Читать книгу The Shadow of Ashlydyat - Henry Mrs. Wood - Страница 7

Table of Contents

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?”

“Sarah Anne Grame.”

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.