The Shadow of Ashlydyat

"Was said to take it," he interposed, in a tone of quiet reproof; "that would be the better phrase. And, in speaking of the Shadow being dreaded by the G.o.dolphins, you allude, I presume, to the G.o.dolphins of the past ages. I know of none in the present who dread it: except my superst.i.tious sister, Janet."

"How touchy you are upon the point!" she cried, with a light laugh. "Do you know, George G.o.dolphin, that that very touchiness betrays the fact that you, for one, are not exempt from the dread. And," she added, changing her tone again to one of serious sympathy, "did not the dread help to kill Mrs. G.o.dolphin?"

"No," he gravely answered. "If you give ear to all the stories that the old wives of the neighbourhood love to indulge in, you will collect a valuable stock of fable-lore."

"Let it pa.s.s. If I repeated the fable, it was because I had heard it.

But now you will understand why I felt vexed last night when you did not come. It was not for your sweet company I was pining, as your vanity has been a.s.suming, but that I wanted you to see the Shadow.--How that girl is fixing her eyes upon us!"

George G.o.dolphin turned at the last sentence, which was uttered abruptly. An open barouche had drawn up, and its occupants, two ladies, were both looking towards them. The one was a young girl with a pale gentle face and dark eyes, as remarkable for their refined sweetness, as Miss Pain's were for their brilliancy. The other was a little lady of middle age, dressed youthfully, and whose naturally fair complexion was so excessively soft and clear, as to give a suspicion that nature had less hand in it than art. It was Lady G.o.dolphin. She held her eye-gla.s.s to her eye, and turned it on the crowd.

"Maria, whatever is that on horseback?" she asked. "It looks green."

"It is Charlotte Pain in a bright-green riding-habit," was the young lady's answer.

"A bright-green riding-habit! And her head seems to glitter! Has she anything in her cap?"

"It appears to be a gold feather."

"She must look beautiful! Very handsome, does she not?"

"For those who admire her style--very," replied Maria Hastings.

Which was certainly not the style of Maria Hastings. Quiet, retiring, gentle, she could only wonder at those who dressed in bright-coloured habits with gold b.u.t.tons and feathers, and followed the hounds over gates and ditches. Miss Hastings wore a pretty white silk bonnet, and grey cashmere mantle. Nothing could be plainer; but then, she was a clergyman's daughter.

"It is on these occasions that I regret my deficient sight," said Lady G.o.dolphin. "Who is that, in scarlet, talking to her? It resembles the figure of George G.o.dolphin."

"It is he," said Maria. "He is coming towards us."

He was piloting his horse through the throng, returning greetings from every one. A universal favourite was George G.o.dolphin. Charlotte Pain's fine eyes were following him with somewhat dimmed brilliancy: he was not so entirely hers as she could wish to see him.

"How are you this morning, Lady G.o.dolphin?" But it was on the hand of Maria Hastings that his own lingered; and her cheeks took the hue of Charlotte Pain's, as he bent low to whisper words that were all too dear.

"George, do you know that your father is here?" said Lady G.o.dolphin.

George, in his surprise, drew himself upright on his horse. "My father here! Is he, indeed?"

"Yes; and on horseback. Very unwise of him; but he would not be persuaded out of it. It was a sudden resolution that he appeared to take. I suppose the beauty of the morning tempted him. Miss Maria Hastings, what nonsense has George been saying to you? Your face is as red as his coat."

"That is what I was saying to her," laughed George G.o.dolphin. "Asking her where her cheeks had borrowed their roses from."

A parting of the crowd brought Sir George G.o.dolphin within view, and the family drew together in a group. Up went Lady G.o.dolphin's gla.s.s again.

"Is that Bessy? My dear, with whom did you come?"

"I came by myself, Lady G.o.dolphin. I walked."

"Oh dear!" uttered Lady G.o.dolphin. "You do do the wildest things, Bessy!

And Sir George allows you to do them!"

"Sir George does not," spoke the knight. "Sir George has already desired her to take her place in the carriage. Open the door, James."

Bessy laughed as she stepped into it. She cheerfully obeyed her father; but anything like ceremony, or, as the world may call it, etiquette, she waged war with.

"I expected to meet your sisters here, Bessy," said Lady G.o.dolphin. "I want you all to dine with me to-day. We must celebrate the first reappearance of your father. You will bear the invitation to them."

