crustily. In spite of his blind trust in the unbleached good faith of Mr. Verrall, there were moments when a thought would cross him as to whether that gentleman had been playing a double game. This was one of them.
“I had a hasty summons, and was obliged to come away without delay,” explained Mr. Verrall. “I sent you a message.”
“Which I never received,” retorted George. “But the message is not the question. See here! A pretty letter, this, for a man to read. It came by the afternoon post.”
Mr. Verrall took the letter, and digested the contents deliberately; in all probability he had known their substance before. “What do you think of it?” demanded George.
“It’s unfortunate,” said Mr. Verrall.
“It’s ruin,” returned George.
“Unless averted. But it must be averted.”
“How?”
“There is one way, you know,” said Mr. Verrall, after a pause. “I have pointed it out to you already.”
“And I wish your tongue had been blistered, Verrall, before you ever had pointed it out to me!” foamed George. “There!”
Mr. Verrall raised his impassive eyebrows. “You must be aware — —”
“Man!” interrupted George, his voice hoarse with emotion, as he grasped Mr. Verrall’s shoulder: “do you know that the temptation, since you suggested it, is ever standing out before me — an ignis fatuus, beckoning me on to it! Though I know that it would prove nothing but a curse to engulf me.”
“Here, George, take this,” said Mr. Verrall, pouring out a large tumbler of sparkling wine, and forcing it upon him. “The worst of you is, that you get so excited over things! and then you are sure to look at them in a wrong light. Just hear me for a moment. The pressure is all at this present moment, is it not? If you can lift it, you will recover yourself fast enough. Has it ever struck you,” Mr. Verrall added, somewhat abruptly, “that your brother is fading?”
Remembering the scene with his brother the previous night, George looked very conscious. He simply nodded an answer.
“With Ashlydyat yours, you would recover yourself almost immediately. There would positively be no risk.”
“No risk!” repeated George, with emphasis.
“I cannot see that there would be any. Everything’s a risk, if you come to that. We are in risk of earthquakes, of a national bankruptcy, of various other calamities: but the risk that would attend the step I suggested to you is really so slight as not to be called a risk. It never can be known: the chances are a hundred thousand to one.”
“But there remains the one,” persisted George.
“To let an exposé come would be an act of madness, at the worst look out: but it is madness and double madness when you may so soon succeed to Ashlydyat.”
“Oblige me by not counting upon that, Verrall,” said George. “I hope, ill as my brother appears to be, that he may live yet.”
“I don’t wish to count upon it,” returned Mr. Verrall. “It is for you to count upon it, not me. Were I in your place, I should not blind my eyes to the palpable fact. Look here: your object is to get out of this mess?”
“You know it is,” said George.
“Very well. I see but one way for you to do it. The money must be raised, and how is that to be done? Why, by the means I suggest. It will never be known. A little time, and things can be worked round again.”
“I have been hoping to work things round this long while,” said George. “And they grow worse instead of better.”
“Therefore I say that you should not close your eyes to the prospect of Ashlydyat. Sit down. Be yourself again, and let us talk things over quietly.”
“You see, Verrall, the risk falls wholly upon me.”
“And, upon whom the benefit, for which the risk will be incurred?” pointedly returned Mr. Verrall.
“It seems to me that I don’t get the lion’s share of these benefits,” was George’s remark.
“Sit down, I say. Can’t you be still? Here, take some more wine. There: now let us talk it over.”
And talk it over they did, as may be inferred. For it was a full hour afterwards when George came out. He leaped into the cab, which had waited, telling the man that he must drive as if he were going through fire and water. The man did so: and George arrived at the Paddington station just in time to lose his train.
CHAPTER VII. BEYOND RECALL.
The clerks were at a stand-still in the banking-house of Godolphin, Crosse, and Godolphin. A certain iron safe had to be opened, and the key was not to be found. There were duplicate keys to it; one of them was kept by Mr. Godolphin, the other by Mr. George. Mr. Hurde, the cashier, appealed to Isaac Hastings.
“Do you think it has not been left with Mrs. George Godolphin?”
“I’ll ask her,” replied Isaac, getting off his stool. “I don’t think it has: or she would have given it to me when she informed me of Mr. George Godolphin’s absence.”
He went into the dining-room: that pleasant room, which it was almost a shame to designate by the name. Maria was listlessly standing against the window-frame, plucking mechanically the fading blossoms of a geranium. She turned her head at the opening of the door, and saw her brother.
“Isaac, what time does the first train come in?”
“From what place?” inquired Isaac.
“Oh — from the Portsmouth direction. It was Portsmouth that Captain St. Aubyn was to embark from, was it not?”
“I don’t know anything about it,” replied Isaac. “Neither can I tell at what hours trains arrive from that direction. Maria, has Mr. George Godolphin left the key of the book-safe with you?”
