“Mr. Godolphin’s here. And a nice task he has of it every day with the angry creditors. If we have had one of the bank creditors bothering at the hall-door for Mr. George, we have had fifty. At first, they wouldn’t believe he was away, and wouldn’t be got rid of. Creditors of the house, too, have come, worrying my mistress out of her life. There’s a sight of money owing in the town. Cook says she wouldn’t have believed there was a quarter of the amount only just for household things, till it came to be summed up. Some of them downstairs are wondering if they will get their wages. And—I say, Margery, have you heard about Mr. Hastings?”
“What about him?” asked Margery.
“He has lost every shilling he had. It was in the Bank, and——”
“He couldn’t have had so very much to lose,” interposed Margery, who was in a humour to contradict everything. “What can a parson save? Not much.”
“But it is not that—not his money. The week before the Bank went, he had lodged between nine and ten thousand pounds in it for safety. He was left trustee, you know, to dead Mr. Chisholm’s children, and their money was paid to him, it turns out, and he brought it to the Bank. It’s all gone.”
Margery lifted her hands in dismay. “I have heard say that failures are like nothing but a devouring fire, for the money they swallow up,” she remarked. “It seems to be true.”
“My mistress has looked so ill ever since! And she can eat nothing. Pierce says it would melt the heart of a stone to see her make believe to eat before him, waiting at dinner, trying to get a morsel down her throat, and not able to do it. My belief is, that she’s thinking of her father’s ruin night and day. Report is, that master took the money from the Rector, knowing it would never be paid back again, and used it for himself.”
Margery got up with a jerk. “If I stop here I shall be hearing worse and worse,” she remarked. “This will be enough to kill Miss Janet. That awful Shadow hasn’t been on the Dark Plain this year for nothing. We might well notice that it never was so dark before!”
Perching her bonnet on her head, and throwing her shawl over her arm, Margery lighted a candle and opened a door leading from the room into a bed-chamber. Her own bed stood opposite to her, and in a corner at the opposite end was Miss Meta’s little bed. She laid her shawl and bonnet on the drawers, and advanced on tiptoe, shading the light with her hand.
Intending to take a fond look at her darling. But, like many more of us who advance confidently on some pleasure, Margery found nothing but disappointment. The place where Meta ought to have been was empty. Nothing to be seen but the smooth white bed-clothes, laid ready open for the young lady’s reception. Did a fear dart over Margery’s mind that she must be lost? She certainly flew back as if some such idea occurred to her.