"Certainly," said Bessy. "We shall be happy to come. I know Janet has no engagement."

"An early dinner, mind: five o'clock. Sir George cannot wait."

"To dine at supper-time," chimed in unfas.h.i.+onable Bessy. "George, do you hear? Lady G.o.dolphin's at five."

A movement; a rush; a whirl. The hounds were preparing to throw off, and the field was gathering. George G.o.dolphin hastily left the side of Miss Hastings, though he found time for a stolen whisper.

"Fare you well, my dearest."

And when she next saw him, after the noise and confusion had cleared away, he was galloping in the wake of the baying pack, side by side with Charlotte Pain.

CHAPTER II.

LADY G.o.dOLPHIN'S FOLLY.

Prior's Ash was not a large town, though of some importance in county estimation. In the days of the monks, when all good people were Roman Catholics, or professed to be, it had been but a handful of houses, which various necessities had caused to spring up round the priory: a flouris.h.i.+ng and crowded establishment of religious men then; a place marked but by a few ruins now. In process of time the handful of houses had increased to several handfuls, the handfuls to a village, and the village to a borough town; still retaining the name bestowed on it by the monks--"Prior's Ash."

In the heart

The G.o.dolphins could trace back to the ages of the monks. But of no very high ancestry boasted they; no t.i.tles, places, or honours; they ranked among the landed gentry as owners of Ashlydyat, and that was all. It was quite enough for them: to be lords of Ashlydyat was an honour they would not have bartered for a dukedom. They held by Ashlydyat. It was their pride, their stronghold, their boast. Had feudal times been in fas.h.i.+on now, they would have dug a moat around it, and fenced it in with fortifications, and called it their castle. Why did they so love it? It was but a poor place at best; nothing to look at; and, in the matter of s.p.a.ce inside, was somewhat straitened. Oak-panelled rooms, dark as mahogany and garnished with cross beams, low ceilings, and mullioned windows, are not the most consonant to modern taste. People thought that the G.o.dolphins loved it from its a.s.sociations and traditions; from the very fact that certain superst.i.tions attached to it. Foolish superst.i.tions, you will be inclined to call them, as contrasted with the enlightenment of these matter-of-fact days--I had almost said these days of materialism.

Ashlydyat was not entailed. There was a clause in the old deeds of tenure which prevented it. A wicked G.o.dolphin (by which complimentary appellation his descendants distinguished him) had cut off the entail, and gambled the estate away; and though the G.o.dolphins recovered it again in the course of one or two lives, the entail was not renewed. It was now bequeathed from father to son, and was always the residence of the reigning G.o.dolphin. Thomas G.o.dolphin knew that it would become his on the death of his father, as surely as if he were the heir by entail.

The late Mr. G.o.dolphin, Sir George's father, had lived and died in it.

Sir George succeeded, and then _he_ lived in it--with his wife and children. But he was not Sir George then: therefore, for a few minutes, while speaking of this part of his life; we will call him what he was--Mr. G.o.dolphin. A pensive, thoughtful woman was Mrs. G.o.dolphin, never too strong in health. She was Scotch by birth. Of her children, Thomas and Janet most resembled her; Bessy was like no one but herself: George and Cecilia inherited the beauty of their father. There was considerable difference in the ages of the children, for they had numbered thirteen. Thomas was the eldest, Cecilia the youngest; Janet, Bessy, and George were between them; and the rest, who had also been between them, had died, most of them in infancy. But, a moment yet, to give a word to the description of Ashlydyat, before speaking of the death of Mrs. G.o.dolphin.

Pa.s.sing out of Prior's Ash towards the west, a turning to the left of the high-road took you to Ashlydyat. Built of greystone, and lying somewhat in a hollow, it wore altogether a gloomy appearance. And it was intensely ugly. A low building of two storeys, irregularly built, with gables and nooks and ins-and-outs of corners, and a square turret in the middle, which was good for nothing but the birds to build on. It wore a time-honoured look, though, with all its ugliness, and the moss grew, green and picturesque, on its walls. Perhaps on the principle, or, let us say, by the subtle instinct of nature, that a mother loves a deformed child with a deeper affection than she feels for her other children, who are fair and sound of limb, did the G.o.dolphins feel pride in their inheritance because it was ugly. But the grounds around it were beautiful, and the landscape, so much of it as could be seen from that unelevated spot, was most grand to look upon. A full view might be obtained from the turret, though it was somewhat of a mount to get to it. Dark groves, and bright undulating lawns, shady spots where the water rippled, pleasant to bask in on a summer's day, sunny parterres of gay flowers scenting the air; charming, indeed, were the environs of Ashlydyat. All, except one spot: and that had charms also for some minds--sombre ones.