“No,” was Maria’s answer. “I suppose he must have forgotten to do so. He has left it with me when he has gone away unexpectedly before, after banking-hours.”
Isaac returned to the rest of the clerks. The key was wanted badly, and it was decided that he should go up to Ashlydyat for Mr. Godolphin’s.
He took the nearest road to it. Down Crosse Street, and through the Ash-tree Walk. It was a place, as you have heard, especially shunned at night: it was not much frequented by day. Therefore, it was no surprise to Isaac Hastings that he did not, all through it, meet a single thing, either man or ghost. At the very end, however, on that same broken bench where Thomas Godolphin and his bodily agony had come to an anchor the previous night, sat Charlotte Pain.
She was in deep thought: deep perplexity; there was no mistaking that her countenance betrayed both: some might have fancied in deep pain, either bodily or mental. Pale she was not. Charlotte’s complexion was made up too fashionably for either red or white, born of emotion, to affect it, unless it might be emotion of a most extraordinary nature. Hands clenched, brow knit, lips drawn from her teeth, eyes staring on vacancy — Isaac Hastings could not avoid reading the signs, and he read them with surprise.
“Good morning, Mrs. Pain!”
Charlotte started from the seat with a half scream. “What’s the use of startling one like that!” she fiercely exclaimed.
“I did not startle you intentionally,” replied Isaac. “You might have heard my footsteps had you not been so preoccupied. Did you think it was the ghost arriving?” he added, jestingly.
“Of course I did,” returned Charlotte, laughing, as she made an effort, and a successful one, to recover herself. “What do you do here this morning? Did you come to look after the ghost, or after me?”
“After neither,” replied Isaac, with more truth than gallantry. “Mr. George Godolphin has sent me up here.”
Now, in saying this, what Isaac meant to express was nothing more than that his coming up was caused by George Godolphin. Alluding of course to George’s forgetfulness in carrying off the key. Charlotte, however, took the words literally, and her eyes opened.
“Did George Godolphin not go last night?”
“Yes, he went. He forgot — —”
“Then what can have brought him back so soon?” was her vehement interruption, not allowing Isaac time to conclude. “There’s no day train in from London yet.”
“Is there not?” was Isaac’s rejoinder, looking keenly at her.
“Why, of course there’s not: as you know, or ought to know. Besides, he could not get through the business he has gone upon and be back yet, unless he came by telegraph. He intended to leave by the eleven o’clock train from Paddington.”
She spoke rapidly, thoughtlessly, in her surprise. Her inward thought was, that to have gone to London, and returned again since the hour at which she parted from him the previous night, one way, at least, must have been accomplished on the telegraph wires. Had she taken a moment for reflection, she would not have so spoken. However familiar she might be with the affairs of Mr. George Godolphin, so much the more reason was there for her shunning open allusion to them.
“Who told you Mr. George Godolphin had gone to London, Mrs. Pain?” asked Isaac, after a pause.
“Do you think I did not know it? Better than you, Mr. Isaac, clever and wise as you deem yourself.”
“I pretend to be neither one nor the other with regard to the movements of Mr. George Godolphin,” was the reply of Isaac. “It is not my place to be so. I heard he had only gone a stage or two towards Portsmouth with a sick friend. Of course if you know he has gone to London, that is a different matter. I can’t stay now, Mrs. Pain: I have a message for Mr. Godolphin.”
“Then he is not back again?” cried Charlotte, as Isaac was going through the turnstile.
“Not yet.”
Charlotte looked after him as he went out of sight, and bit her lips. A doubt was flashing over her — called up by Isaac’s last observation — as to whether she had done right to allude to London. When George had been with her, discussing it, he had wondered what excuse he should invent for taking the journey, and Charlotte never supposed but that it would be known. The bright idea of starting on a benevolent excursion towards Portsmouth, had been an after-thought of Mr. George’s as he journeyed home.
“If I have done mischief,” Charlotte was beginning slowly to murmur. But she threw back her head defiantly. “Oh, nonsense about mischief! What does it matter? George can battle it out.”
Thomas Godolphin was at breakfast in his own room, his face, pale and worn, bearing traces of suffering. Isaac Hastings was admitted, and explained the cause of his appearance. Thomas received the news of George’s absence with considerable surprise.
“He left me late last night — in the night, I may say — to return home. He said nothing then of his intention to be absent. Where do you say he has gone to?”
“Maria delivered a message to me, sir, from him, to the effect that he had accompanied a sick friend, Captain St. Aubyn, a few miles on the Portsmouth line,” replied Isaac. “But Mrs. Pain, whom I have just met, says it is to London that he has gone: she says she knows it.”
