It was quite the same to Lord Averil, whether the young lady was bundled up as she was now, or decked out in a lace frock and crinoline. He led her down the path, talking pleasantly; but Meta’s breath was caught up incessantly with sobbing sighs. Her heart was full, imperfect as her idea of the calamity overshadowing her necessarily was.
Thus it happened that Miss Meta was not at hand when Maria asked for her. Whether it was from this, or from causes wholly unconnected with it, in a short time Maria grew restless: restless, as it seemed, both in body and mind, and it was deemed advisable that she should not sit up longer.
“Go for Meta while they get me into bed, George,” she said to him. “I want her to be near me.”
He went out at once. But he did not immediately turn to Ashlydyat: with hasty steps he took the road to Mr. Snow’s. There had been a yearning on George Godolphin’s mind, ever since he first saw his wife in the afternoon, to put the anxious question to one or both of the medical men: “Can nothing be done to prolong her life, even for the shortest space of time?”
Mr. Snow was out: the surgery boy did not know where: “Paying visits,” he supposed, and George turned his steps to Dr. Beale’s, who lived now in Prior’s Ash, though he used not to live in it. Dr. Beale’s house was ablaze with light, and Dr. Beale was at home, the servant said, but he had a dinner-party.
How the words seemed to grate on his ear! A dinner-party!—gaiety, lights, noise, mirth, eating and drinking, when his wife was dying! But the next moment reflection came to him: the approaching death of a patient is not wont to cast its influence on a physician’s private life.
He demanded to see Dr. Beale in spite of the dinner-party. George Godolphin forgot recent occurrences, exacting still the deference paid to him all his life, when Prior’s Ash had bowed down to the Godolphins. He was shown into a room, and Dr. Beale came out to him.
But the doctor, though he would willingly have smoothed matters to him, could not give him hope. George asked for the truth, and he had it—that his wife’s life now might be counted by hours. He went out and proceeded towards Ashlydyat, taking the near way down Crosse Street, by the Bank—the Bank that once was: it would lead him through the dull Ash-tree Walk with its ghostly story; but what cared George Godolphin?
Did a remembrance of the past come over him as he glanced up at the Bank’s well-known windows?—a remembrance that pricked him with its sharp sting? He need never have left that house; but for his own recklessness, folly, wickedness—call it what you will—he might have been in it still, one of the honoured Godolphins, heir to Ashlydyat, his wife well and happy by his side. Now!—he went striding on with wide steps, and he took off his hat and raised his burning brow to the keen night air. You may leave the house behind you, George Godolphin, and so put it out of your sight, but you cannot blot out your memory.
Grace had remained with Maria. She was in bed now, but the restlessness seemed to continue. “I want Meta; bring Meta.”