“Do you believe that there can be anything in it—that it foretells ill?” asked Maria.
“I know that it is the tradition handed down with our house: I know that, in my own experience, the Shadow never came but it brought ill,” was the reply of Miss Godolphin.
“What caused the superstition to arise in the first instance?” asked Maria.
“Has George never told you the tale?” replied Janet.
“Never. He says he does not remember it clearly enough. Will you not tell it me, Janet?”
Janet hesitated. “One of the early Godolphins brought a curse upon the house,” she at length began, in a low tone. “It was that evil ancestor whose memory we would bury, were it possible; he who earned for himself the title of the Wicked Godolphin. He killed his wife by a course of gradual and long-continued ill-treatment. He wanted her out of the way that another might fill her place. He pretended to have discovered that she was not worthy: than which assertion nothing could be more false and shameless, for she was one of the best ladies ever created. She was a de Commins, daughter of the warrior Richard de Commins, and was brave as she was good. She died; and the Wicked Godolphin turned her coffin out of the house on to the Dark Plain; there”—pointing to the open space before the archway—“to remain until the day of interment. But he did not wait for that day of interment to bring home his second wife.”
“Not wait!” exclaimed Maria, her eager ears drinking in the story.
“The habits in those early days will scarcely admit of allusion to them in these,” continued Janet: “they savour of what is worse than barbarism—sin. The father, Richard de Commins, heard of his child’s death, and hastened to Ashlydyat, arriving by moonlight. The first sounds he encountered were the revels of the celebration of the second marriage; the first sight he saw was the coffin of his daughter on the open plain, covered by a pall, two of her faithful women bending, the one at the head, the other at the foot, mourning the dead. While he halted there, kneeling in prayer, it was told to the Wicked Godolphin that de Commins had arrived. He—that Wicked Godolphin—rushed madly out, and drew his sword upon him as he knelt. De Commins was wounded, but not mortally, and he rose to defend himself. A combat ensued, de Commins having no resource but to fight, and he was killed; murdered. Weary with his journey, enfeebled by age, weakened by grief, his foot slipped, and the Wicked Godolphin, stung to fury by the few words of reproach de Commins had had time to speak, deliberately ran him through as he lay. In the moment of death, de Commins cursed the Godolphins, and prophesied that the shadow of his daughter’s bier, as it appeared then, should remain as a curse upon the Godolphins’ house for ever.”
“But do you believe the story?” cried Maria, breathlessly.
“How much of it may be true, how much of it addition, I cannot decide,” said Janet. “One fact is indisputable: that a shadow, bearing the exact resemblance of a bier, with a mourner at its head and another at its foot, does appear capriciously on that Dark Plain; and that it never yet showed itself, but some grievous ill followed for the Godolphins. It is possible that the Shadow may have partially given rise to the story.”