The Shadow of Ashlydyat

by Mrs. Henry Wood

“No more I don’t want it,” was the answer. “I can do all the packing that is to be done here, if I am let alone, and allowed to take my own time, and do it in my own way. In all that chaffling and changing of houses when my Lady Godolphin chose to move the Ashlydyat things to the Folly, and when they had to be moved back afterwards in accordance with Sir George’s will, who did the best part of the packing and saw to everything, but me? It would be odd if I couldn’t put up a few gowns and shirts, but I must be talked to about help!”

Poor Margery was evidently in a temper. Time back George would have put her down with a haughty word of authority or with joking mockery, as the humour might have taken him. He did not to-day. There had been wrong inflicted upon Margery; and it may be that he was feeling it. She had lost the little savings of years—the Brays had not allowed them to be very great; she had lost the money bequeathed to her by Mrs. Godolphin. All had been in the Bank, and all had gone. In addition to this, there were personal discomforts. Margery found the work of a common servant thrown upon her in her old age: an under girl, Sarah, was her only help now at the Bank, and Margery alone would follow their fallen fortunes to these lodgings.

“Do as you please,” was all George said. “But your mistress shall not meddle with it.”

“If my mistress chooses to set to work behind my back, I can’t stop it. She knows there’s no need to do it. If you’ll be so good, ma’am,” turning to her mistress, “as just let things alone and leave ’em to me, you’ll find they’ll be done. What’s a few clothes to pack?” indignantly repeated Margery. “And there’s nothing else that we may take. If I put up but a pair of sheets or a tin dish-cover, I should be called a thief, I suppose.”

There lay the great grievance of Margery’s present mood—that everything, except the “few clothes,” must be left behind. Margery, for all her crustiness and her outspoken temper, was a most faithfully attached servant, and it may be questioned if she did not feel the abandonment of their goods more keenly than did even Maria and George. The things were not hers: every article of her own, even to a silver cream-jug which had been the boasted treasure of her life, she had been allowed to retain; even to the little work-box of white satin-wood, with its landscape, the trees of which Miss Meta had been permitted to paint red, and the cottage blue. Not an article of Margery’s that she could remove but was sacred to her: but in her fidelity she did resent bitterly having to leave the property of her master and mistress, that it might all pass into the hands of strangers.

Maria, debarred from assisting, wandered in her restlessness through some of the more familiar rooms. It was well that she should pay them a farewell visit. From the bedroom where the packing was going on, to George’s dressing-room, thence to her own sitting-room, thence to the drawing-room, all on that floor. She lingered in all. A home sanctified by years of happiness cannot be quitted without regret, even when exchanged at pleasure for another; but to turn out of it in humiliation, in poverty, in hopelessness, is a trial of the sharpest and sorest kind. Apart from the pain, the feeling was a strange one. The objects crowding these rooms: the necessary furniture costly and substantial; the elegant ornaments of various shapes and sorts, the chaste works of art, not necessary, but so luxurious and charming, had hitherto been their own—hers in conjunction with her husband’s. They might have done what they pleased with them. Had she broken that Wedgwood vase, there was no one to call her to account for it: had she or George chosen to make a present of that rare basket in medallion, with its speaking likenesses of the beauties of the whilom gay French court, there was no one to say them nay; had they felt disposed to change that fine piano for another, the liberty to do so was theirs. They had been the owners of these surroundings, master and mistress of the house and its contents. And now? Not a single article belonged to them: they were but tenants on sufferance: the things remained, but their right in them had passed away. If she dropped and broke only that pretty trifle which her hand was touching now, she must answer for the mishap. The feeling, I say, was a strange one.

She walked through the rooms with dry eyes and a hot brow. Tears seemed long ago to have gone from her. It is true she had been surprised into a few that day, but the lapse was unusual. Why should she make this farewell visit to the rooms, she began asking herself. She needed it not to remember them. Visions of the past came crowding upon her memory; of this or the other happy day spent in them: of the gay meetings when they had received the world; of the sweet home hours when she had sat there alone with him of whom she had well-nigh made an idol—her husband. Mistaken idolatry, Mrs. George Godolphin! mistaken, useless, vain idolatry. Was there ever an earthly idol yet that did not mock its worshipper? I know of none. We make an idol of our child, and the time comes when it will turn and sting us: we make an idol of the god or goddess of our passionate love, and how does it end?

Maria sat down and leaned her head upon her hand, thinking more of the past than of the future. She was getting to have less hope in the future than was good for her. It is a bad sign when a sort of apathy with regard to it steals over us; a proof that the mind is not in the healthy state that it ought to be. A time of trial, of danger, was approaching for Maria, and she seemed to contemplate the possibility of her sinking under if with strange calmness. A few months ago, the bare glance at such a fear would have unhinged her: she would have clung to her husband and Meta, and sobbed out her passionate prayer to God in her dire distress, not to be taken from them. Things had changed: the world in which she had been so happy had lost its charm for her; the idol in whose arms she had sheltered herself turned out not to have been of pure gold: and Maria Godolphin began to realize the truth of the words of the wise king of Jerusalem—that the world and its dearest hopes are but vanity.

Meanwhile Mrs. Charlotte Pain, in her looped-up petticoats and nicely-fitting kid boots, was tripping jauntily through the streets of Prior’s Ash. Mrs. Pain had been somewhat vacillating in regard to her departure from that long-familiar town; she had reconsidered her determination of quitting it so abruptly; and on the day she went out of Lady Godolphin’s Folly, she entered on some stylish lodgings in the heart of Prior’s Ash. Only for a week or two; just to give her time to take proper leave of her friends she said: but the weeks had gone on and on, and Charlotte was still there.

Society had been glad to keep Charlotte. Society of course shuts its lofty ears to the ill-natured tales spread by low-bred people: that is, when it finds it convenient so to do. Society had been pleased to be deaf to any little obscure tit-bits of scandal which had made vulgarly free with Charlotte’s name: and as to the vague rumours connecting Mr. Verrall with George Godolphin’s ruin, no one knew whether that was not pure scandal too. But if not, why—Mrs. Pain could not be justly reflected on for the faults of Mr. Verrall. So Charlotte was as popular and dashing in her hired rooms as she had been at Lady Godolphin’s Folly, and she had remained in them until now.