CHAPTER III.
THE DARK PLAIN IN THE MOONLIGHT.
The beams of the setting sun streamed into the dining-room at Lady Godolphin’s Folly. A room of fine proportions; not dull and heavy, as it is much the custom for dining-rooms to be, but light and graceful as could be wished.
Sir George Godolphin, with his fine old beauty, sat at one end of the table; Lady Godolphin, good-looking also in her peculiar style, was opposite to him. She wore a white dress, its make remarkably young, and her hair fell in ringlets, young also. On her right hand sat Thomas Godolphin, courteous and calm, as he ever was; on her left hand was Bessy, whom you have already seen. On the right of Sir George sat Maria Hastings, singularly attractive in her quiet loveliness, in her white spotted muslin dress with its white ribbons. On his left sat his eldest daughter, Janet. Quiet in manner, plain in features, as was Thomas, her eyes were yet wonderful to behold. Not altogether for their beauty, but for the power they appeared to contain of seeing all things. Large, reflective, strangely-deep eyes, grey, with a circlet of darker grey round them. When they were cast upon you, it was not at you they looked, but at what was within you—at your mind, your thoughts; at least, such was the impression they conveyed. She and Bessy were dressed alike, in grey watered silk. Cecil sat between Janet and Thomas, a charming girl, with blue ribbons in her hair. George sat between his sister Bessy and Maria Hastings. Thomas was attired much as he had been in the morning: George had exchanged his hunting clothes for dinner dress.
Lady Godolphin was speaking of her visit to Scotland. Sir George’s illness had caused it to be put off, or they would have gone in August: it was proposed to proceed thither now. “I have written finally to say that we shall be there on Tuesday,” she observed.
“Will papa be able to make the journey in one day?” asked Bessy.
“He says he is quite strong enough to do so now,” replied Lady Godolphin. “But I could not think of his running any risk, so we shall stay a night upon the road. Janet, will you believe that I had a battle with Mr. Hastings to-day?”
Janet turned her strange eyes on Lady Godolphin. “Had you, madam?”
“I consider Mr. Hastings the most unreasonable, changeable man I ever met with,” complained Lady Godolphin. “But clergymen are apt to be so. So obstinate, if they take up a thing! When Maria was invited to accompany us in August, Mr. Hastings made not a single demur neither he nor Mrs. Hastings: they bought her—oh, all sorts of new things for the visit. New dresses and bonnets; and—a new cloak, was it not, Maria?”
Maria smiled. “Yes, Lady Godolphin.”
“People who have never been in Scotland acquire the notion that in temperature it may be matched with the North Pole, so a warm cloak was provided for Maria for an August visit! I called at the Rectory to-day with Maria, after the hounds had thrown off, to tell them that we should depart next week, and Mr. Hastings wanted to withdraw his consent to her going. “Too late in the season,” he urged, or some such plea. I told him she should not be frozen; we should be back before the cold weather set in.”
Maria lifted her sweet face, an earnest look upon it. “It was not the cold papa thought of, Lady Godolphin: he knows I am too hardy to fear that. But, as winter approaches, there is so much more to do, both at home and abroad. Mamma has to be out a great deal: and this will be a heavy winter with the poor, after all the sickness.”
“The sickness has passed,” exclaimed Lady Godolphin, in a tone so sharp, so eager, as to give rise to a suspicion that she might fear, or had feared, the sickness for herself.
“Nearly so,” assented Miss Godolphin. “There have been no fresh cases since——”
“Janet, if you talk of ‘fresh cases’ at my table, I shall retire from it,” interrupted Lady Godolphin in agitation. “Is fever a pleasant or fitting topic of conversation, pray?”
Janet Godolphin bowed her head. “I did not forget your fears, madam. I supposed, however, that, now that the sickness is subsiding, your objection to hearing it spoken of might have subsided also.”
“And how did the controversy with Mr. Hastings end?” interposed Bessy, to turn the topic. “Is Maria to go?”
“Of course she is to go,” said Lady Godolphin, with a quiet little laugh of power, as she recovered her good-humour. “When I wish a thing, I generally carry my point. I would not stir from his room until he gave his consent, and he had his sermon on the table, and was no doubt wishing me at the antipodes. He thought Maria had already paid me a visit long enough for Sir George to have grown tired of her, he said. I told him that it was not his business: and that whether Sir George or any one else was tired of her, I should take her to Scotland. So he yielded.”
Maria Hastings glanced timidly at Sir George. He saw the look. “Not tired of you yet, are we, Miss Hastings?” he said, with, Maria fancied, more gallantry than warmth. But fancy, with Maria, sometimes went a great way.
“It would have been a disappointment to Maria,” pursued Lady Godolphin. “Would it not, my dear?”
“Yes,” she answered, her face flushing.
“And so very dull for Charlotte Pain. I expressly told her when I invited her that Maria Hastings would be of the party.”
“Charlotte Pain!” echoed Bessy Godolphin, in her quick way; “is she going with you? What in the world is that for?”
“I invited her, I say,” said Lady Godolphin, with a hard look on her bloom-tinted face: a look that it always wore when her wishes were questioned, her actions reflected on. None brooked interference less than Lady Godolphin.
Sir George bent his head slightly towards his wife. “My dear, I considered that Charlotte Pain invited herself. She fished pretty strongly for the invitation, and you fell into the snare.”
“Snare! It is an honour and a pleasure that she should come with us. What do you mean, Sir George?”
“An honour, if you like to call it so; I am sure it will be a pleasure,” replied Sir George. “A most attractive young woman is Charlotte Pain: though she did angle for the invitation. George, take care how you play your cards.”
“What cards, sir?”
“Look at that graceless George! at his conscious vanity!” exclaimed Sir George to the table generally. “He knows who it is that makes the attraction here to Charlotte Pain. Wear her if you can win her, my boy.”
“Would Charlotte Pain be one worthy to be won by George Godolphin?” quietly spoke Janet.
“Rumour says she has thirty thousand charms,” nodded Sir George.
“I never would marry for money, if I were George,” cried Cecil indignantly. “And, papa, I do not see so much beauty in Charlotte Pain. I do not like her style.”
“Cecil, did you ever know one pretty girl like the ‘style’ of another?” asked George.
“Nonsense! But you can’t call Charlotte Pain much of a girl, George. She is as old as you, I know. She’s six and twenty, if she’s a day.”
“Possibly,” carelessly replied George Godolphin.
“Did she ride well to-day, George?” inquired his father.
“She always rides well, sir,” replied George.
“I wish I had invited her to dinner!” said Lady Godolphin.
“I wish you had,” assented Sir George.
Nothing more was said upon the subject; the conversation fell into other channels. But, when the ladies had withdrawn, and Sir George was alone with his sons, he renewed it.
“Mind, George, I was not in jest when speaking of Charlotte Pain. It is getting time that you married.”
“Need a man think of marriage on this side thirty, sir?”
“Some men need not think of it on this side forty or on this side fifty, unless they choose to do so: your brother Thomas is one,” returned Sir George. “But they are those who know how to sow their wild oats without it.”
