The Shadow of Ashlydyat Part 95

Maria went into the bedroom to her husband. He was locking his portmanteau.

"That is all, I believe," he said, transferring the keys to his pocket, and taking up the small hand-case. "Remember that it is sent off by to-night's train, Maria. I have addressed it."

"You are not going now, George?" she said, her heart seeming to fail her strangely.

"Yes, I am."

"But--there is no train. The express must have pa.s.sed this half-hour."

"I shall ride over to Crancomb and take the train there," he answered.

"I have some business in the place," added he, by way of stopping any questions as to the why and wherefore. "Listen, Maria. You need not mention that I have gone until you see Thomas on Monday morning. Tell _him_."

"Shall you not see him yourself in London?" she returned. "Are you not going to meet him?"

"I may miss him: it is just possible," was the reply of George, spoken with all the candour in life, just as though his mission to London was the express one of meeting his brother. "If Thomas should return home without having seen me, I mean."

"What am I to tell him?" she asked.

"Only that I am gone. There's no necessity to say anything else. I shall--if I miss seeing him in town--write to him here."

"And when shall you be back again?"

"Soon. Good-bye, my darling."

He held his wife folded in his arms, as he had recently held Meta. The tears were raining down her cheeks.

"Don't grieve, Maria. It will blow over, I say. G.o.d bless you. Take care of Meta."

Maria's heart felt as if it were breaking. But in the midst of her own distress, she remembered the claims of others. "That ten-pound note, George? If you are not back in a day or two, how shall I have it? The woman may come for it."

"Oh, I shall be back. Or you can ask Thomas."

In his careless indifference he thought he should be back before long.

He was not going to _run away_: only to absent himself from the brunt of the explosion. That his delinquencies would be patent to Thomas and to others by Monday morning, he knew: it would be just as well to let some of their astonishment and anger evaporate without his presence; be far more agreeable to himself, personally. In his careless indifference, too, he had spoken the words, "You can ask Thomas." A moment's consideration would have told him that Thomas would have no ten-pound notes to spare for Maria. George G.o.dolphin was one who never lost heart.

He was indulging, now, the most extravagantly sanguine hopes of raising money in London, by some means or other. Perhaps Verrall could help him?

He strained his wife to his heart, kissed her again, and was gone. Maria sat down in the midst of her blinding tears.

Walking round to the stables, he waited there while his horse was got ready, mounted him, the small black case in front, and rode away alone.

The groom thought his master was only going out for a ride, as he did on other days: but the man did wonder that Mr. George should go _that_ day.

Crancomb was a small place about five miles off: it had a railway station, and the ordinary trains stopped there. What motive induced him to go there to take the train, he best knew. Probably, he did not care to excite the observation and comment, which his going off from Prior's Ash on that day would be sure to excite. Seriously to fear being stopped, he did not.

He rode along at a leisurely pace, reaching Crancomb just before the up-train was expected. Evidently the day's great disaster had not yet travelled to Crancomb. George was received with all the tokens of respect, ever accorded to the G.o.dolphins. He charged the landlord of the inn to send his horse back to Prior's Ash on Monday morning, changed Mrs. Bond's ten-pound note, and chatted familiarly to the employes at the station, after taking his ticket.

Up came the train. Two or three solitary pa.s.sengers, bound for the place, descended, two or three entered. The whistle sounded; the engine shrieked and puffed: and George G.o.dolphin, nodding familiarly around with his gay smile, was carried on his road to London.

Maria had sat on, her blinding tears falling. What an alteration it was!

What a contrast to the happiness of the morning! That a few minutes should have power to bring forth so awful a change! The work she had done so eagerly before, lay on the table. Where had its enjoyment gone?

She turned from it now with a feeling not far removed from sickness.

Nothing could be thought of but the great trouble which had fallen; there was no further satisfaction to be derived from outward things. The work lay there, untouched; destined, though she knew it not, never to have another st.i.tch set in it by its mistress; and she sat on and on, her hands clasped inertly before her, her brain throbbing with its uncertainty and its care.

