The Shadow of Ashlydyat Part 129

"Very smart indeed!" replied Mr. Snow.

"It's not smart," spoke Meta resentfully. "My smart frocks are put away in the drawers. It is for Uncle Thomas, Mr. Snow! Mr. Snow, Uncle Thomas is in heaven now."

"Ay, child, that he is. And it's time that Miss Meta G.o.dolphin was in bed."

That same night Mr. Snow was called up to Mrs. George G.o.dolphin.--Let us call her so to the end; but she is Mrs. G.o.dolphin now. Margery was sleeping quietly, the child in a little bed by her side, when she was aroused by some one standing over her. It was her mistress in her night-dress. Up started the woman, wide awake instantly, crying out to know what was the matter.

"Margery, I shan't be in time. The ship's waiting to sail, and none of my things are ready. I can't go without my things."

Margery, experienced in illness of many kinds, saw what it was. Her mistress had suddenly awakened from some vivid dream, and in her weak state was unable to shake off the delusion. In fact, that species of half-consciousness, half-delirium was upon her, which is apt in the night-time to attack some patients labouring under long-continued and excessive weakness.

She had come up exactly as she got out of bed. No slippers on her feet, nothing upon her shoulders. As Margery threw a warm woollen shawl over those shoulders, she felt the ominous damp of the night-dress. A pair of list-shoes of her own were at the bedside, and she hastily put them upon her mistress's feet.

"There'll be no time, Margery; there'll be no time to get the things ready: they never could be bought and made, you know. Oh, Margery! the ship must not go without me! What will be done?"

"I'll telegraph up to that ship to-morrow morning, and get him to put off starting for a week or two," cried Margery, nodding her head with authority. "Never you trouble yourself, ma'am; it will be all right. You shall go to sleep again comfortably, and we'll see about the things with morning light."

Margery talked as she conveyed her mistress back to bed, and remained talking after she was in it. A stock of this should be got in, a stock of the other: as for linen, it could all be bought ready made--and the best way too, now calico was so cheap. Somewhat surprised that she heard no answer, no further expressed fear, Margery looked close at her mistress by the night-lamp, wondering whether she had gone to sleep again. She had not gone to sleep. She was lying still, cold, white, without sense or motion; and Margery, collected Margery, very nearly screamed.

Maria had fainted away. Margery did not understand it at all, or why she should have fainted when she ought to have gone to sleep. Margery liked it as little as she understood it; and she ran upstairs to their landlady, Mrs. James, and got her to despatch her son for Mr. Snow.

But that was only the beginning. Night after night would these attacks of semi-delirium come upon her, though in the day she seemed pretty well. Mr. Snow came and came, and drew an ominous face and doubled the tonics and changed them, and talked and joked and scolded. But it all seemed unavailing: she certainly did not get better. Weary, weary hours!

weary, weary days! as she lay there alone, struggling with her malady.

And yet no malady, either, that Mr. Snow could discover; nothing but a weakness which he only half believed in.

Janet and Bessy G.o.dolphin were one day sitting with Mrs. George. The time had come for Janet to quit Ashlydyat, and she was paying her farewell visit to Maria. Maria was at the window at work when they arrived; at work with her weak and fevered hands. No very poetical employment, that on which she was engaged, but one which has to be done in most families nevertheless--stocking-darning. She was darning socks for Miss Meta. Miss Meta, her sleeves and white pinafore tied up with black ribbon, her golden curls somewhat in disorder, for the young lady had rebelliously broken from Margery and taken a race round the garden in the blowing wintry wind, her smooth cheeks fresh and rosy, was now roasting her face in front of the fire, her doll and a whole collection of dolls' clothes lying around her on the hearth-rug.

Bessy had come, not so much to accompany Janet, as for a special purpose--to deliver a message from Lady G.o.dolphin. My lady, deeming possibly that her displeasure had lasted long enough, graciously charged Bessy with an invitation to Maria--to spend a day or two at the Folly ere her departure for Calcutta.

Maria gave a sort of sobbing sigh. "She is very kind. Tell Lady G.o.dolphin how kind I think it of her, Bessy, but that I am not strong enough to go from home now."

Bessy looked at her. "But, Maria, if you are not strong enough to go out on a short visit, how shall you be strong enough to undertake a three or four months' voyage?"

Maria paused ere she answered the question. She was gazing out straight before her, as if seeing something at a distance--something in the future. "I think of it and of its uncertainty a great deal," she presently said. "If I can only get away: if I can only keep up sufficiently to get away, I can lie down always in my berth. And if I do die before I reach India, George will be with me."

"Child!" almost sharply interrupted Janet, "what are you saying?"

She seemed scarcely to hear the interruption. She sat, gazing still, her white and trembling hands lying clasped on her black dress, and she resumed, as if pursuing the train of thought.