“I shall sow mine in good time,” said George, with a gay, half-conscious smile. “Thomas never had any to sow.”
“I wish you would settle the time and keep it, then,” was the marked rejoinder. “It might be better for you.”
“Settle the time for my marriage, do you mean, sir?”
“You know what I mean. But I suppose you do intend to marry some time, George?”
“I dare say I shall. It is a thing that comes to most of us as a matter of course; as measles or vaccination,” spoke irreverent George. “You mentioned Charlotte Pain, sir: I presume you have no urgent wish that my choice should fall upon her?”
“If I had, would you comply with it?”
George raised his blue eyes to his father. “I have never thought of Charlotte Pain as a wife.”
“She is a fine girl, a wonderfully fine girl; and if, as is rumoured, she has a fortune, you might go further and fare worse,” remarked Sir George. “If you don’t like Charlotte Pain, find out some one else that you would like. Only, take care that there’s money with her.”
“Money is desirable in itself. But it does not invariably bring happiness, sir.”
“I never heard that it brought unhappiness, Master George. I cannot have you both marry portionless women. Thomas has chosen one who has nothing: it will not do for you to follow his example. The world is before you; choose wisely.”
“If we choose portionless women, we are not portionless ourselves.”
“We have a credit to keep up before the public, George. It stands high; it deserves to stand high; I hope it always will do so. But I consider it necessary that one of you should marry a fortune; I should have been glad that both had done so. Take the hint, George; and never expect my consent to your making an undesirable match, for it would not be given.”
“But, if my inclination fixed itself upon one who has no money, what then, sir?” asked bold George carelessly.
Sir George pushed from before him a dish of filberts, so hastily as to scatter them on the table. It proved to his sons, who knew him well, that the question had annoyed him.
“Your inclinations are as yet free, George: I say the world is before you, and you may choose wisely. If you do not: if, after this warning, you suffer your choice to rest where it is undesirable that it should rest, you will do it in deliberate defiance of me. In that case I shall disinherit you: partially, if not wholly.”
Something appeared to be on the tip of George’s tongue, but he checked it, and there ensued a pause.
“Thomas is to be allowed to follow his choice,” he presently said.
“I had not warned Thomas with regard to a choice; therefore he has been guilty of no disobedience. It is his having chosen as he has, that reminds me to caution you. Be careful, my boy.”
“Well, sir, I have no intention of marrying yet, and I suppose you will not disinherit me for keeping single,” concluded George good-humouredly. He rose to leave the room as he spoke, throwing a merry glance towards Thomas as he did so, who had taken no part whatever in the conversation.
The twilight of the evening had passed, but the moon shone bright and clear, rendering the night nearly as light as day. Janet Godolphin stood on the lawn with Miss Hastings, when George stepped out and joined them.
“Moon-gazing, Janet!”
“Yes,” she answered. “I am going on to the ash-trees.”
George paused before he again spoke. “Why are you going thither?”
“Because,” whispered Janet, glancing uneasily around, “they say the Shadow is there again.”
George himself had heard that it was: had heard it, as you know, from Charlotte Pain. But he chose to make mockery of his sister’s words.
“Some say the moon’s made of green cheese,” quoth he. “Who told you that nonsense?”
“It has been told to me,” mysteriously returned Janet. “Margery saw it last night, for one.”
“Margery sees double, sometimes. Do not go, Janet.”
Janet’s only answer was to put the hood of her cloak over her head, and walk away. Bessy Godolphin ran up at this juncture.
“Is Janet going to the ash-trees? She’ll turn into a ghost herself some time, believing all the rubbish Margery chooses to dream. I shall go and tell her so.”
Bessy followed in the wake of her sister. George turned to Miss Hastings.
“Have you a cloak also, Maria? Draw it round you, then, and let us go after them.”
He caught her to him with a fond gesture, and they hastened on, down from the eminence where rose the Folly, to the lower ground nearer Ashlydyat. The Dark Plain lay to the right, and as they struck into a narrow, overhung walk, its gloom contrasted unpleasantly with the late brightness. Maria Hastings drew nearer to her companion with an involuntary shiver.
“Why did you come this dark way, George?”
“It is the most direct way. In the dark or in the light you are safe with me. Did you notice Sir George’s joke about Charlotte Pain?”
The question caused her heart to beat wildly. “Was it a joke?” she breathed.
“Of course it was a joke. But he has been giving me a lecture upon—upon——”
“Upon what?” she inquired, helping out his hesitation.
“Upon the expediency of sowing my wild oats and settling down into a respectable man,” laughed George. “I promised him it should be done some time. I cannot afford it just yet, Maria,” he added, his tone changing to earnestness. “But I did not tell him that.”
Meanwhile, Janet Godolphin had gained the ash-trees. She quietly glided before them beneath their shade to reach the bench. It was placed back, quite amidst them, in what might almost be called a recess formed by the trees. Janet paused ere turning in, her sight thrown over the Dark Plain.
“Heavens and earth! how you startled me. Is it you, Miss Godolphin?”
The exclamation came from Charlotte Pain, who was seated there. Miss Godolphin was startled also; and her tone, as she spoke, betrayed considerable vexation.
“You here, Miss Pain! A solitary spot, is it not, for a young lady to be sitting in alone at night?”
“I was watching for that strange appearance which you, in this neighbourhood, call the Shadow,” she explained. “I saw it last evening.”
“Did you?” freezingly replied Janet Godolphin, who had an unconquerable aversion to the supernatural sign being seen or spoken of by strangers.
“Well, pray, and where’s the Shadow?” interrupted Bessy Godolphin, coming up. “I see nothing, and my eyes are as good as yours, Janet: better, I hope, than Margery’s.”
“I do not see it to-night,” said Charlotte Pain. “Here are more footsteps! Who else is coming?”
“Did you ever know the Shadow come when it was watched for?” cried Janet to Bessy, in a half-sad, half-resentful tone, as her brother and Maria Hastings approached. “Watch for it, and it does not come. It never yet struck upon the sight of any one, but it did so unexpectedly.”
“As it did upon me last night,” said Charlotte Pain. “It was a strange-looking shadow: but, as to its being supernatural, the very supposition is ridiculous. I beg your pardon, if I offend your prejudices, Miss Godolphin.”
“Child! why did you come?” cried Janet Godolphin to Maria.
“I had no idea you did not wish me to come.”
“Wish! It is not that. But you are little more than a child, and might be spared these sights.”
There appeared to be no particular sight to spare any one. They stood in a group, gazing eagerly. The Dark Plain was stretched out before them, the bare patch of clear ground, the archway behind; all bright in the moonlight. No shadow or shade was to be seen. Charlotte Pain moved to the side of George Godolphin.
“You told me I was fanciful this morning, when I said the Dark Plain put me in mind of a graveyard,” she said to him in a half-whisper. “See it now! Those low bushes scattered about look precisely like grave-mounds.”
“But we know them to be bushes,” returned George.
“That is not the argument. I say they look like it. If you brought a stranger here first by moonlight, and asked him what the Plain was, he would say a graveyard.”
