“A peaceful ending! Yes. It could not be anything else with him.”
“No, no,” murmured George. “Not anything else with him.”
“May God in His mercy send us all as happy a one, when our time shall come!”
As the words left the Rector’s lips, the heavy bell boomed out again, giving notice to Prior’s Ash that the last rites were over: that the world had closed for ever on Thomas Godolphin.
“Oh, George! can’t you stay with me?”
The words broke from Maria with a wail of anguish as she rose to bid her husband good-bye. He was hastening away to catch the evening train. It seemed that she had not liked to prefer the request before, had put it off to the last moment. In point of fact, she had seen very little of George all day. After the funeral he had returned in the coach with Lord Averil to Ashlydyat, and only came home late in the afternoon.
Lord and Lady Averil, recalled so suddenly from their wedding tour, had reached Ashlydyat the previous night, and would not leave it again. Janet was to depart from it in a few days; Bessy would be on the morrow with Lady Godolphin.
George would not believe that his wife was in any sort of danger. He had been to Mr. Snow, begged him to take all possible care of her, and asked whether there were really any grounds for alarm. Mr. Snow answered him that he could not say for certain: she was, no doubt, very weak and poorly, but he saw no reason why she should not get out of it; and as for himself, he was taking of her all the care he could take. The reply satisfied George, and he became full of the projects and details of his departure, entering into them so warmly with her that Maria caught the spirit of enterprise, and was beguiled into a belief that she might yet go also.
He had come home from the funeral bearing a parcel wrapped in paper for Meta. It had been found amidst Thomas Godolphin’s things, directed to the child. George lifted Meta on to his knee—very grave, very subdued was his face to-day—and opened it. It proved to be a Bible, and on the fly-leaf in his own hand was written, “Uncle Thomas’s last and best gift to Meta,” and it was dated the day he died. Lower down were the words, “My ways are ways of pleasantness, and all my paths are peace.”
And the evening had gone on, and it grew time for George to leave. It was as he bent to kiss his wife that she had burst out with that wailing cry. “Oh, George! can’t you stay with me?”