Part 110 (1/2)

”It is another nail in your coffin,” growled Mr. Snow, as he took his leave.

He went straight to the Bank. He asked to see Mrs. George G.o.dolphin.

Maria, in her pretty morning dress of muslin, was seated with Meta on her knees. She had been reading the child a Bible story, and was now talking to her in a low voice, her own face, so gentle, so pure, and so sad, bent towards the little one's upturned to it.

”Well, young lady, and how are all the dolls?” was the surgeon's greeting. ”Will you send her away to play with them, Mrs. George?”

Meta ran off. She intended to come bustling down again with her arms full. Mr. Snow took his seat opposite Maria.

”Why does your husband not come back?” he abruptly asked.

The question seemed to turn Maria's heart to sickness. She opened her lips to answer, but stopped in hesitation. Mr. Snow resumed:

”His staying away is killing Thomas G.o.dolphin. I prescribe tranquillity for him; total rest: instead of which, he is obliged to come here day after day, and be in a continuous scene of worry. Your husband must return, Mrs. George G.o.dolphin.”

”Y--es,” she faintly answered, lacking the courage to say that considerations for his personal security might forbid it.

”Murder will not mend these unhappy matters, Mrs. George G.o.dolphin; nor would it be a desirable ending to them. And it will be nothing less than murder if he does not return, for Mr. G.o.dolphin will surely die.”

All Maria's pulses seemed to beat the quicker. ”Is Mr. G.o.dolphin worse?”

she asked.

”He is considerably worse. I have been called in to him this morning. My last orders to him were, not to attempt to come to the Bank. His answer was, that he must come: there was no help for it. I believe there is no help for it, George being away. You must get him home, Mrs. George.”

She looked sadly perplexed. Mr. Snow read it correctly.

”My dear, I think there would be no danger. Lord Averil is a personal friend of Mr. G.o.dolphin's. I think there's none for another reason: if the viscount's intention had been to stir unpleasantly in the affair, he would have stirred in it before this.”

”Yes--I have thought of that,” she answered.

”And now I must go again,” he said, rising. ”I wish to-day was twenty-four hours long, for the work I have to do in it; but I spared a few minutes to call in and tell you this. Get your husband here, for the sake of his good brother.”

The tears were in Maria's eyes. She could scarcely think of Thomas G.o.dolphin and his unmerited troubles without their rising. Mr. Snow saw the wet eyelashes, and laid his hand on the smoothly-parted hair.

”You have your share of sorrow just now, child,” he said; ”more than you ought to have. It is making you look like a ghost. Why does he leave you to battle it out alone?” added Mr. Snow, his anger mastering him, as he gazed at her pale face, her rising sobs. ”Prior's Ash is crying shame upon him. Are you and his brother of less account than he, in his own eyes, that he should abandon you to it?”

She strove to excuse her husband--he _was_ her husband, in spite of that cruel calumny divulged by Margery--but Mr. Snow would not listen. He was in a hurry, he said, and went bustling out of the door, almost upsetting Meta, with her dolls, who was bustling in.

Maria sent the child to the nursery again after Mr. Snow's departure, and stood, her head pressed against the frame of the open window, looking unconsciously on to the terrace, revolving the words recently spoken. ”It is killing Thomas G.o.dolphin. It will be nothing less than murder, if George does not return.”

Every fibre of her frame was thrilling to it in answer: every generous impulse of her heart was stirred to its depths. He _ought_ to be back.

She had long thought so. For her sake--but she was nothing; for Thomas G.o.dolphin's; for her husband's own reputation. Down deep in her heart she thrust that dreadful revelation of his falsity, and strove to bury it as an English wife and gentlewoman has no resource but to do. Ay! to bury it; and to keep it buried! though the concealment eat away her life--as that scarlet letter A, you have read of, ate into the bosom of another woman renowned in story. It seemed to Maria that the time was come when she must inquire a little into the actual state of affairs, instead of hiding her head and spending her days in the indulgence of her fear and grief. If the whole world spoke against him,--if the whole world had cause to speak,--she was his wife still, and his interests and welfare were hers. Were it possible that any effort she could make would bring him back, she must make it.

The words of Mr. Snow still rang in her ears. How was she to set about it? A few minutes given to reflection, her aching brow pressed to the cold window-frame, and she turned and rang the bell. When the servant appeared, she sent him into the Bank with a request that Mr. Hurde would come and speak with her for five minutes.

Mr. Hurde was not long in obeying the summons. He appeared with a pen behind his ear, and his spectacles pushed up on his brow.

It was not a pleasant task, and Maria had to swallow a good many lumps in her throat before she could make known precisely what she wanted.

”Would Mr. Hurde tell her the exact state of things? What there was, or was not, against her husband.”

Mr. Hurde gave no very satisfactory reply. He took off his gla.s.ses and wiped them. Maria had invited him to a chair, and sat near him, her elbow leaning on the table, and her face slightly bent. Mr. Hurde did not know what Mrs. George G.o.dolphin had or had not heard, or how far it would be expedient for him to speak. She guessed at his dilemma.