“Thus it has ever been!” murmured Janet Godolphin to herself. “At the first coming of the Shadow, it will be here capriciously; visible one night, invisible the next: betokening that the evil has not yet arrived, that it is only hovering! You are sure you saw it, Miss Pain?”
“I am quite sure that I saw a shadow, bearing a strange and distinct form, there, in front of the archway. But I am equally sure it is to be accounted for by natural causes. But that my eyes tell me there is no building, or sign of building above the Dark Plain, I should say it was cast from thence. Some fairies, possibly, may be holding up a sheet there,” she carelessly added, “playing at magic lantern in the moonlight.”
“Standing in the air,” sarcastically returned Miss Godolphin. “Archimedes offered to move the world with his lever, if the world would only find him a place, apart from itself, to stand on.”
“Are you convinced, Janet?” asked George.
“Of what?”
He pointed over the Plain. “That there is nothing uncanny to be seen to-night. I’ll send Margery here when I return.”
“I am convinced of one thing—that it is getting uncommonly damp,” said practical Bessy. “I never stood under these ash-trees in an evening yet, let the atmosphere be ever so cold and clear, but a dampness might be felt. I wonder if it is the nature of ash-trees to exhale it? Maria, the Rector would not thank us for bringing you here.”
“Is Miss Hastings so susceptible to cold?” asked Charlotte Pain.
“Not more so than other people are,” was Maria’s answer.
“It is her child-like, delicate appearance, I suppose, that makes us fancy it,” said Bessy Godolphin. “Come, let us depart. If Lady Godolphin could see us here, she would go crazy: she says, you know, that damp brings fever.”
They made a simultaneous movement. Their road lay to the right; Charlotte Pain’s to the left. “I envy you four,” she said, after wishing them good night. “You are a formidable body, numerous enough to do battle with any assailants you may meet in your way, fairies, or shadows, or fever, or what not. I must encounter them alone.”
“Scarcely,” replied George Godolphin, as he drew her arm within his, and turned with her in the direction of Ashlydyat.
Arrived at Lady Godolphin’s Folly, the Miss Godolphins passed indoors; Maria Hastings lingered a moment behind them. She leaned against a white pillar of the terrace, looking forth on the lovely night. Not altogether was that peaceful scene in accordance with her heart, for, in that, warred passionate jealousy. Who was Charlotte Pain, she asked herself, that she should come between them with her beauty; with her——
Some one was hastening towards her; crossing the green lawn, springing up the steps of the terrace: and the jealous feeling died away into love.
“Were you waiting for me?” whispered George Godolphin. “We met Verrall, so I resigned mademoiselle to his charge. Maria, how your heart is beating!”
“I was startled when you ran up so quickly; I did not think it could be you,” was the evasive answer. “Let me go, please.”
“My darling, don’t be angry with me: I could not well help myself. You know with whom I would rather have been.”
He spoke in the softest whisper; he gazed tenderly into her face, so fair and gentle in the moonlight; he clasped her to him with an impassioned gesture. And Maria, as she yielded to his tenderness in her pure love, and felt his stolen kisses on her lips, forgot the jealous trouble that was being wrought by Charlotte Pain.
CHAPTER IV.
ALL SOULS’ RECTORY.
At the eastern end of Prior’s Ash was situated the Church and Rectory of All Souls—a valuable living, the Reverend Isaac Hastings its incumbent. The house, enclosed from the high-road by a lofty hedge, was built, like the church, of greystone. It was a commodious residence, but its rooms, excepting one, were small. This one had been added to the house of late years: a long, though somewhat narrow room, its three windows looking on to the flowered lawn. A very pleasant room to sit in on a summer’s day; when the grass was green, and the flowers, with their brightness and perfume, gladdened the senses, and the birds were singing, and the bees and butterflies sporting.
Less pleasant to-day. For the skies wore a grey hue; the wind sighed round the house with an ominous sound, telling of the coming winter; and the mossy lawn and the paths were dreary with the yellow leaves, decaying as they lay. Mrs. Hastings, a ladylike woman of middle height and fair complexion, stood at one of these windows, watching the bending of the trees as the wind shook them; watching the falling leaves. She was remarkably susceptible to surrounding influences; seasons and weather held much power over her: but that she was a clergyman’s wife, and, as such, obliged to take a very practical part in the duties of life, she might have subsided into a valetudinarian.
A stronger gust sent the leaves rustling up the path, and Mrs. Hastings slightly shivered.
“How I dislike this time of year,” she exclaimed. “I wish there were no autumn. I dislike to see the dead leaves.”
“I like the autumn: although it heralds in the winter.”
The reply came from Mr. Hastings, who was pacing the carpet, thinking over his next day’s sermon: for it was Saturday morning. Nature had not intended Mr. Hastings for a parson, and his sermons were the bane of his life. An excellent man; a most efficient pastor of a parish; a gentleman; a scholar, abounding in good practical sense; but not a preacher. Sometimes he wrote his sermons, sometimes he tried the extempore plan; but, let him do as he would, there was always a conviction of failure, as to his sermons winning their way to his hearers’ hearts. He was under middle height, with keen aquiline features, his dark hair already sprinkled with grey.
“I am glad the wind has changed,” remarked the Rector. “We shall say good-bye to the fever. While that warm weather lasted, I always had my fears of its breaking out again. It was only coquetting with us. I wonder——”
Mr. Hastings stopped, as if lapsing into thought. Mrs. Hastings inquired what his “wonder” might be.
“I was thinking of Sir George Godolphin,” he continued. “One thought leads to another and another, until we should find them a strange train, if we traced them back to their origin. Beginning with dead leaves, and ending with—metaphysics.”
“What are you talking of, Isaac?” his wife asked in surprise.
A half-smile crossed the thin delicate lips of Mr. Hastings. “You spoke of the dead leaves: that led to the thought of the fever; the fever to the bad drainage; the bad drainage to the declaration of Sir George Godolphin that, if he lived until next year, it should be remedied, even though he had to meet the expense himself. Then the train went on to speculate upon whether Sir George would live; and next upon whether this change of weather may not cause my lady to relinquish her journey; and lastly, to Maria. Cold Scotland, if we are to have a season of bleak winds, cannot be beneficial to Sir George.”
“Lady Godolphin has set her mind upon going. She is not likely to relinquish it.”
“Mark you, Caroline,” said Mr. Hastings, halting in his promenade, and standing opposite his wife; “it is her dread of the fever that is sending her to Scotland. But for that, she would not go, now that it is so late in the year. And for Maria’s sake I wish she would not. I do not now wish Maria to go to Scotland.”
“Why?” asked Mrs. Hastings.
Mr. Hastings knitted his brow. “It is an objection more easily felt than explained.”
“When the invitation was given in the summer, you were pleased that she should accept it.”
“Yes; I acknowledge it: and, had they gone then, I should have felt no repugnance to the visit. But I do feel a repugnance to it now, so far as Maria is concerned; an unaccountable repugnance. If you ask me to explain it, or to tell you what my reason is, I can only answer that I am unable to do so. It is this want of reason, good or bad, which has prevented my entirely withdrawing the consent I gave. I essayed to do so, when Lady Godolphin was here on Thursday; but she pressed me closely, and, having no sound or plausible argument to bring forward against it, my opposition broke down.”
