Kitabı oku: «The Shadow of Ashlydyat», sayfa 28

“George looked for the deeds a month ago. Not finding them in the box, he concluded that I had moved them. Therefore we cannot be said to have known of the loss until to-day.”

“George ought to have asked you,” said Janet.

“Yes, he ought,” acquiesced Thomas. But it was all he said.

“It is just like careless George!” exclaimed Janet. “Should the time ever come that he is sole head of the Bank, I do not know how it will get on! To whom did the deeds belong, Thomas?”

“To Lord Averil.”

“You are sure you had them?” asked cautious Janet.

A half smile crossed Thomas Godolphin’s lips. “Quite sure, Janet. You understand,” he added, looking at them both, “we do not care that this should be spoken of. You are safe, I know, Janet; and Maria would most likely hear it from George.”

Maria had been buried in a reverie. “I cannot conceive how it is possible for anything to have been lost from the strong-room,” she said, lifting her head. “All about us are trustworthy. And, were they not, there would be no possibility of their getting to the safes in the strong-room.”

“You are right, Maria,” said Thomas. “I have thought of it until I am bewildered.”

Maria seemed to be getting bewildered also. She was thinking of it in its every aspect and bearing. Many little past incidents, proving that her husband was ill at ease, had something on his mind, rushed into her memory. She had not thought much of them before: but they grew strangely vivid now. To miss deeds of this value would amply account for it.

“Thomas,” said she, speaking out her thoughts, “do you not think George must have feared there was something wrong, when he missed them at first? I do.”

“No. Why do you think it?”

“Because–” Maria stopped. It suddenly occurred to her that it might not be quite right to comment upon her husband’s manner, what it had, or what it had not been; that he might not like her to do so, although it was only to his brother and sister. So she turned it off: speaking any indifferent words that came uppermost.

“It is curious, missing a packet of deeds of that value from its place, that he should not have feared it might be missing altogether.”

“The very fact of his not asking me about it, Maria, proves that no suspicion of wrong crossed his mind,” was the comment of Thomas Godolphin. “He supposed I had placed it elsewhere.”

“That’s just like George!” repeated Janet. “Taking things on trust, as he takes people! A child might deceive him.”

“I hope we shall find them yet,” said Thomas Godolphin.

“Does Lord Averil–”

What Janet might be about to inquire was never known. The words were stopped by a strange noise, an appalling noise, apparently at the very door of the room they were in. A loud, prolonged, discordant noise, unlike anything they had ever heard. Some might have compared it to the shrieks of a strong giant in his agony; some to the hoarse screams of a bird of prey. But it was unlike either: it was unlike anything earthly.

With one bound, they flew to the hall, on to which the room opened, Maria, white with terror. The servants came rushing from their apartments, and stood in consternation.

What was the noise? What had caused it? The questions were pouring forth from all. The hall was perfectly empty, except for its startled gazers; doors and windows had been closed. Thomas walked to the entrance and looked beyond, beyond the porch, but nothing was there. The space was empty; the evening was calm and still. At a distance, borne on the evening air, could be heard the merry laughter of Meta, playing with Bessy and Cecil. Thomas came in and closed the door again.

“I cannot think what it could have been!” he observed, speaking generally.

The servants were ready with answering remarks. One had thought this; one had thought that; another something else. Maria had seized upon Janet: glad, perhaps, that it was too dark for her white face to be discerned. It was the sound which had so terrified her: no association in her mind was connected with it; and it was the sound which had terrified the servants. They had never heard a sound like unto it in all their lives.

“It must have been a night-bird, shrieking as he flew over the house,” observed Mr. Godolphin.

But, in truth, he so spoke only in the absence of any other possible assumption, and against his own belief. No bird of prey, known to ornithology, could have made that noise, even had it been within the hall to do it. A dozen birds of prey could not have made it. Thomas, like the rest, felt bewildered.

The servants began to move away. Nothing more than usual was to be seen in the darkened hall nothing to be heard. As the last one disappeared, Thomas turned to the drawing-room door, and held it open for his sister and Maria.

At that very moment when they had gone in, and Thomas was following, the noise came again. Loud, prolonged, shrill, unearthly! What was it? Were the rafters of the house loosening? the walls rending asunder? Were the skies opening for the crack of doom? They gathered in the hall again: master, ladies, servants; and stood there, motionless, appalled, bewildered, their faces whiter than before.

Its echoes died away in shrieks. Human cries this time, and not unfamiliar. One of the women-servants, excited beyond repression, had fallen into hysterics.

But whence had proceeded that noise? Where had been its centre? Without the house, or within the house?—in its walls, its passages, its hall?—where? Its sound had been everywhere. In short, what had caused it? what had it been?

They could not tell. It was a problem beyond human philosophy to solve. They could not tell then; they could not tell afterwards. It has been no ideal scene that I have described, as living witnesses could testify. Witnesses who can no more account for those unearthly sounds now, than they could account for them then.