CHAPTER XX.

MRS. BOND'S VISIT.

In the old study at All Souls' Rectory--if you have not forgotten that modest room--in the midst of almost as much untidiness as used to characterize it when the little Hastingses were in their untidy ages, sat some of them in the summer's evening. Rose's drawings and fancy-work lay about; Mrs. Hastings's more substantial sewing lay about; and a good deal of litter besides out of Reginald's pocket; not to speak of books belonging to the boys, fishing-tackle, and sundries.

Nothing was being touched, nothing used; it all lay neglected, as Maria G.o.dolphin's work had done, earlier in the afternoon. Mrs. Hastings sat in a listless att.i.tude, her elbow on the old cloth cover of the table, her face turned to her children. Rose sat at the window; Isaac and Reginald were standing by the mantel-piece; and Grace, her bonnet thrown off on to the floor, her shawl unpinned and partially falling from her shoulders, half sat, half knelt at her mother's side, her face upturned to her, asking for particulars of the calamity. Grace had come running in only a few minutes ago, eager, anxious, and impulsive.

"Only think the state I have been in!" she cried. "But one servant in the house, and unable to leave baby to get down here! I----"

"What brings you with only one servant?" interrupted Rose.

"Ann's mother is ill, and I have let her go home until Monday morning. I wish you would not interrupt me with frivolous questions, Rose!" added Grace in her old, quick, sharp manner. "Any other day but Sat.u.r.day, I would have left baby to Martha, and she might have put off her work, but on Sat.u.r.days there's always so much to do. I had half a mind to come and bring the baby myself. What should I care, if Prior's Ash did see me carrying him? But, mamma, you don't tell me--how has this dreadful thing been brought about?"

"_I_ tell you, Grace!" returned Mrs. Hastings. "I should be glad to know, myself."

"There's a report going about--Tom picked it up somewhere and brought it home to me--that Mr. George G.o.dolphin had been playing pranks with the Bank's money," continued Grace.

"Grace, my dear, were I you I would not repeat such a report," gravely observed Mrs. Hastings.

Grace shrugged her shoulders. George G.o.dolphin had never been a favourite of hers, and never would be. "It may turn out to be true,"

said she.

"Then, my dear, it will be time enough for us to talk of it when it does. You are fortunate, Grace; you had no money there."

"I'm sure we had," answered Grace, more bluntly than politely. "We had thirty pounds there. And thirty pounds would be as much of a loss to us as thirty hundred to some."

"Tom Akeman must be getting on--to keep a banking account!" cried free Reginald.

Grace for a wonder, did not detect the irony: though she knew that Reginald had never liked Mr. Akeman: he had always told Grace she lowered herself by marrying an unknown architect.

"Seven hundred pounds were lodged in the Bank to his account when that chapel-of-ease was begun," she said, in answer to Reginald's remark. "He has drawn it all out, for wages and other things, except thirty pounds.

And of course, that, if it _is_ lost, will be our loss. Had the Bank stood until next week, there would have been another large sum paid in.

Will it go on again, Isaac?"

"You may as well ask questions of a stranger, as ask them of me, Grace,"

was her brother Isaac's answer. "I cannot tell you anything certain."

"You won't, you mean," retorted Grace. "I suppose you clerks may not tell tales out of school. What sum has the Bank gone for, Isaac? That, surely, may be told."

"Not for any sum," was Isaac's answer. "The Bank has not 'gone' yet, in that sense. There was a run upon the Bank this morning, and the calls were so great that we had not enough money in the place to satisfy them, and were obliged to cease paying. It is said that the Bank will open again on Monday, when a.s.sistance shall have come; that business will be resumed, as usual. Mr. G.o.dolphin himself said so: and he is not one to say a thing unless it has foundation. I know nothing more than that, Grace, whatever you may choose to infer."

"Do you mean to tell me that there are no suspicions in the Bank that something, more than the public yet knows, is amiss with George G.o.dolphin?" persisted Grace.