Mrs. Hastings wondered. Never was there a man less given to whims and fancies than the Reverend Isaac Hastings. His actions and thoughts were based on the sound principle of plain matter-of-fact sense: he was practical in all things; there was not a grain of ideality in his composition.
At that moment a visitor’s knock was heard. Mrs. Hastings glanced across the hall, and saw her second daughter enter. She wore her grey cashmere cloak, soft and fine in texture, delicate in hue; a pretty morning dress, and a straw bonnet trimmed with white. A healthy colour shone on her delicate face, and her eyes were sparkling with inward happiness. Very attractive, very ladylike, was Maria Hastings.
“I was obliged to come this morning, mamma,” she said, when greetings had passed. “Some of my things are still here which I wish to take, and I must collect them and send them to the Folly. We start early on Monday morning; everything must be packed to-day.”
“One would suppose you were off for a year, Maria,” exclaimed Mr. Hastings, “to hear you talk of ‘collecting your things.’ How many trunk-loads have you already at the Folly?”
“Only two, papa,” she replied, laughing, and wondering why Mr. Hastings should speak so sternly. “They are chiefly trifles that I have come for; books, and other things: not clothes.”
“Your papa thought it likely that Lady Godolphin would not now go, as the fine weather seems to be leaving us,” said Mrs. Hastings.
“Oh yes, she will,” replied Maria. “Her mind is fully made up. Did you not know that the orders had already been sent into Berwickshire? And some of the servants went on this morning?”
“Great ladies change their minds sometimes,” remarked Mr. Hastings in a cynical tone.
Maria shook her head. She had untied her bonnet-strings, and was unfastening her mantle. “Sir George, who has risen to breakfast since Thursday, asked Lady Godolphin this morning whether it would not be late for Scotland, and she resented the remark. What do you think she said, mamma? That if there was nothing else to take her to Scotland, this absurd rumour, of the Shadow’s having come again, would drive her thither.”
“What’s that, Maria?” demanded the clergyman in a sharp, displeased accent.
“A rumour has arisen, papa, that the Shadow is appearing at Ashlydyat. It was seen on Wednesday night. On Thursday night, some of us went to the ash-trees——”
“You went?” interrupted the Rector.
“Yes, papa,” she answered, her voice growing timid, for he spoke in a tone of great displeasure. “I, and Miss Godolphin, and Bessy. We were not alone: George Godolphin was with us.”
“And what did you see?” eagerly interposed Mrs. Hastings, who possessed more of the organ of marvel in her composition than her husband.
“Mamma, we saw nothing. Only the Dark Plain lying quietly under the moonlight. There appeared to be nothing to see; nothing unusual.”
“But that I hear you say this with my own ears, I should not have believed you capable of giving utterance to folly so intense,” sternly exclaimed Mr. Hastings to his daughter. “Are you the child of Christian parents? have you received an enlightened education?”
Maria’s eyelids fell under the reproof, and the soft colour in her cheeks deepened.
“That a daughter of mine should confess to running after a ‘shadow’!” he continued, really with more asperity than the case seemed to need. But the Rector of All Souls’ was one who would have deemed it little less heresy to doubt his Bible, than to countenance a tale of superstition. He repudiated such with the greatest contempt: he never, even though proof positive had been brought before his eyes, could accord to it an iota of credence. “An absurd tale of a ‘shadow,’ worthy only to be told to those who, in their blind credulity, formerly burnt poor creatures as witches; worthy only to amuse the ears of ignorant urchins, whom we put into our fields to frighten away the crows! And my daughter has lent herself to it! Can this be the result of your training, madam?”—turning angrily to his wife. “Or of mine?”
“I did not run after it from my own curiosity; I went because the rest went,” answered poor Maria in her confusion, all too conscious that the stolen moonlight walk with Mr. George Godolphin had been a far more powerful motive to the expedition than the “Shadow.” “Miss Pain saw it on Wednesday night; Margery saw it——”
“Will you cease?” broke forth the Rector. “‘Saw it!’ If they said they saw it they must have been labouring under a delusion; or else were telling a deliberate untruth. And you do not know better than to repeat such ignorance! What would Sir George think of you?”
“I should not mention it in his presence, papa. Or in Lady Godolphin’s.”
“Neither shall you in mine. It is not possible”—Mr. Hastings stood before her and fixed his eyes sternly upon hers—“that you can believe in it?”
“I think not, papa,” she answered in her strict truth. To truth, at any rate, she had been trained, whether by father or by mother; and she would not violate it even to avoid displeasure. “I think that my feeling upon the point is curiosity; not belief.”
“Then that curiosity implies belief,” sternly replied the Rector. “If a man came to me and said, ‘There’s an elephant out there, in the garden,’ and I went forth to see, would not that prove my belief in the assertion?”
Maria was no logician; or she had answered, “No, you might go to prove the error of the assertion.” “Indeed, papa, if I know anything of myself, I am not a believer in it,” she repeated, her cheeks growing hotter and hotter. “If I were once to see the Shadow, why then——”
“Be silent!” he cried, not allowing her to continue. “I shall think next I am talking to that silly dreamer, Janet Godolphin. Is it she who has imbued you with this tone of mind?”
Maria shook her head. There was an undercurrent of consciousness, lying deep in her heart, that if a “tone” upon the point had been insensibly acquired by her, it was caught from one far more precious to her heart, far more essential to her very existence, than was Janet Godolphin. That last Thursday night, in running with George Godolphin after this tale of the Shadow, his arm cast lovingly round her, she had acquired the impression, from a few words he let fall, that he must put faith in it. She was content that his creed should be hers in all things: had she wished to differ from him, it would have been beyond her power to do so. Mr. Hastings appeared to wait for an answer.
“Janet Godolphin does not intrude her superstitious fancies upon the world, papa. Were she to seek to convert me to them, I should not listen to her.”
“Dismiss the subject altogether from your thoughts, Maria,” commanded the Rector. “If men and women would perform efficiently their allotted part in life, there is enough of hard substance to occupy their minds and their hours, without losing either the one or the other in ‘shadows.’ Take you note of that.”
“Yes, papa,” she dutifully answered, scarcely knowing whether she had deserved the lecture or not, but glad that it was at an end. “Mamma, where is Grace?”
“In the study. You can go to her. There’s David!” exclaimed Mrs. Hastings, as Maria left the room.
A short, thick-set man had appeared in the garden, giving rise to the concluding remark of Mrs. Hastings. If you have not forgotten the first chapter, you may remember that Bessy Godolphin spoke of a man who had expressed his pleasure at seeing her father out again. She called him “Old Jekyl.” Old Jekyl lived in a cottage on the outskirts of Prior’s Ash. He had been in his days a working gardener, but rheumatism and age had put him beyond work now. There was a good bit of garden-ground to his cottage, and it was well cultivated. Vegetables and fruit grew in it; and a small board was fastened in front of the laburnum-tree at the gate, with the intimation “Cut flowers sold here.” There were also bee-hives. Old Jekyl (Prior’s Ash never dignified him by any other title) had no wife: she was dead: but his two sons lived with him, and they followed the occupation that had been his. I could not tell you how many gardens in Prior’s Ash and its environs those two men kept in order. Many a family, not going to the expense of keeping a regular gardener, some, perhaps, not able to go to it, entrusted the care of their garden to the Jekyls, paying them a stipulated sum yearly. The plan answered. The gardens were kept in order, and the Jekyls earned a good living; both masters and men were contented.