In one part of the grounds there grew a great quant.i.ty of ash-trees--and it was supposed, though not known, that these trees may originally have suggested the name, Ashlydyat: as they most certainly had that of Prior's Ash, given to the village by the monks. A few people wrote it in accordance with its p.r.o.nunciation, Ash-_lid_-yat, but the old way of spelling it was retained by the family. As the village had swollen into a town, the ash-trees, growing there, were cleared away as necessity required; but the town was surrounded with them still.

Opposite to the ash-trees on the estate of Ashlydyat there extended a waste plain, totally out of keeping with the high cultivation around. It looked like a piece of rude common. Bushes of furze, broom, and other stunted shrubs grew upon it, none of them rising above the height of a two-year-old child. The description given by Charlotte Pain to George G.o.dolphin was not an inapt one--that the place, with these stunted bushes on it, looked in the moonlight not unlike a graveyard. At the extremity, opposite to the ash-trees, there arose a high archway, a bridge built of greystone. It appeared to have formed part of an ancient fortification, but there was no trace of water having run beneath it.

Beyond the archway was a low round building, looking like an isolated windmill without sails. It was built of greystone also, and was called the belfry: though there was as little sign of bells ever having been in it, as there was of water beneath the bridge. The archway had been kept from decay; the belfry had not, but was open in places to the heavens.

Strange to say, the appellation of this waste piece of land, with its wild bushes, was the "Dark Plain." Why? The plain was not dark: it was not shaded: it stood out, broad and open, in the full glare of sunlight.

That certain dark tales had been handed down with the appellation, is true: and these may have given rise to the name. Immediately before the archway, for some considerable, s.p.a.ce, the ground was entirely bare. Not a blade of gra.s.s, not a shrub grew on it. Or, as the story went, _would_ grow. It was on this spot that the appearance, the Shadow, as mentioned by Charlotte Pain, would be sometimes seen. Whence the Shadow came, whether it was ghostly or earthly, whether those learned in science and philosophy could account for it by Nature's laws, whether it was cast by any gaseous vapour arising in the moonbeams, I am unable to say. If you ask me to explain it, I cannot. If you ask, why then do I write about it, I can only answer, because I have seen it. I have seen it with my own unprejudiced eyes; I have sat and watched it, in its strange stillness; I have looked about and around it, low down, high up, for some substance, ever so infinitesimal, that might cast its shade and enable me to account for it: and I have looked in vain. Had the moon been behind the archway, instead of behind _me_, that might have furnished a loophole of explanation: a very poor and inefficient loophole; a curious one also: for how can an archway in the substance be a bier and two mourners in its shadow? but, still, better than none.

No; there was nothing whatever, so far as human eyes--and I can tell you that keen ones and sceptical ones have looked at it--to cast the shade, or to account for it. There, as you sat and watched, stretched out the plain in the moonlight, with its low, tomb-like bushes, its clear s.p.a.ce of bare land, the archway rising behind it. But, on the spot of bare land, before the archway, would rise the Shadow; not looking as if it were a shadow cast on the ground, but a palpable fact: as if a bier, with its two bending mourners, actually stood there in the substance. I say that I cannot explain it, or attempt to explain it; but I do say that there it was to be seen. Not often: sometimes not for years together. It was called the Shadow of Ashlydyat: and superst.i.tion told that its appearance foreshadowed the approach of calamity, whether of death or other evil, to the G.o.dolphins. The greater the evil that was coming upon them, the plainer and more distinct would be the appearance of the Shadow--the longer the s.p.a.ce of time that it would be observed.

Rumour went, that once, on the approach of some terrible misfortune, it had been seen for months and months before, whenever the moon was sufficiently bright. The G.o.dolphins did not care to have the subject mentioned to them: in their scepticism, they (some of them, at least) treated it with ridicule, or else with silence. But, like disbelievers of a different sort, the scepticism was more in profession than in heart. The G.o.dolphins, in their inmost soul, would cower at the appearance of that shadowed bier; as those others have been known to cower, in their anguish, at the approach of the shadow of death.