The Shadow of Ashlydyat. Henry Wood

heard a voice from heaven, saying unto me, Write, From henceforth blessed are the dead which die in the Lord: even so saith the Spirit; for they rest from their labours.”

      And so went on the service to the end.

      The beadle, with much bustle and a liberal use of his staff, scattered and dispersed the mob from the gates, to clear a passage. Two mourning coaches were in waiting. Thomas Godolphin came forth, leaning on his brother’s arm, both of them bare-headed still. They entered one; Lord Macdoune stepped into the other.

      “Thomas!” cried George Godolphin, leaning forward and seizing his brother’s hand impulsively, as the mourning-coach paced slowly on: “I should have been here in good time, but for a delay in the train.”

      “How did you hear of it? I did not know where to write to you,” was Thomas’s reply, spoken calmly.

      “I heard of it at Broomhead. I went back there, and then I came off at once. Thomas, could they not save her?”

      A slight negative movement was all Thomas Godolphin’s answer. “How did you find your father, George?”

      “Breaking. Breaking fast. Thomas, all his talk is, that he must come home to die.”

      “To Ashlydyat. I know. How is he to come to it? The Folly is not Ashlydyat. He has desired me to see that he is at Prior’s Ash before Christmas, and I shall do so.”

      George looked surprised. “Desired you to see that he is?”

      “If he is not back speedily, I am to go to Broomhead.”

      “Oh, I see. That your authority, upholding his, may be pitted against my lady’s. Take care, Thomas: she may prove stronger than both of you put together.”

      “I think not,” replied Thomas quietly; and he placed his elbow on the window frame, and bent his face upon his hand, as if wishing for silence.

      Meanwhile the Reverend Mr. Hastings had passed through the private gate to his own garden; and half a dozen men were shovelling earth upon the coffin, sending it with a rattle upon the bright plate, which told who was mouldering within:

“Ethel Grame. Aged twenty years.”

      CHAPTER XV.

      A MIDNIGHT WALK

      Thomas Godolphin sat in his place at the bank, opening the morning letters. It was some little time after the interment of Ethel Grame, and the second week in December was already on the wane. In two days more it was his intention to start for Broomhead: for no tidings arrived of the return of Sir George. The very last of the letters he came upon, was one bearing the Scotch post-mark. A poor little note with a scrawled address: no wonder the sorting-clerk had placed it last of all! It looked singularly obscure, in comparison with those large blue letters and their business hands.

      Thomas Godolphin knew the writing. It was Margery’s. And we may as well read the contents with him, verbatim:

      “Mr. Thomas Sir,

      “I imbrace this favurible oportunaty of adresing you for I considur it my duty to take up my pen and inform you about my master, He’s not long for this world, Mr. Thomas I know it by good tokens which I don’t write not being an easy writer but they are none the less true, The master’s fretting his life away because he is not at home and she is keeping him because she’s timorus of the fever. But you saw how it was sir when you were here and it’s the same story still. There’d have been a fight for it with my lady but if I’d been you Mr. Thomas I’d have took him also when me and the young ladies went with you to Prior’s Ash. When I got back here, sir I saw an awful change in him and Mr. George he saw it but my lady didn’t. I pen these lines sir to say you had better come off at once and not wait for it to be nearer Christmas, The poor master is always saying Thomas is coming for me, Thomas is coming for me but I’d not answer for it now that he will ever get back alive, Sir it was the worst day’s work he ever did to go away at all from Ashlydyat if my lady was dying to live at the new Folly place she might have gone to it but not him, When we do a foolish wrong thing we don’t think of the consekences at the time at least not much of em but we think all the more after and fret our hearts out with blame and it have been slowly killing him ever since, I am vexed to disturb you Mr. Thomas with this epistle for I know you must be in enough grief of your own just now.

“Your humble servant,          “Margery.”

      Thomas Godolphin read it over twice, and then crossed to the opposite side of the private room, where sat a gentleman at another desk. A tall, portly man, with a fresh colour, large, keen dark eyes, and hair white as snow. It was Mr. Crosse.

      “Anything particular, Thomas?” he asked, as Thomas Godolphin put the letter into his hand.

      “Not in business. Read it, will you?”

      Mr. Crosse read the letter through. “Is it my advice you wish for?” asked he, when he came to the last word.

      “Not exactly,” replied Thomas Godolphin. “I have made up my mind, I believe.”

      “To go immediately?”

      “Yes. Within an hour.”

      “Right. It is what I should have recommended you to do, had you been undecided. When it comes to letter-writing with Margery, the thing is serious, rely upon it.”

      And within the hour Thomas Godolphin had started.

      The railway station nearest to Broomhead, was three miles distant from it, by the road: but there was a shorter cut across some fields—bearing past the house of that Mr. Sandy Bray, if you are curious to know—which reduced it to less than two. It was one of those rural stations so little frequented that travellers are tempted to ask why they were built at all. Such a thing as a fly, or an omnibus, had never yet been seen at it, at midday: you may therefore judge what chance Thomas Godolphin had of either, getting there, as he did, at midnight. He was the only passenger to alight, and the train went puffing on. The man, who lived in the one-roomed cottage close by, and was called the station-master, appeared to be the only official to receive him. A man who had been drafted thither from one of the English lines.

      “For Broomhead, sir?” he questioned, recognizing the traveller.

      “Yes. Do you happen to know how Sir George Godolphin is?”

      “He looks rare and poorly, sir. He was past here in his carriage to-day. Huddled up in a corner of it, as if he was cold; or else hadn’t the strength to sit up. Her ladyship was inside with him.”

      “There’s no porter about, I suppose?”

      “He has been gone this two hours, sir. I’d offer to carry your luggage myself, but I shall have the up-express by in half an hour. I shut up for the night then.”

      “I would not trouble you for so trifling a matter, at this hour, were you at liberty,” replied Thomas Godolphin.

      He took up his portmanteau himself: a thing not much larger than what the French would call a petit sac-de-nuit, containing little besides a clean shirt and his shaving-tackle: and started, bending his steps not along the road, but across it to the stile.

      “I wouldn’t take the field way to-night, sir, if I were you,” said the man from the station door. “The road is safest.”

      “Why is it?” asked Thomas Godolphin.

      “There’s a nasty bit by the field way, a quarter of a mile before you come to Bray’s. Anybody, not knowing it well, might take the wrong turning, and go, head first, into the dam.”

      “But I do know it well,” said Thomas Godolphin. “And the night is light enough to distinguish the turnings.”

      The station-master looked up at the skies—figuratively speaking, for he could see nothing but fog. A light, hazy mist; not a dark one; which seemed likely to turn to rain. He said no more, except a “Good night, sir:” and Thomas Godolphin walked on, hesitating for a moment between the two roads, and then turning decisively to that of the fields, as if some hidden impulse impelled him. Perhaps it did so.

      It