They had been named Jonathan and David: and were as opposite as men and brothers could well be, both in nature and appearance. Each was worthy in his way. Jonathan stood six feet three if he stood an inch, and was sufficiently slender for a lamp-post: rumour went that he had occasionally been taken for one. An easy-going, obliging, talkative, mild-tempered man, was Jonathan, his opinion agreeing with every one’s. Mrs. Hastings was wont to declare that if she were to say to him, “You know, Jonathan, the sun never shone,” his answer would be, “Well, ma’am, I don’t know as ever it did, over bright like.” David had the build of a Dutchman, and was taciturn upon most subjects. In manner he was somewhat surly, and would hold his own opinion, especially if it touched upon his occupation, against the world.
Amongst others who employed them in this way, was the Rector of All Souls’. They were in the habit of coming and going to that or any other garden, as they pleased, at whatever day or time suited their convenience; sometimes one brother, sometimes the other, sometimes one of the two boys they employed, as they might arrange between themselves. Any garden entrusted to their care they were sure to keep in order; therefore their time and manner of doing it was not interfered with. Mrs. Hastings suddenly saw David in the garden. “I will get him to sweep those ugly dead leaves from the paths,” she exclaimed, throwing up the window. “David!”
David heard the call, turned and looked. Finding he was wanted, he advanced in a leisurely, independent sort of manner, giving his attention to the beds as he passed them, and stopping to pluck off any dead flower that offended his eye. He gave a nod as he reached Mrs. Hastings, his features not relaxing in the least. The nod was a mark of respect, and meant as such; the only demonstration of respect commonly shown by David. His face was not ugly, though too flat and broad; his complexion was fair, and his eyes were blue.
“David, see how the leaves have fallen; how they lie upon the ground!”
David gave a half-glance round, by way of answer, but he did not speak. He knew the leaves were there without looking.
“You must clear them away,” continued Mrs. Hastings.
“No,” responded David to this. “’Twon’t be of no use.”
“But, David, you know how very much I dislike to see these withered leaves,” rejoined Mrs. Hastings in a voice more of pleading than of command. Command answered little with David.
“Can’t help seeing ’em,” persisted David. “Leaves will wither; and will fall: it’s their natur’ to do it. If every one of them lying there now was raked up and swept away, there’d be as many down again to-morrow morning. I can’t neglect my beds to fad with the leaves—and bring no good to pass, after all.”
“David, I do not think any one ever was so self-willed as you!” said Mrs. Hastings, laughing in spite of her vexation.
“I know my business,” was David’s answer. “If I gave in at my different places to all the missises’ whims, how should I get my work done? The masters would be blowing me up, thinking it was idleness. Look at Jonathan! he lets himself be swayed any way; and a nice time he gets of it, among ’em. His day’s work’s never done.”
“You would not suffer the leaves to lie there until the end of the season!” exclaimed Mrs. Hastings. “They would be up to our ankles as we walked.”
“May be they would,” composedly returned David. “I have cleared ’em off about six times this fall, and I shall clear ’em again, but not as long as this wind lasts.”
“Is it going to last, David?” inquired the Rector, appearing at his wife’s side, and laughing inwardly at her diplomatic failure.
David nodded his usual salutation as he answered. He would sometimes relax so far as to say “Sir” to Mr. Hastings, an honour paid exclusively to his pastoral capacity. “No, it won’t last, sir. We shall have the warm weather back again.”
“You think so!” exclaimed the Rector in an accent of disappointment. Experience had taught him that David, in regard to the weather, was an oracle.
“I am sure so,” answered David. “The b’rometer’s going fast on to heat, too.”
“Is it?” said Mr. Hastings. “You have often told me you put no faith in the barometer.”
“No more I don’t: unless other signs answer to it,” said David. “The very best b’rometer going, is old father’s rheumatiz. There was a sharp frost last night, sir.”
“I know it,” replied Mr. Hastings. “A few nights of that and the fever will be driven away.”
“We shan’t get a few nights of it,” said David. “And the fever has broken out again.”
“What!” exclaimed Mr. Hastings. “The fever broken out again?”
“Yes,” said David.
The news fell upon the clergyman’s heart as a knell. He had fully believed the danger to have passed away, though not yet the sickness. “Are you sure it has broken out again, David?” he asked, after a pause.
“I ain’t no surer than I was told, sir,” returned phlegmatic David. “I met Cox just now, and he said, as he passed, that fever had shown itself in a fresh place.”
“Do you know where?” inquired Mr. Hastings.
“He said, I b’lieve, but I didn’t catch it. If I stopped to listen to the talk of fevers, and such-like, where would my work be?”
Taking his hat, one of the very clerical shape, with a broad brim, the Rector left his house. He was scarcely without the gates when he saw Mr. Snow, who was the most popular doctor in Prior’s Ash, coming along quickly in his gig. Mr. Hastings threw out his hand, and the groom pulled up.
“Is it true?—this fresh rumour of the fever?”
“Too true, I fear,” replied Mr. Snow. “I am on my way thither now; just summoned.”
“Who is attacked?”
The name appeared to startle the Rector. “Sarah Anne Grame!” he repeated. “She will never battle through it!” The doctor raised his eyebrows, as if he thought it doubtful himself, and signed to his groom to hasten on.
“Tell Lady Sarah I will call upon her in the course of the day,” called out Mr. Hastings, as the gig sped on its way. “I must ask Maria if she has heard news of this,” he continued, in soliloquy, as he turned within the Rectory gate.
Maria Hastings had found her way to the study. To dignify a room by the appellation of “study” in a clergyman’s house, would at once imply that it must be the private sanctum of its master, consecrated to his sermons and his other clerical studies. Not so, however, in the Rectory of All Souls. The study there was chiefly consecrated to litter, and the master had less to do with it, personally, than with almost any other room in the house. There, the children, boys and girls, played, or learned lessons, or practised; there, Mrs. Hastings would sit to sew when she had any work in hand too plebeian for the eyes of polite visitors.
Grace, the eldest of the family, was twenty years of age, one year older than Maria. She bore a great resemblance to her father; and, like him, was more practical than imaginative. She was very useful, in the house, and took much care off Mrs. Hastings’s hands. It happened that all the children, five of them besides Maria, were this morning at home. It was holiday that day with the boys. Isaac was next to Maria, but nearly three years younger; one had died between them; Reginald was next; Harry last; and then came a little girl, Rose. They ought to have been preparing their lessons; were supposed to be doing so by Mr. and Mrs. Hastings: in point of fact, they were gathering round Grace, who was seated on a low stool solving some amusing puzzles from a new book. They started up when Maria entered, and went dancing round her.
