The Shadow of Ashlydyat. Henry Wood
was ten times more alarmed than Mrs. Verrall.”
“I am truly glad it is no worse!” said Thomas Godolphin. “I feared fever might have found its way there.”
“That is taking its departure; as I think. And, the sooner it goes, the better. It has been capricious as the smiles of a coquette. How strange it is, that not a soul, down by those Pollard pigsties, should have had it, except the Bonds!”
“It is equally strange that, in many houses, it should have attacked only one inmate, and spared the rest. What do you think now of Sarah Anne Grame?”
Mr. Snow shook his head, and his voice grew insensibly low. “In my opinion she is sinking fast. I found her worse this afternoon; weaker than she has been at all. Lady Sarah said, ‘If she could get her to Ventnor?’—‘If she could get her to Hastings?’ But the removal would kill her: she’d die on the road. It will be a terrible blow to Lady Sarah, if it does come: and—though it may seem harsh to say it—a retort upon her selfishness. Did you know that they used to make Ethel head nurse, while the fever was upon her?”
“No!” exclaimed Thomas Godolphin.
“They did, then. My lady inadvertently let it out to-day. Dear child! If she had caught it, I should never have forgiven her mother, whatever you may have done. Good night. I have a dozen visits now to pay before bedtime.”
“Worse!” soliloquized Thomas Godolphin, as he stepped on. “Poor, peevish Sarah Anne! But—I wonder,” he hesitated as the thought struck him, “whether, if the worst should come, as Snow seems to anticipate, it would put off Ethel’s marriage? What with one delay and another–”
Thomas Godolphin’s voice ceased, and his heart stood still. He had turned the corner, to the front of the ash-tree grove, and stretching out before him was the Dark Plain, with its weird-like bushes, so like graves, and—its Shadow, lying cold and still in the white moonlight. Yes! there surely lay the Shadow of Ashlydyat. The grey archway rose behind it; the flat plain extended out before it, and the Shadow was between them, all too distinctly visible.
The first shock over, Thomas Godolphin’s pulses coursed on again. He had seen that Shadow before in his lifetime, but he halted to gaze at it again. It was very palpable. The bier, as it looked in the middle, a mourner at the head, a mourner at the foot, each—as a spectator could fancy—with bowed heads. In spite of the superstition touching this strange Shadow in which Thomas Godolphin had been brought up, he looked round now for some natural explanation of it. He was a man of intellect, a man of the world, a man who played his full share in the practical business of everyday life: and such men are not given to acknowledging superstitious fancies in this age of enlightenment, no matter what bent may have been given to their minds in childhood.
Therefore Thomas Godolphin ranged his eyes round and round in the air, and could see nothing that would solve the mystery. “I wonder whether it be possible that certain states of the atmosphere should give out these shadows?” he soliloquized. “But—if so—why should it invariably appear in that one precise spot; and in no other? Could Snow have seen it, I wonder?”
He walked on towards Ashlydyat, his head always turned, looking at the Shadow. “I am glad Janet does not see it! It would frighten her into a belief that my father’s end was near,” came his next thought.
Mrs. Verrall, playing the invalid, lay on a sofa, her auburn hair somewhat ruffled, her pretty pink cheeks flushed, her satin slippers peeping out; altogether challenging admiration. The damaged arm, its silk sleeve pinned up, was stretched out on a cushion, a small delicate cambric handkerchief, saturated with water, resting lightly on the burn. A basin of water stood near, with a similar handkerchief lying in it, and Mrs. Verrall’s maid was at hand to change the handkerchiefs as might be required. Thomas Godolphin drew a chair near to Mrs. Verrall, and listened to the account of the accident, giving her his full sympathy, for it might have been a bad one.
“You must possess great presence of mind,” he observed. “I think your showing it, as you have done in this instance, has won Mr. Snow’s heart.”
Mrs. Verrall laughed. “I believe I do possess presence of mind. And so does Charlotte. Once we were out with some friends in a barouche, and the horses took fright, ran up a bank, turned the carriage over, and nearly kicked it to pieces. While all those with us were fearfully frightened, Charlotte and I remained calm and cool.”
“It is a good thing for you,” he observed.
“I suppose it is. Better, at any rate, than to go mad with fear, as some do. Cecil”—turning to her—“has had fright enough to last her for a twelvemonth, she says.”
“Were you present, Cecil?” asked her brother.
“I was present, but I did not see it,” replied Cecil. “It occurred in Mrs. Verrall’s bedroom, and I was standing at the dressing-table, with my back to her. The first thing I knew, or saw, was Mrs. Verrall on the floor with the rug rolled round her.”
Tea was brought in, and Mrs. Verrall insisted that they should remain for it. Thomas pleaded an engagement, but she would not listen: they could not have the heart, she said, to leave her alone. So Thomas—the very essence of good feeling and politeness—waived his objection and remained. Not the bowing politeness of a petit maître, but the genuine consideration that springs from a noble and unselfish heart.
“I am in ecstasy that Verrall was away,” she exclaimed. “He would have magnified it into something formidable, and I should not have been allowed to stir for a month.”
“When do you expect him home?” asked Thomas Godolphin.
“I never expect him until he comes,” replied Mrs. Verrall. “London seems to possess attractions for him. Once up there, he may stay a day, or he may stay fifty. I never know.”
Cecil went upstairs to put her things on when tea was over, the maid attending her. Mrs. Verrall turned to see that the door was closed, and then spoke abruptly.
“Mr. Godolphin, can anything be done to prevent the wind whistling as it does in these passages?”
“Does it whistle?” he replied.
“The last few nights it has whistled—oh, I cannot describe it to you! If I were not a good sleeper, it would have kept me awake all night. I wish it could be stopped.”
“It cannot be done, I believe, without pulling the house down,” he said. “My mother had a great dislike to hear it, and a good deal of expense was incurred in trying to remedy it; but it did little or no good.”
“What puzzles me is, that the wind should have been whistling within the house, when there’s no wind whistling without. The weather has been quite calm. Sometimes when it is actually blowing great guns we cannot hear it at all.”
“Something peculiar in the construction of the passages,” he carelessly remarked. “You hear the whistling or not, according to the quarter from which the wind may happen to be blowing.”
“The servants tell a tale—these old Ashlydyat retainers who remain in the house—that this strangely-sounding wind is connected with the Ashlydyat superstition, and foretells ill to the Godolphins.”
Thomas Godolphin smiled. “I am sure you do not give ear to anything so foolish, Mrs. Verrall.”
“No, that I do not,” she answered. “It would take a great deal to imbue me with faith in the supernatural. Ghosts! Shadows! As if any one with common sense could believe in such impossibilities! They tell another tale about here, do they not? That a shadow of some sort may occasionally be seen in the moonbeams in front of the archway, on the Dark Plain; a shadow cast by no earthly substance. Charlotte once declared she saw it. I only laughed at her!”
His lips parted as he listened, and he lightly echoed the laugh said to have been given by Charlotte. Considering what his eyes had just seen, the laugh must have been a very conscious one.
“When do you expect your brother home?” asked Mrs. Verrall. “He seems to be making a long stay at Broomhead.”
“George is not at Broomhead,” replied Thomas Godolphin.