There was no opportunity for further colloquy. Bessy came in, carrying the laughing truant; and Margery, with a tart word to the young lady, attended the Miss G.o.dolphins down the garden path to throw open the gate for them. In her poor way, in her solitary self, Margery strove to make up for the state they had been accustomed to, when the ladies called from Ashlydyat.

Maria, lying motionless on the sofa, where on being left alone she had thrown herself in weariness, heard Margery's gratuitous remark about Mrs. Pain, through the unlatched door, and a contraction arose to her brow. In her hand lay the four sovereigns left there by Janet. She looked at them musingly, and then murmured, "I can afford to give her half." When Margery returned indoors, she called her in, and sent her for Mrs. Bond.

A little while, and Mrs. Bond, on her meekest and civilest behaviour, stood before Maria, her thin shawl and wretched old gown drawn tightly round her, to protect her from the winter's cold. Maria put two sovereigns into her hand.

"It is the first instalment of my debt to you, Mrs. Bond. If I live, I will pay it you all, but it will be by degrees. And perhaps that is the best way that you could receive it. I wish I could have given you some before."

Mrs. Bond burst into tears. Not the crocodile's tears that she was somewhat in the habit of favouring the world with when not quite herself, but real, genuine tears of grat.i.tude. She had given up all hope of the ten pounds, did not expect to see a penny of it; and the joy overcame her. Her conscience p.r.i.c.ked her a little also, for she remembered sundry hard words she had at one time liberally regaled her neighbours' ears with, touching Mrs. George G.o.dolphin. In her grateful repentance she could have knelt at Maria's feet: hunger and other ills of poverty had tended to subdue her spirit.

"May the good Lord bless and repay you, ma'am!--and send you a safe journey to the far-off place where I hear you be going!"

"Yes, I shall go, if I am well enough," replied Maria. "It is from thence that I shall send you home some money from time to time if I can do so. Have you been well, lately?"

"As well as pretty nigh clamming will let me be, ma'am. Things has gone hard with me: many a day I've not had as much as a crust to eat. But this 'll set me up again, and, ma'am, I'll never cease to pray for you."

"Don't spend it in--in--you know, Mrs. Bond," Maria ventured timidly to advise, in a lowered voice.

Mrs. Bond shook her head and turned up her eyes by way of expressing a very powerful negative. Probably she did not feel altogether comfortable on the subject, for she hastened to quit it.

"Have you heard the news about old Jekyl, ma'am?"

"No. What news?"

"He's dead. He went off at one o'clock this a'ternoon. He fretted continual after his money, folks says, and it wore him to a skeleton. He couldn't abear to be living upon his sons; and Jonathan don't earn enough for himself now, and the old 'un felt it."

Some one else was feeling it. Fretting continually after his money!--that money which might never have been placed in the Bank but for her! Miss Meta came flying in, went straight up to the visitor, and leaned her pretty arm upon the snuffy black gown.

"When shall I come and see the parrot?"

"The parrot! Lawks bless the child! I haven't got the parrot now, I haven't had him this many a day. I couldn't let _him_ clam," she continued, turning to Maria. "I was clamming myself, ma'am, and I sold him, cage and all, just as he stood."

"Where is he?" asked Meta, looking disappointed.

"He's where he went," lucidly explained Mrs. Bond. "It were the lady up at t'other end o' the town, beyond the parson's, what bought him, ma'am.

Leastways her daughter did: sister to her what was once to have married Mr. G.o.dolphin. It's a white house."

"Lady Sarah Grame's," said Maria. "Did she buy the parrot?"

"Miss did: that cross-looking daughter of her'n. She see him as she was going by my door one day, ma'am, and she stopped and looked at him, and asked me what I'd sell him for. Well, on the spur o' the moment I said five shilling; for I'd not a halfpenny in the place to buy him food, and for days and days he had had only what the neighbours brought him; but it warn't half his worth. And miss was all wild to buy him, but her mother wasn't. She didn't want screeching birds in her house, she said, and they had a desperate quarrel in my kitchen before they went away.

Didn't she call her mother names! She's a vixen that daughter, if ever there were one. But she got her will, for an hour or two after that, a young woman come down for the parrot with the five shilling in her hand.

And there's where he is."

"I shall have twenty parrots when I go to India," struck in Meta.

"What a sight of food they'll eat!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mrs. Bond. "That there one o' mine eats his fill now. I made bold one day to go up and ask after him, and the two young women in the kitchen took me to the room to see him, the ladies being out, and he had his tin stuffed full o' seed.

He knowed me again, he did, and screeched out to be heerd a mile off.

The young women said that what with his screeching and the two ladies quarrelling, the house weren't bearable sometimes."

Meta's large eyes were open in wondering speculation. "Why do they quarrel?" she asked.

"'Cause it's their natur'," returned Mrs. Bond. "The one what had the sweet natur' was took, and the two fretful ones was left. Them young women said that miss a'most drove my lady mad with her temper, and they expect nothing less but there'd be blows some day. A fine disgraceful thing to say of born ladies, ain't it, ma'am?"

Maria, in her delicacy of feeling, would not endorse the remark of Dame Bond. But the state of things at Lady Sarah Grame's was perfectly well known at Prior's Ash. Sarah Anne Grame had become her mother's bane, as Mr. Snow had once said she would be. A very terrible bane; to herself, to her mother, to all about her. And the "screeching" parrot had only added a little more noise to an already too noisy house.

Mrs. Bond curtsied herself out. She met Margery in the pa.s.sage, and stopped to whisper.

"I say! how ill she do look!"

"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 G.o.dolphin. 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 G.o.dolphin 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 G.o.dolphin, 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 superst.i.tion 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."

As Margery stood, about to turn home again, vexed for having been brought out in the cold for nothing more, and intending to give a few complimentary thanks for it to the young man who had been the means of sending her, she was accosted by Mr. Crosse, who had latterly been laid up in his house with gout. Not the slightest notice had he taken of George G.o.dolphin and his wife since his return home, though he had been often with Thomas.

"How d'ye do, Margery?" he said, taking up Meta at the same time to kiss her. "Are you going to Ashlydyat with the rest?"

"Not I, the simpletons!" was Margery's free rejoinder. "There's my poor mistress alone in the house."

"Is she ill?" asked Mr. Crosse.

"Ill!" returned Margery, not at all pleased at the question. "Yes, sir, she is ill. I thought everybody knew that."

"When does she start for India?"

"She don't start at all. She'll be starting soon for a place a little bit nearer. Here! you run on and open the gate," added Margery, whisking Meta from Mr. Crosse's hand and sending her down the lane out of hearing. "She'll soon be where Mr. Thomas G.o.dolphin is, sir, instead of being marched off in a ship to India," continued the woman, turning to Mr. Crosse confidentially.