The Shadow of Ashlydyat. Henry Wood

he said. “We shall have it, ere long. See those clouds. They look small and inoffensive; but they mean mischief.”

      Charlotte Pain strolled away over the meadows towards the side path on which Margery was advancing. George Godolphin leaped from his seat, apparently with the intention of following her. But first of all he approached Maria, and bent to look at her progress.

      “Make the farm—as you call it—very conspicuous, Maria, if you are going to keep the sketch as a memento,” said he.

      “Is it not a farm?”

      “It was, once; until idleness suffered it to drop through.”

      “Why should I make it particularly conspicuous?” she continued.

      There was no reply, and she looked quickly up. A peculiar expression, one which she did not understand, sat upon his face.

      “If we had a mind to cheat the world, Maria, we might do so, by paying a visit to that house.”

      “In what way?”

      “I might take you in Maria Hastings, and bring you out Mrs. George Godolphin.”

      “What do you mean?” she inquired, completely puzzled.

      Mr. George laughed. “The man who lives there, Sandy Bray, has made more couples one than a rustic parson. Some people call him a public nuisance; others say he is a convenience, as it is three miles to the nearest kirk. He goes by the nickname of Minister Bray. Many a lad and lassie have stolen in there, under cover of the twilight, and in five minutes have come forth again, married, the world being none the wiser.”

      “Is it the place they call Gretna Green?” inquired Maria in much astonishment.

      “No, it is not Gretna Green. Only a place of the same description, and equally serviceable.”

      “But such marriages cannot be binding!”

      “Indeed they are. You have surely heard of the Scotch laws?”

      “I have been told that any one can marry people in Scotland. I have heard that the simple declaration of saying you take each other for man and wife constitutes a marriage.”

      “Yes; if said before a witness. Would you like to try it, Maria?”

      The colour mantled to her face as she bent over her drawing. She smiled at the joke, simply shaking her head by way of answer. And Mr. George Godolphin went off laughing, lighting another cigar as he talked. Overtaking Charlotte Pain just as Margery came up, he accosted the latter.

      “How grand you are, Margery! What’s agate?”

      “Grand!” returned Margery. “Who says it? What is there grand about me?”

      “That shawl displays as many colours as a kaleidoscope. We thought it was a rainbow coming along. Did it arrive in an express parcel last night from Paisley?”

      “It isn’t me that has money to spend upon parcels!” retorted Margery. “I have too many claims dragging my purse at both ends, for that.”

      A faithful servant was Margery, in spite of her hard features, and her stern speech. Scant of ceremony she had always been, and scant of ceremony she would remain. In fact, she was given to treating the younger branches of the Godolphins, Mr. George included, very much as she had treated them when they were children. They knew her sterling worth, and did not quarrel with her severe manners.

      “When you have half a dozen kin pulling at you, ‘I want this!’ from one, and ‘I want that!’ from another, and the same cry running through all, it isn’t much money you can keep to spend on shawls,” resumed Margery. “I was a fool to come here; that’s what I was! When the master said to me, ‘You had better come with us, Margery,’ I ought to have answered, ‘No, Sir George, I’m better away.’”

      “Well, what is the grievance, Margery?” George asked, while Charlotte Pain turned from one to the other in curiosity.

      “Why, they are on at me for money, that’s what it is, Mr. George. My lady sent for me this morning to say she intended to call and see Selina to-day. Of course I knew what it meant—that I was to go and give them a hint to have things tidy—for, if there’s one thing my lady won’t do, it is to put her foot into a pigsty. So I threw on my shawl, that you are laughing at, and went. There was nothing the matter with the place, for a wonder; but there was with them. Selina, she’s in bed, ill—and if she frets as she’s fretting now, she won’t get out of it in a hurry. Why did she marry the fellow? It does make me so vexed!”

      “What has she to fret about?” continued George.

      “What does she always have to fret about?” retorted Margery. “His laziness, and the children’s ill-doings. They go roaming about the country, here, there, and everywhere, after work, as they say, after places; and then they get into trouble and untold worry, and come home or send home for money to help them out of it! One of them, Nick—and a good name for him, say I!—must be off into Wales to those relations of Bray’s; and he has been at some mischief there, and is in prison for it, and is now committed for trial. And the old woman has walked all the way here to get funds from them, to pay for his defence. The news has half killed Selina.”

      “I said she was a Welshwoman,” interrupted Charlotte Pain. “She was smoking, was she not, Margery?”

      “She’s smoking a filthy short pipe,” wrathfully returned Margery. “But for that, I should have said she was a decent body—although it’s next to impossible to understand her tongue. She puts in ten words of Welsh to two of English. Of course they have no money to furnish for it; it wouldn’t be them, if they had; so they are wanting to get it out of me. Fifteen or twenty pounds! My word! They’d like me to end my days in the workhouse.”

      “You might turn a deaf ear, Margery,” said George.

      “I know I might; and many a hundred times have I vowed I would,” returned Margery. “But there’s she in her bed, poor thing, sobbing and moaning, and asking if Nick is to be quite abandoned. The worse a lad turns out, the more a mother clings to him—as it seems to me. Let me be here, or let me be at Ashlydyat, I have no peace for their wants. By word of mouth or by letter they are on at me for ever.”

      “If ‘Nick’ has a father, why can he not supply him?” asked Charlotte.

      “It’s a sensible question, Miss Pain,” said the woman. “Nick’s father is one of those stinging-nettles that only encumber the world, doing no good for themselves nor for anybody else. ‘Minister’ Bray, indeed! it ought to be something else, I think. Many a one has had cause to rue the hour that he ‘ministered’ for them!”

      “How does he minister?—what do you mean?” wondered Charlotte.

      “He marries folks; that’s his ne’er-do-well occupation, Miss Pain. Give him a five-shilling piece, and he’d marry a boy to his grandmother. I’m Scotch by birth—though it’s not much that I have lived in the land—but, I do say, that to suffer such laws to stand good, is a sin and a shame. Two foolish children—and many of those that go to him are no better—stand before him for a half-minute, and he pronounces them to be man and wife! And man and wife they are, and must remain so, till the grave takes one of them: whatever their repentance may be when they wake up from their folly. It’s just one of the blights upon bonny Scotland.”

      Margery, with no ceremonious leave-taking, turned at the last words, and continued her way. George Godolphin smiled at the blank expression displayed on Charlotte Pain’s countenance. Had Margery talked in Welsh, as did the old woman with the pipe, she could not have less understood her.

      “You require the key, Charlotte,” said he. “Shall I give it to you? Margery was my mother’s maid, as you may have heard. Her sister, Selina, was maid to the present Lady Godolphin: not of late years: long and long before she ever knew my father. It appears the girl, Selina, was a favourite with her mistress; but she left her, in spite of opposition from all quarters, to marry Mr. Sandy Bray. And has, there’s no doubt, been rueing it ever since. There are several children, of an age now to be out in the world; but you heard Margery’s account of them.