Part 115 (2/2)
George received a gentle hint that those articles, however ornamental to himself, must be confiscated to the bankruptcy; and he resigned them with a good grace. The news of this little incident travelled abroad, as an interesting anecdote connected with the proceedings, and the next time George saw Charlotte Pain, she told him he was a fool to walk into the camp of the Philistines with pretty things about him. But George was not wilfully dishonest (if you can by any possibility understand that a.s.sertion, after what you know of his past doings), and he replied to Charlotte that it was only right the creditors should make spoil of his watch, and anything else he possessed. The truth, were it defined, being, that George was only dishonest when driven so to be. He had made free with the bonds of Lord Averil, but he could not be guilty of the meanness of concealing his personal trinkets.
Three or four times now had George been at Prior's Ash. People wondered why he did not remain; what it was that took him again and again to London. The very instant he found that he could be dispensed with at Prior's Ash, away he flew; not to return to it again until imperatively demanded. The plain fact was that Mr. George did _not_ like to face Prior's Ash. For all the easy self-possession, the gay good-humour he displayed to its inhabitants, the place had become utterly distasteful to him, almost unbearable; he shunned it and hated it as a pious Roman Catholic hates and would shun purgatory. For that reason, and for no other, George did his best to escape from it.
He had seen Lord Averil. And his fair face had betrayed its shame as he said a few words of apology for what he had done--of thanks for the clemency shown him--of promises for the future. ”If I live, I'll make it good to you,” he murmured. ”I did not intend to _steal_ them, Averil; I did not, on my solemn word of honour. I thought I should have replaced them before anything could be known. Your asking for them immediately--that you should do so seemed a very fatality--upset everything. But for that, I might have weathered it all, and the house would not have gone. It was no light pressure that forced me to touch them--Heaven alone knows the need and the temptation.”
And the meeting between the brothers? No eye saw it; no ear heard it.
Good Thomas G.o.dolphin was dying from the blow, dying before his time; but not a word of reproach was given to George. How George defended himself--or whether he attempted to defend himself, or whether he let it wholly alone--the outside world never knew.
Lady G.o.dolphin's Folly was no longer in the occupancy of the Verralls or of Mrs. Pain: Lady G.o.dolphin had returned to it. Not a day aged; not a day altered. Time flitted lightly over Lady G.o.dolphin. Her bloom-tinted complexion was delicately fresh as ever; her dress was as becoming, her flaxen locks were as youthful. She came with her servants and her carriages, and she took up her abode at the Folly, in all the splendour of the old days. Her income was large, and the misfortunes which had recently fallen on the family did not affect it. Lady G.o.dolphin washed her hands of these misfortunes. She washed her hands of George. She told the world that she did so. She spoke of them openly to the public in general, to her acquaintances in particular, in a slighting, contemptuous sort of manner, as we are all apt to speak of the ill-doings of other people. They don't concern us, and it's rather a condescension on our part to blame them at all.--This was no concern of Lady G.o.dolphin's. She told every one it was not so. George's disgrace did not reflect itself upon the family, and of him she--washed her hands. No: Lady G.o.dolphin could not see that this break-up caused by George should be any reason whatever why she or the Miss G.o.dolphins should hide their heads and go mourning in sack-cloth and ashes. Many of her old acquaintances in the county agreed with Lady G.o.dolphin in her view of things, and helped by their visits to make the Folly gay again.
To wash her hands of Mr. George, was, equitably speaking, no more than that gentleman deserved: but Lady G.o.dolphin also washed her hands of Maria. On her return to Prior's Ash she had felt inclined to espouse Maria's part; to sympathize with and pity her; and she drove down in state one day, and left her carriage with its powdered coachman and footman to pace to and fro in Crosse Street before the Bank, while she went in. She openly avowed to Maria that she considered herself in a remote degree the cause which had led to her union with George G.o.dolphin: she supposed that it was her having had Maria so much at the Folly, and afterwards on the visit at Broomhead, which had led to the attachment. As a matter of course she regretted this, and wished there had been no marriage, now that George had turned out so gracelessly. If she could do anything to repair it she would: and, as a first step, she offered the Folly as a present asylum to Maria. She would be safe there from worry, and--from George.
Maria scarcely at first understood her. And when she did so, her only answer was to thank Lady G.o.dolphin, and to stand out, in her quiet, gentle manner, but untiringly and firmly, for her husband. Not a shade of blame would she acknowledge to be due to him; not a reverence would she render him the less: her place was with him, she said, though the whole world turned against him. It vexed Lady G.o.dolphin.
”Do you know,” she asked, ”that you must choose between your husband and the world?”
”In what way?” replied Maria.
”In what way! When a man acts as George G.o.dolphin has acted, he places a barrier between himself and society. But there's no necessity for the barrier to extend to you, Maria. If you will come to my house for a while, you will find this to be the case--it will not extend to you.”
”You are very kind, Lady G.o.dolphin. My husband is more to me than the world.”
”Do you approve of what he has done?”
”No,” replied Maria. ”But it is not my place to show that I blame him.”
”I think it is,” said Lady G.o.dolphin in the hard tone she used when her opinion was questioned.
Maria was silent. She never could contend with any one.
”Then you prefer to hold out against the world,” resumed Lady G.o.dolphin; ”to put yourself beyond its pale! It is a bold step, Maria.”
”What can I do?” was Maria's pleading answer. ”If the world throws me over because I will not turn against my husband, I cannot help it. I married him for better or for worse, Lady G.o.dolphin.”
”The fact is, Maria,” retorted my lady sharply, ”that you have loved George G.o.dolphin in a ridiculous degree.”
”Perhaps I have,” was Maria's subdued answer, the colour dyeing her face with various reminiscences. ”But surely there was no sin in it, Lady G.o.dolphin: he is my husband.”
”And you cling to him still?”
”Oh yes.”
Lady G.o.dolphin rose. She shrugged her shoulders as she drew her white lace shawl over them, she glanced at her coquettish blue bonnet in the gla.s.s as she pa.s.sed it, at her blush-rose cheeks. ”You have chosen your husband, Maria, in preference to me; in preference to the world; and from this moment I wash my hands of you, as I have already done of him.”
It was all the farewell she took: and she went out to her carriage, thinking what a blind, obstinate, hardened woman was Maria G.o.dolphin.
She saw not what it had cost that ”hardened” woman to bear up before her: that her heart was nigh unto breaking; that the sorrow laid upon her was greater than she well knew how to battle with.
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