Maria danced too; she kissed them all; she sang aloud in her joyousness of heart. What was it that made that heart so glad, her life as a very Eden? The ever-constant presence there of George Godolphin.
“Have you come home to stay, Maria?”
“I have come home to go,” she answered, with a laugh. “We start for Scotland on Monday, and I want to hunt up oceans of things.”
“It is fine to be you, Maria,” exclaimed Grace, with a sensation very like envy. “You have all the pleasure, and I have to stop at home and do all the work. It is not fair.”
“Gracie dear, it will be your turn next. I did not ask Lady Godolphin to invite me, instead of you. I never thought of her inviting me, being the younger of the two.”
“But she did invite you,” grumbled Grace.
“I say, Maria, you are not to go to Scotland,” struck in Isaac.
“Who says so?” cried Maria, her heart standing still, as she halted in one corner of the room with at least half a dozen arms round her.
“Mamma said yesterday she thought you were not: that papa would not have it.”
“Is that all?” and Maria’s pulses coursed on again. “I am to go: I have just been with papa and mamma. They know that I have come to get my things for the journey.”
“Maria, who goes?”
“Sir George and my lady, and I and Charlotte Pain.”
“Maria, I want to know why Charlotte Pain goes?” cried Grace.
Maria laughed. “You are like Bessy Godolphin, Grace. She asked the same question, and my lady answered, ‘Because she chose to invite her.’ I can only repeat to you the same reason.”
“Does George Godolphin go?”
“No,” replied Maria.
“Oh, doesn’t he, though!” exclaimed Reginald. “Tell that to the marines, mademoiselle.”
“He does not go with us,” said Maria. “Regy, you know you will get into hot water if you use those sea phrases.”
“Sea phrases! that is just like a girl,” retorted Reginald. “What will you lay me that George Godolphin is not in Scotland within a week after you are all there?”
“I will not lay anything,” said Maria, who in her inmost heart hoped and believed that George would be there.
“Catch him stopping away if Charlotte Pain goes?” went on Reginald. “Yesterday I was at the pastry-cook’s, having a tuck-out with that shilling old Crosse gave me, and Mr. George and Miss Charlotte came in. I heard a little.”
“What did you hear?” breathed Maria. She could not help the question: any more than she could help the wild beating of her heart at the boy’s words.
“I did not catch it all,” said Reginald. “It was about Scotland, though, and what they should do when they were there. Mrs. Verrall’s carriage came up then, and he put her into it. An out-and-out flirt is George Godolphin!”
Grace Hastings threw her keen dark eyes upon Maria. “Do not let him flirt with you,” she said in a marked tone. “You like him; I do not. I never thought George Godolphin worth his salt.”
“That’s just Grace!” exclaimed Isaac. “Taking her likes and dislikes! and for no cause, or reason, but her own crotchets and prejudices. He is the nicest fellow going, is George Godolphin. Charlotte Pain’s is a new face and a beautiful one: let him admire it.”
“He admires rather too many,” nodded Grace.
“As long as he does not admire yours, you have no right to grumble,” rejoined Isaac provokingly: and Grace flung a bundle of work at him, for the laugh turned against her.
“Rose, you naughty child, you have my crayons there!” exclaimed Maria, happening to cast her eyes upon the table, where Rose was seated too quietly to be at anything but mischief.
“Only one or two of your sketching pencils, Maria,” said Miss Rose. “I shan’t hurt them. I am making a villa with two turrets and some cows.”
“I say, Maria, is Charlotte Pain going to take that thoroughbred hunter of hers?” interposed Reginald.
“Of course,” scoffed Isaac: “saddled and bridled. She’ll have him with her in the railway carriage; put him in the corner seat opposite Sir George. Regy’s brains may do for sea—if he ever gets there; but they are not sharp enough for land.”
“They are as sharp as yours, at any rate,” flashed Reginald. “Why should she not take him?”
“Be quiet, you boys!” said Grace.
She was interrupted by the appearance of Mr. Hastings. He did not open the door at the most opportune moment. Maria, Isaac, and Harry were executing a dance that probably had no name in the dancing calendar; Reginald was standing on his head; Rose had just upset the contents of the table, by inadvertently drawing off its old cloth cover, and Grace was scolding her in a loud tone.
“What do you call this?” demanded Mr. Hastings, when he had leisurely surveyed the scene. “Studying?”
They subsided into quietness and their places; Reginald with his face red and his hair wild, Maria with a pretty blush, Isaac with a smothered laugh. Mr. Hastings addressed his second daughter.
“Have you heard anything about this fresh outbreak of fever?”
“No, papa,” was Maria’s reply. “Has it broken out again?”
“I hear that it has attacked Sarah Anne Grame.”
“Oh, papa!” exclaimed Grace, clasping her hands in sorrowful consternation. “Will she ever live through it?”
Just the same doubt, you see, that had occurred to the Rector.
CHAPTER V.
THOMAS GODOLPHIN’S LOVE.
For nearly a mile beyond All Souls’ Rectory, as you went out of Prior’s Ash, there were scattered houses and cottages. In one of them lived Lady Sarah Grame. We receive our ideas from association; and, in speaking of the residence of Lady Sarah Grame, or Lady Sarah Anyone, imagination might conjure up some fine old mansion with all its appurtenances, grounds, servants, carriages and grandeur: or, at the very least, a “villa with two turrets and some cows,” as Rose Hastings expressed it.
Far more like a humble cottage than a mansion was the abode of Lady Sarah Grame. It was a small, pretty, detached white house, containing eight or nine rooms in all; and, they, not very large ones. A plot of ground before it was crowded with flowers: far too crowded for good taste, as David Jekyl would point out to Lady Sarah. But Lady Sarah loved flowers, and would not part with one of them.
The daughter of one soldier, and the wife of another, Lady Sarah had scrambled through life amidst bustle, perplexity, and poverty. Sometimes quartered in barracks, sometimes following the army abroad; out of one place into another; never settled anywhere for long together. It was an existence not to be envied; although it is the lot of many. She was Mrs. Grame then, and her husband, the captain, was not a very good husband to her. He was rather too fond of amusing himself, and threw all care upon her shoulders. She passed her days nursing her sickly children, and endeavouring to make one sovereign go as far as two. One morning, to her unspeakable embarrassment, she found herself converted from plain, private Mrs. Grame into the Lady Sarah. Her father boasted a peer in a very remote relative, and came unexpectedly into the title.
Had he come into money with it, it would have been more welcome; but, of that, there was only a small supply. It was a very poor Scotch peerage, with limited estates; and, they, encumbered. Lady Sarah wished she could drop the honour which had fallen to her share, unless she could live a little more in accordance with it. She had much sorrow. She had lost one child after another, until she had only two left, Sarah Anne and Ethel. Then she lost her husband; and, next, her father. Chance drove her to Prior’s Ash, which was near her husband’s native place; and she settled there, upon her limited income. All she possessed was her pension as a captain’s widow, and the interest of the sum her father had been enabled to leave her; the whole not exceeding five hundred a year. She took the white cottage, then just built, and dignified it with the name of “Grame House:” and the mansions in the neighbourhood of Prior’s Ash were content not to laugh, but to pay respect to her as an earl’s daughter.
