The Shadow of Ashlydyat. Henry Wood
long been aware that she should be foiled, if it ever came to an encounter—strength against strength—between herself and Thomas Godolphin. Easy George she could manage, the Miss Godolphins she could put down, Sir George was, now, as a reed in her hands. But Thomas?—he was different. None of them had been so uniformly respectful and courteous to her as Thomas. And yet she had known that he, of all the rest, would not bend to her authority, were any cause to arise why he should not do so.
She sat biting—as far as she dared—her rose-tinted lips; she lifted one hand and toyed with her perfumed ringlets; she opened a fan which lay at her side, and gently fanned herself; she glanced at the still countenance of Thomas Godolphin: and she knew that she must give up the game. To give it up with a good grace was essential to her future ruling: and she was now making up her mind to do this. It would never do, either, for her to stand in the hall on the morrow, call the servants around her, and say, “It is my pleasure that Sir George does not leave this place for Prior’s Ash. Keep him in; hold him in; lock the door; use any necessary means,” while Thomas Godolphin was at hand, to lift—as he had phrased it—his finger, and say, “It is my pleasure that my father does go to Prior’s Ash. Stand back while he passes.” Lady Godolphin was no simpleton, and she could hazard a shrewd guess as to which of the two would be obeyed. So she sat, bringing her mind to make a virtue of necessity, and throw up the plea. In point of fact, she had no cause of objection to Sir George’s returning to Prior’s Ash, except that she did not care to return to it herself. For two reasons: one, that she liked Broomhead best: the other, that she could not yet subdue her fears of the fever. She bent her head, as if examining the chaste devices on her fan, and spoke indifferently.
“You must be aware that my wish to keep Sir George here arises solely from the state of Prior’s Ash. It always has been our custom to spend Christmas there, amongst you all, and I should have had no other thought for this Christmas, but for the illness which arose. Will you guarantee that it is safe for him?”
“Nay, Lady Godolphin. To ‘guarantee’ an assurance of the sort would be impossible at the best of times. I believe that any fears you may entertain now of the fever will prove only a bugbear.”
“The fever has been more than a bugbear to you,” she exclaimed, acidity in her tone.
“Yes,” he sadly answered.
He drew his chair from the table, where he had been taking some refreshment after his journey, and at that moment the hall clock struck two.
“I am keeping you up very late, Lady Godolphin.”
“It is a pleasant change,” she answered. “The life here, with Sir George in his delicate state, is so excessively monotonous, that a few nights of sitting up and days of bed, might prove an agreeable variety. Did I understand you rightly—that you intend to start in the morning?”
“If Sir George shall then wish to do so as anxiously as he appeared to wish it to-night. Otherwise, I shall not object to delay it until the following one. I cannot remain longer: business demands my presence at home. And,” he added, lowering his voice, “I fear that speed is necessary for my father’s sake. If he does not go pretty soon, he may not be able to go at all. It is more than likely that we shall start to-morrow.”
“You cannot expect me to be ready in that space of time.”
“Certainly not. Just as you please, Lady Godolphin.”
Thomas Godolphin was shown to his room. Margery waylaid him in the corridor and entered it with him. “Did you get my epistle, Mr. Thomas?”
“It was that which brought me here now, Margery. Otherwise, I should not have come until the end of the week.”
“Then you would have come too late, sir. Yes, Mr. Thomas, I mean what I say,” added the woman, dropping her voice to solemnity. “By dreams and signs and tokens, which I have had–”
“Stay, Margery. You know that I am never very tolerant of your dreams and signs. Let them rest.”
“It’s true you are not,” answered Margery, without the least appearance of discomfiture; “and many’s the argument I would have liked to hold with you over it. But you’d never let me. When you were a young man, you’d laugh and joke it down—just as Mr. George might now, were I so foolish as to waste words upon him—and since you grew older and steadier you have just put me off as you are doing at this moment. Mr. Thomas, gifts are different in different people. They are not sent upon all alike: and the Scripture says so. One will see what another can’t. One will play beautiful music, while another can’t tell one tune from another. One man has a head for steam-engines and telegraphs, and will put ’em together as if he had a workshop inside him; and another, his own cousin maybe, can hardly tell an engine when he sees it, and couldn’t work one out if he lived to be a hundred years old. And so with other things.”
“Well?” responded Thomas Godolphin: for Margery paused, as if waiting for an answer.
“And do you suppose, Mr. Thomas, that it’s not the same with signs and warnings? It is not given to all to see or understand them. It is not given, as I take it, for many to see or understand them. But it is given to a few. And those few can no more be talked out of knowing that it’s truth, than they can be talked out of their own life, or of the skies above ’em. And, Mr. Thomas, it’s not only that those who have not the gift can’t see or believe for themselves, but they can’t be brought to believe that others may do so: and so they laugh at and ridicule it. Many a time, sir, you have laughed at me.”
“You see so many, you know, Margery,” said Thomas Godolphin, with a slight smile.
Margery looked at him. “Sometimes I have thought, sir, that you are not quite as unbelieving as you seem. But I know it does not do for a gentleman, high and educated and looked up to in his town, to say he puts faith in such. So I’ll not trouble you, Mr. Thomas, with the tokens I have had. I’ll not tell you that only last night that ever was, I heard the footsteps of–”
“But you are telling me, Margery.”
“That’s just how you take me up, Mr. Thomas! Well, sir, I say I’ll not bring forward these things, but I’ll speak of what you may think a surer sign—and that’s Sir George’s state of health.”
“Ay! I can follow you there.”
He let her talk on. And she did so, until he was obliged to give her a gentle hint that he should be glad to be alone and get to bed.
The house was awakened before it was yet dawn. Sir George had rung for his servant, had rung for Margery, had rung for the coachman to say the carriage was wanted—in short, had rung for so many, that the whole household was aroused. My lady appeared, in fur slippers and a warm dressing-gown, to know what the commotion could mean. His son Thomas was there, the knight answered. He was sure he had not dreamt it, but that Thomas had come the previous night; he met him at the stile; and Thomas had promised that they should go to Ashlydyat in the early morning.
It appeared he was sane enough to remember that. My lady retired, grumbling; and Margery went and called Thomas.
When Thomas reached the room, Sir George was almost in the last stage of dressing. His own trembling, eager fingers had done as much towards it as his servant. He lifted his face with its ashy hue and its strange yearning. “Thomas, my son, I must hasten back to Ashlydyat. You said I should go there to die.”
“Do you wish to start immediately, father?”
“You said I should do so!” he wailed in a tone imploringly earnest. “You said I should start with this morning’s dawn.”
“Yes, yes,” acquiesced Thomas. And he forthwith busied himself to advance the preparations.
The best hour that they could leave the station was a little before nine. No train, except one much earlier, stopped at it before. This gave time to get off comfortably: though Sir George, in his impatience, could with difficulty be induced to sit down to breakfast. My lady came in when they were at the table.
“This is really the most extraordinary proceeding!” she exclaimed, speaking chiefly to Thomas Godolphin. “Were such a thing related