"My great dread is, lest I should not keep up to get to London, to be taken on board; lest George should, after all, be obliged to sail without me. It is always on my mind, Janet; it makes me dream constantly that the ship has gone and I am left behind. I wish I did not have those dreams."

"Come to Lady G.o.dolphin's Folly, Maria," persuasively spoke Bessy. "It will be the very best thing to cheat you of those fears. They all arise from weakness."

"I have no doubt they do. I had a pleasant dream one night," she added with some animation. "I thought we had arrived in safety, and I and George and Meta were sitting under a tree whose leaves were larger than an umbrella. It was very hot, but these leaves shaded us, and I seemed to be well, for we were all laughing merrily together. It _may_ come true, you know, Janet."

"Yes," a.s.sented Janet. "Are you preparing much for the voyage?"

"Not yet. Clothes can be had so quickly now. George talked it over with me when he was down, and we decided to send a list to the outfitter's, just before we sailed, so that the things might not come down here, but be packed in London."

"And Margery?" asked Janet.

"I do not know what she means to do," answered Maria, shaking her head.

"She protests ten times a day that she will not go; but I see she is carefully mending up all her cotton gowns, and one day I heard her say to Meta that she supposed nothing but cotton was bearable out there.

What I should do without Margery on the voyage I don't like to think about. George told her to consider of it, and give us her decision when he next came down. And you, Janet? When shall you be back again at Prior's Ash?"

"I do not suppose I shall ever come back to it," was Janet's answer.

"Its reminiscences will not be so pleasing to me that I should seek to renew my acquaintance with it."

"Bexley attends you, I hear."

"Yes. My aunt's old servant has got beyond his work--he has been forty-two years in the family, Maria--and Bexley will replace him."

When Janet rose to leave, she bent over Maria and slipped four sovereigns into her hand. "It is for yourself, my dear," she whispered.

"Oh, thank you! But indeed I have enough, Janet. George left me five pounds when he was at home, and it is not half gone. You don't know what a little keeps us. I eat next to nothing, and Margery, I think, lives chiefly upon porridge: there's only Meta."

"But you ought to eat, child!"

"I can't eat," said Maria. "I have never lost that pain in my throat."

"What pain?" asked Janet.

"I do not know. It came on with the trouble. I feel--I feel always ill within myself, Janet. I seem to be always shivering inwardly; and the pain in the throat is sometimes better, sometimes worse, but it never quite goes away."

Janet looked at her searchingly. She heard the meek, resigned tone, she saw the white, wan face, the attenuate hands, the chest rising with every pa.s.sing emotion, the mournful look in the sweet eyes; and for the first time a suspicion that another life would shortly have to go, took possession of Miss G.o.dolphin.

"What is George at, that he is not here to see after you?" she asked in a strangely severe accent.

"He cannot bear Prior's Ash, Janet," whispered Maria. "But for me and Thomas, he never would have come back to it. And I suppose he is busy in London: there must be many arrangements to make."

Janet stooped and gravely kissed her; kissed her twice. "Take care of yourself, my dear, and do all you can to keep your mind tranquil and to get up your strength. You shall hear from me before your departure."

Margery stood in the little hall. Miss Bessy G.o.dolphin was in the garden, in full chase after that rebellious damsel, Meta, who had made a second escape through the opened door, pa.s.sing angry Margery and the outstretched hand that would have made a prisoner of her, with a laugh of defiance. Miss G.o.dolphin stopped to address Margery.

"Shall you go to India or not, Margery?"

"I'm just almost torn in two about it, ma'am," was the answer, delivered confidentially. "Without me, that child would never reach the other side alive: she'd be clambering up the sides o' the ship and get drownded ten times over before they got there. Look at her now! And who'd take care of her over there, among those native beasts--those elephants and black people? If I thought she'd ever come to be waited on by a black woman with woolly hair, I should be fit to smother her before she went out. I shall see, Miss Janet."

"Margery, your mistress appears to want the greatest care."

"She has wanted that a long while," was Margery's composed answer.

"She ought to have everything strengthening. Wine and other necessaries required by the sick."

"I suppose she ought," said Margery. "But she won't take them, Miss Janet; she says she can't eat and drink. And for the matter of that, we have nothing of that sort for her to take. There were more good things consumed in the Bank in a day than we should see in a month now."

"Where's your master?" repeated Janet in an accent not less sharp than the one she had used for the same question to Maria.

"He?" cried wrathful Margery, for the subject was sure to put her out uncommonly, in the strong opinion she was pleased to hold touching her master's short-comings. "I suppose he's riding about with his choice friend, Madam Pain. Folks talk of their horses being seen abreast pretty often."