Lady Sarah was a partial woman. She had only these two daughters, and her love for them was as different as light is from darkness. Sarah Anne she loved with an inordinate affection, almost amounting to passion; for Ethel, she did not care. What could be the reason of this? What is the reason why parents (many of them may be found) will love some of their children, and dislike others? They cannot tell you, any more than Lady Sarah could have told. Ask them, and they will be unable to give you an answer. It does not lie in the children: it often happens that those obtaining the least love will be the most worthy of it. Such was the case here. Sarah Anne Grame was a pale, sickly, fretful girl; full of whims, full of complaints, giving trouble to every one about her. Ethel, with her sweet countenance and her merry heart, made the sunshine of the home. She bore with her sister’s exacting moods, bore with her mother’s want of love. She loved them both, and waited on them, and carolled forth her snatches of song as she moved about the house, and was as happy as the day was long. The servants—they kept only two—would tell you that Miss Grame was cross and selfish; but that Miss Ethel was worth her weight in gold. The gold was soon to be appropriated; transplanted to a home where it would be appreciated and cherished: for Ethel was the affianced wife of Thomas Godolphin.
On the morning already mentioned, when you heard it said that fever had broken out again, Sarah Anne Grame awoke, ill. In her fretful, impatient way, she called to Ethel, who slept in an adjoining room. Ethel was asleep: but she was accustomed to be roused at unseasonable hours by Sarah Anne, and she threw on her dressing-gown and hastened to her.
“I want some tea,” began Sarah Anne. “I am as ill and thirsty as I can be.”
Sarah Anne was really of a sickly constitution, and to hear her complain of being ill and thirsty was nothing unusual. Ethel, in her loving nature, her sweet patience, received the information with as much concern as though she had never heard it before. She bent over Sarah Anne, inquiring tenderly where she felt pain.
“I tell you that I am ill and thirsty, and that’s enough,” peevishly answered Sarah Anne. “Go and get me some tea.”
“As soon as I possibly can,” said Ethel soothingly. “There is no fire at present. The maids are not up. I do not think it can be later than six, by the look of the morning.”
“Very well!” sobbed Sarah Anne—sobs of temper, not of pain. “You can’t call the maids, I suppose! and you can’t put yourself the least out of the way to alleviate my suffering! You want to go to bed again and sleep till eight o’clock. When I am dead, you’ll wish you had been more like a sister to me. You possess rude health yourself, and you can feel no compassion for any one who does not.”
An assertion unjust and untrue: as was many another, made by Sarah Anne Grame. Ethel did not possess “rude health,” though she was not, like her sister, always ailing; and she felt far more compassion than Sarah Anne deserved.
“I will see what I can do,” she gently said. “You shall soon have some tea.”
Passing into her own room, Ethel hastily dressed herself. When Sarah Anne was in one of her exacting moods, there could be no more sleep or rest for Ethel. “I wonder,” she thought to herself, “whether I could not light a fire, without calling the servants? They had so hard a day’s work yesterday, for mamma kept them both cleaning from morning till night. Yes: if I can only find some wood, I’ll try to light one.”
She went down to the kitchen, hunted up what was required, laid the fire, and lighted it. It did not burn up well. She thought the wood must be damp, and found the bellows. She was on her knees, blowing away at the wood, and sending the blaze up into the coal, when some one came into the kitchen.
“Miss Ethel!”
It was one of the servants: Elizabeth. She had heard movement in the house, and had risen. Ethel explained that her sister felt ill, and tea was wanted.
“Why did you not call us, Miss Ethel?”
“You went to rest late, Elizabeth. See how I have made the fire burn!”
“It is not ladies’ work, miss.”
“I certainly think ladies should put on gloves when they attempt it,” merrily laughed Ethel. “Look at my black hands.”
The tea ready, Ethel carried a cup of it to her sister, with some dry toast that they had made. Sarah Anne drank the tea, but turned with a shiver from the toast. She seemed to be shivering much.
“Who was so stupid as to make that? You might know I should not eat it. I am too ill.”
Ethel began to think that she did look unusually ill. Her face was flushed, shivering though she was, her lips were dry, her heavy eyes were unnaturally bright. She gently laid her hands, washed now, upon her sister’s brow. It felt burning, and Sarah Anne screamed.
“Do keep your hands away! My head is splitting with pain.”
Involuntarily Ethel thought of the fever; the danger from which they had been reckoning had passed away. It was a low sort of typhus which had prevailed; not very extensively, and chiefly amidst the poor: the great fear had been, lest it should turn to a more malignant type. About half a dozen deaths had taken place altogether.
“Would you like me to bathe your forehead with water, Sarah Anne?” asked Ethel kindly. “Or to get you some eau-de-Cologne?”
“I should like you to wait until things are asked for, and not to worry me,” retorted Sarah Anne.
Ethel sighed. Not for the temper: Sarah Anne was always fractious in illness: but for the suffering she thought she saw, and the half doubt, half dread, which had arisen within her. “I think I had better call mamma,” she deliberated to herself. “Though, if she sees nothing unusually the matter with Sarah Anne, she will only be angry with me.”
Proceeding to her mother’s chamber, Ethel knocked softly. Lady Sarah slept still, but the entrance aroused her.
“Mamma, I do not like to disturb you; I was unwilling to do so: but Sarah Anne is ill.”
“Ill again! And only last week she was in bed three days! Poor dear sufferer! Is it her chest again?”
“Mamma, she seems unusually ill. Otherwise I should not have disturbed you. I feared—I thought—you will be angry with me if I say, perhaps?”
“Say what? Don’t stand like a statue, Ethel.”
Ethel dropped her voice. “Dear mamma, suppose it should be the fever?”
For one startling moment, Lady Sarah felt as if a dagger had pierced her: the next, she turned upon Ethel. Fever for Sarah Anne! how dared she prophesy it? A low, common fever, confined to the poor of the town, and which had subsided; or, all but subsided! Was it likely to return again and come up here to attack her darling child? What did Ethel mean by it?
Ethel, the tears in her eyes, said she hoped it would prove to be only an ordinary headache; it was her love for Sarah Anne which awoke her fears. Lady Sarah proceeded to the sick-room; and Ethel followed. Her ladyship was not in the habit of observing caution, and spoke freely of the “fever” before Sarah Anne; apparently for the purpose of casting blame at Ethel.
Sarah Anne did not imbibe the fear; she ridiculed Ethel as her mother had done. For some hours Lady Sarah did not admit it either. She would have summoned medical advice at first, but that Sarah Anne, in her peevishness, protested she would not have a doctor. Later on she grew worse, and Mr. Snow was sent for. You saw him in his gig hastening to the house.
Lady Sarah came forward to receive him; Ethel, full of anxiety, near her. She was a thin woman, with a shrivelled face and a sharp red nose, her grey hair banded plainly under a close white net cap.
