“Who looks ill?” was the ungracious demand.
Mrs. Bond nodded towards the parlour door. “The missis. Her face looks more as if it had death writ in it, than voyage-going.”
“Perhaps you’ll walk on your way, Dame Bond, and keep your opinions till they’re asked for,” was the tart reply of Margery.
But, in point of fact, the words had darted into the faithful servant’s heart, piercing it as a poisoned arrow. It seemed so great a confirmation of her own fears.
CHAPTER V.
COMMOTION AT ASHLYDYAT.
A few more days went on, and they wrought a further change in Mrs. George Godolphin. She grew weaker and weaker: she grew—it was apparent now to Mr Snow as it was to Margery—nearer and nearer to that vault in the churchyard of All Souls’. There could no longer be any indecision or uncertainty as to her taking the voyage; the probabilities were, that before the ship was ready to sail, all sailing in this world for Maria would be over. And rumours, faint, doubtful, very much discredited rumours of this state of things, began to circulate in Prior’s Ash.
Discredited because people were so unprepared for it. Mrs. George Godolphin had been delicate since the birth of her baby, as was known to every one, but not a soul, relatives, friends, or strangers, had felt a suspicion of danger. On the contrary, it was supposed that she was about to depart on that Indian voyage: and ill-natured spirits tossed their heads and said it was fine to be Mrs. George Godolphin, to be set up again and go out to lead a grand life in India, after ruining half Prior’s Ash. How she was misjudged! how many more unhappy wives have been, and will be again, misjudged by the world!
One dreary afternoon, as dusk was coming on, Margery, not stopping, or perhaps not caring, to put anything upon herself, but having hastily wrapped up Miss Meta, went quickly down the garden path, leading that excitable and chattering demoiselle by the hand. Curious news had reached the ears of Margery. Their landlady’s son had come in, describing the town as being in strange commotion, in consequence of something which had happened at Ashlydyat. Rumour set it down as nothing less than murder; and, according to the boy’s account, all Prior’s Ash was flocking up to the place to see and to hear.
Margery turned wrathful at the news. Murder at Ashlydyat! The young gentleman was too big to be boxed or shaken for saying it, but he persisted in his story, and Margery in her curiosity went out to see with her own eyes. “The people are running past the top of this road in crowds,” he said to her.
For some days past, workmen had been employed digging up the Dark Plain by the orders of Lord Averil. As he had told Cecil weeks before, his intention was to completely renew it; to do away entirely with its past character and send its superstition to the winds. The archway was being taken down, the gorse-bushes were being uprooted, the whole surface, in fact, was being dug up. He intended to build an extensive summer-house where the archway had been, and to make the plain a flower-garden, a playground for children when they should be born to Ashlydyat: and it appeared that in digging that afternoon under the archway, the men had come upon a human skeleton, or rather upon the bones of what had once been a skeleton. This was the whole foundation for the rumour and the “murder.”