Thomas Godolphin made no further comment. It may not have pleased him to remark upon any information touching his brother furnished by Mrs. Charlotte Pain. He handed the key to Isaac, and said he should speedily follow him to the Bank. It had not been Thomas Godolphin’s intention to go to the Bank that day, but hearing of George’s absence caused him to proceed thither. He ordered his carriage, and got there almost as soon as Isaac, bearing an invitation to Maria from Janet.
A quarter of an hour given to business in the manager’s room, George’s, and then Thomas Godolphin went to Maria. She was seated now near the window, in her pretty morning dress, engaged in some sort of fancy work. In her gentle face, her soft sweet eyes, Thomas would sometimes fancy he read a resemblance to his lost Ethel. Thomas greatly loved and esteemed Maria.
She rose to receive him, holding out her hand that he might take it as she quietly but earnestly made inquiries about his state of health. Not so well as he was yesterday, Thomas answered. He supposed George had given her the account of their meeting the previous night, under the ash-trees, and of his, Thomas’s illness.
Maria had not heard it. “How could George have been near the ash-trees last night?” she, wondering, inquired. “Do you mean last night, Thomas?”
“Yes, last night, after I left you. I was taken ill in going home — —”
Miss Meta, who had been fluttering about the terrace, fluttered in to see who might be talking to her mamma, and interrupted the conclusion of the sentence. “Uncle Thomas! Uncle Thomas!” cried she, joyously. They were great friends.
Her entrance diverted the channel of their conversation. Thomas took the child on his knee, fondly stroking her golden curls. Thomas remembered to have stroked just such golden curls on the head of his brother George, when he, George, was a little fellow of Meta’s age.
“Janet bade me ask if you would go to Ashlydyat for the day, Maria,” said he. “She — —”
“Meta go too,” put in the little quick tongue. “Meta go too, Uncle Thomas.”
“Will Meta be good? — and not run away from Aunt Janet, and lose herself in the passages, as she did last time?” said Thomas, with a smile.
“Meta very good,” was the answer, given with an oracular nod of promise. Thomas turned to Maria.
“Where is it that George has gone?” he asked. “With St. Aubyn? or to London?”
“Not to London,” replied Maria. “He has gone with Captain St. Aubyn. What made you think of London?”
“Isaac said Mrs. Pain thought he had gone to London,” replied Thomas. “It was some mistake, I suppose. But I wonder he should go out to-day for anything less urgent than necessity. The Bank wants him.”
Maria was soon to be convinced that she need not have spoken so surely about George’s having gone with Captain St. Aubyn. When she and Meta, with Margery — who would have thought herself grievously wronged had she not been one of the party to Ashlydyat — were starting, Thomas came out of the Bank parlour and accompanied them to the door. While standing there, the porter of the Bell Inn happened to pass, and Maria stopped him to inquire whether Captain St. Aubyn was better when he left.
“He was not at all well, ma’am,” was the man’s answer: “hardly fit to travel. He had been in a sort of fever all the night.”
“And my master, I suppose, must take and sit up with him!” put in Margery, without ceremony, in a resentful tone.
“No, he didn’t,” said the man, looking at Margery, as if he did not understand her. “It was my turn to be up last night, and I was in and out of his room four or five times: but nobody stayed with him.”
“But Mr. George Godolphin went with Captain St. Aubyn this morning?” said Thomas Godolphin to the man.
“Went where, sir?”
“Started with him. On his journey.”
“No, sir; not that I know of. I did not see him at the station.”
Maria thought the man must be stupid. “Mr. George Godolphin returned to the Bell between eleven and twelve last night,” she explained. “And he intended to accompany Captain St. Aubyn this morning on his journey.”
“Mr. George was at the Bell for a few minutes just after eleven, ma’am. It was me that let him out. He did not come back again. And I don’t think he was at the train this morning. I am sure he was not with Captain St. Aubyn, for I never left the captain till the train started.”
Nothing further was said to the porter. He touched his hat, and went his way. Maria’s face wore an air of bewilderment. Thomas smiled at her.
“I think it is you who must be mistaken, Maria,” said he. “Depend upon it, Mrs. Pain is right: he has gone to London.”
“But why should he go to London without telling me?” debated Maria. “Why say he was going with Captain St. Aubyn?”
Thomas could offer no opinion upon the subject. Miss Meta began to stamp her pretty shoes, and to drag her mamma by the hand. She was impatient to depart.
They chose the way by the lonely Ash-tree Walk. It was pleasant on a sunny day: sunshine scares away ghosts: and it was also the nearest. As they were turning into it, they met Charlotte Pain. Maria, simple-hearted and straightforward, never casting a suspicion to — to anything undesirable — spoke at once of the uncertainty she was in, as to her husband.