She grasped Mr. Snow’s arm. “You must save my child!”
“Higher aid permitting me,” the surgeon answered. “Why do you assume it to be fever? For the last six weeks I have been summoned by timid parents to a score of ‘fever’ cases; and when I have arrived in hot haste, they have turned out to be no fever at all.”
“This is the fever,” replied Lady Sarah. “Had I been more willing to admit that it was, you would have been sent for hours ago. It was Ethel’s fault. She suggested at daylight that it might be fever; and it made my darling girl so angry that she forbid my sending for advice. But she is worse now. Come and see her.”
Mr. Snow laid his hand upon Ethel’s head with a fond gesture, ere he turned to Lady Sarah. All Prior’s Ash loved Ethel Grame.
Tossing upon her uneasy bed, her face flushed, her hair floating untidily about it, lay Sarah Anne, shivering still. The doctor gave one glance at her: it was quite enough to satisfy him that Lady Sarah was not mistaken.
“Is it the fever?” impatiently asked Sarah Anne, unclosing her hot eyelids.
“If it is, we must drive it away again,” said the doctor cheerily.
“Why should the fever have come to me?” she rejoined, her tone rebellious.
“Why was I thrown from my horse last year, and broke my arm?” returned Mr. Snow. “These things come to all of us.”
“To break an arm is nothing—people always recover from that,” irritably answered Sarah Anne.
“And you will recover from the fever, if you will be quiet and reasonable.”
“I am so hot! My head is so heavy!”
Mr. Snow, who had called for water and a glass, was mixing a white powder which he had produced from his pocket. She took it without opposition, and then he lessened the weight of bed-clothes, and afterwards turned his attention to the chamber. It was close and hot; the sun, which had just burst forth brightly from the grey skies, shone full upon it.
“You have that chimney stuffed up!” he exclaimed.
“Sarah Anne will not allow it to be open,” said Lady Sarah. “She is sensitive to cold, dear child, and feels the slightest draught.”
Mr. Snow walked to the chimney, turned up his coat cuff and wristband, and pulled down a bag filled with shavings. Soot came with it, and covered his hand; but he did not mind that. He was as little given to ceremony as Lady Sarah to caution, and he went leisurely up to the wash-hand-stand to remove it.
“Now, if I catch that bag, or any other bag up there again, obstructing the air, I shall attack the bricks next time, and make a good big hole that the sky can be seen through. Of that I give you notice, my lady.”
He next pulled down the window at the top, behind the blind; but the room, at its best, did not find favour with him. “It is not airy; it is not cool,” he said. “Is there not a better ventilated room in the house? If so, she should be moved into it.”
“My room is cool,” interposed Ethel eagerly. “The sun never shines into it, Mr. Snow.”
It would appear that Ethel’s thus speaking must have reminded Mr. Snow that she was present. In the unceremonious manner that he had laid hands upon the chimney bag, he now laid them upon her shoulders, and marshalled her outside the door.
“You go downstairs, Miss Ethel. And do not come within a mile of this chamber again, until I give you leave to do so.”
“I will not be moved into Ethel’s room!” interposed Sarah Anne, imperiously and fretfully. “It is not furnished with half the comforts of mine. And it has only a bit of bedside carpet! I will not go there, Mr. Snow.”
“Now look you here, Miss Sarah Anne!” said the surgeon firmly. “I am responsible for bringing you well out of this illness; and I shall take my own way to do it. If not; if I am to be contradicted at every suggestion; Lady Sarah may summon some one else to attend you: I will not undertake it.”
“My darling, you shall not be moved to Ethel’s room,” cried my lady coaxingly: “you shall be moved into mine. It is larger than this, you know, Mr. Snow, with a thorough draught through it, if you choose to put the windows and door open.”
“Very well,” said Mr. Snow. “Let me find her in it when I come up again this evening. And if there’s a carpet on the floor, take it up. Carpets were never intended for bedrooms.”
He passed into one of the sitting-rooms with Lady Sarah when he descended. “What do you think of the case?” she eagerly asked.
“There will be some difficulty with it,” was the candid reply. “Lady Sarah, her hair must come off.”
“Her hair come off!” uttered Lady Sarah, aghast. “That it never shall! She has the loveliest hair! What is Ethel’s hair, compared with hers?”
“You heard the determination I expressed, Lady Sarah,” he quietly said.
“But Sarah Anne will never allow it to be done,” she returned, shifting the ground of remonstrance from her own shoulders. “And to do it in opposition to her would be enough to kill her.”
“It will not be done in opposition to her,” he answered. “She will be unconscious before it is attempted.”
Lady Sarah’s heart sank. “You anticipate that she will be dangerously ill?”
“In these cases there is always danger, Lady Sarah. But worse cases than—- as I believe—hers will be, have recovered from it.”
“If I lose her, I shall die myself!” she passionately uttered. “And, if she is to have it badly, she will die! Remember, Mr. Snow, how weak she has always been!”
“We sometimes find that weak constitutions battle best with an epidemic,” he replied. “Many a sound one has it struck down and taken off; many a sickly one has struggled through it, and been the stronger for it afterwards.”
“Everything shall be done as you wish,” said Lady Sarah, speaking meekly in her great fear.
“Very well. There is one caution I would earnestly impress upon you: that of keeping Ethel from the sick-room.”
“But there is no one to whom Sarah Anne is so accustomed, as a nurse,” objected Lady Sarah.
“Madam!” burst forth the doctor in his heat, “would you subject Ethel to the risk of taking the infection, in deference to Sarah Anne’s selfishness, or to yours? Better lose all your house contains than lose Ethel! She is its greatest treasure.”
“I know how remarkably prejudiced you have always been in Ethel’s favour!” resentfully spoke Lady Sarah.
“If I disliked her as much as I like her, I should be equally solicitous to guard her from the danger of infection,” said Mr. Snow. “If you choose to put Ethel out of consideration, you cannot put Thomas Godolphin. In justice to him, she must be taken care of.”
Lady Sarah opened her mouth to reply; but closed it again. Strange words had been hovering upon her lips: “If Thomas Godolphin were not blind, his choice would have fallen upon Sarah Anne; not upon Ethel.” In her heart that was a sore topic of resentment: for she was quite alive to the advantages of a union with a Godolphin. Those words were suppressed; to give place to others.
“Ethel is in the house; and therefore must be liable to infection, whether she visits the room or not. I cannot fence her round with a wall, so that not a breath of tainted atmosphere shall touch her. I would if I could; but I cannot.”
“I would send her from the house, Lady Sarah. At any rate, I forbid her to go near her sister. I don’t want two patients on my hands, instead of one,” he added in his quaint fashion, as he took his departure.
He was about to get into his gig, when he saw Mr. Godolphin advancing with a quick step. “Which of them is it who is seized?” inquired the latter, as he came up.
“Not Ethel, thank goodness!” responded the surgeon. “It is Sarah Anne. I have been recommending my lady to send Ethel from home. I should send her, were she a daughter of mine.”
“Is Sarah Anne likely to have it dangerously?”
“I think so. Is there any necessity for you going to the house just now, Mr. Godolphin?”