CHAPTER XIV.
ISAAC HASTINGS TURNS TO THINKING

The revelation to Isaac Hastings, that the deeds, missing, belonged to Lord Averil, set that young gentleman thinking. Like his father, like his sister Grace, he was an exceedingly accurate observer, given to taking note of passing events. He had keen perception, a retentive memory for trifles, great powers of comparison and concentration. What with one thing and another, he had been a little puzzled lately by Mr. George Godolphin. There had been sundry odds and ends out of the common to be detected in Mr. George’s manner: not patent to the generality of people, who are for the most part unobservant, but sufficiently conspicuous to Isaac Hastings. Anxiety about letters; trifles in the everyday ordering of the Bank; one little circumstance, touching a delay in paying out some money, which Isaac, and he alone, had become accidentally cognizant of; all formed food for speculation. There had been the somewhat doubtful affair of George Godolphin’s secret journey to London, leaving false word with his wife that he was accompanying Captain St. Aubyn on the road to Portsmouth, which had travelled to the knowledge of Isaac through want of reticence in Charlotte Pain. More than all, making more impression upon Isaac, had been the strange, shrinking fear displayed by George, that Saturday when he had announced Lord Averil: a fear succeeded by a confusion of manner that proved his master must for the moment have lost his presence of mind. Isaac Hastings had announced the names of other gentlemen that day, and the announcement, equally with themselves, had been received with the most perfect equanimity. Isaac had often thought of that little episode since, and wondered; wondered what there could be in Lord Averil’s visit to scare Mr. George Godolphin. It recurred to him now with double distinctness. The few words he had overheard, between Lord Averil and Mr. Godolphin, recurred to him—the former saying that George must have known of the loss of the deeds when he had asked for them a month ago, that he judged so by his manner, which was peculiar, hesitating, uncertain, “as though he had known of the loss then, and did not like to tell of it.”

To the strange manner Isaac himself could have borne witness. Had this strangeness been caused by the knowledge of the loss of the deeds?—if so, why did not George Godolphin make a stir about them then? Only on the previous day, when Lord Averil had again made his appearance, Isaac had been further struck with George’s startled hesitation, and with his refusal to see him. He had sent out word as the excuse, that he was particularly engaged. Isaac had believed at the time that George was no more engaged than he himself was. And now, this morning, when it could not be concealed any longer, came the commotion. The deeds were gone: they had disappeared in the most unaccountable manner, no one knowing how or when.

What did it all mean? Isaac Hastings asked himself the question as he pursued his business in the Bank, amidst the other clerks. He could not help asking it. A mind, constituted as was that of Isaac Hastings, thoughtful, foreseeing, penetrating, cannot help entering upon these speculations, when surrounding circumstances call them forth. Could it be that George Godolphin had fallen into secret embarrassment?—that he had abstracted the deeds himself and used them? Isaac felt his cheek flush with shame at the thought; with shame that he should allow himself to think such a thing of a Godolphin: and yet, he could not help it. No. Do as he would, he could not drive the thought away: it remained to haunt him. And, the longer it remained, the more vivid it grew.

Ought he to give a hint of this to his father? He did not know. On the one hand there was sober reason, which told him George Godolphin was not likely to be guilty of such a thing on the other lay his fancy, whispering that it might be so. Things as strange had been enacted lately; as the public knew. Men, in an equally good position with George Godolphin, were proved to have been living upon fraud for years. Isaac was fond of newspapers, and knew all they could tell him. What if anything came wrong to this Bank? Why then, Mr. Hastings would be a ruined man. It was not only the loss of his own life’s savings, that were in the hands of Godolphin, Crosse, and Godolphin, but there was the larger sum he had placed there as trustee to the little Chisholms.

Isaac Hastings lingered in the Bank till the last that evening. All had gone, except Mr. Hurde. The latter was preparing to leave, when Isaac went up to him, leaning his arms upon the desk.

“It is a strange thing about those deeds, Mr. Hurde!” cried he, in a low tone.

Mr. Hurde nodded.

“It is troubling me amazingly,” went on Isaac.

This seemed to arouse the old clerk, and he looked up, speaking curtly.

“Why should it trouble you? You didn’t take them, I suppose?”

“No, I didn’t,” said Isaac.

“Very well, then. The loss won’t fall upon you. There’s no need for your troubling.”

Isaac was silent. In truth, he was unable to give any reason for the “troubling,” except on general grounds: he could not say that a doubt was haunting his mind as to the good faith of Mr. George Godolphin.

“It is a loss which I suppose Mr. George will have to make good, as they were in his custody,” he resumed. “My sister won’t like it, I fear.”

The observation recalled Mr. Hurde’s memory to the fact that Mrs. George Godolphin was the sister of Isaac Hastings. It afforded a sufficient excuse for the remarks in the mind of the clerk, and somewhat pacified him.

“It is to be hoped they’ll be found,” said he. “I don’t see how they could have gone.”

“Nor I,” returned Isaac. “The worst is, if they have gone–”

“What?” asked Mr. Hurde, for Isaac had stopped.

“That perhaps money has been made of them.”

Mr. Hurde groaned. “They have not been taken for nothing, you may be sure.”

“If they have been taken,” persisted Isaac.

“If they have been taken,” assented Mr. Hurde. “I don’t believe they have. From the sheer impossibility of anybody’s getting to them, I don’t believe it. And I shan’t believe it, until every nook and corner between the four walls have been hunted over.”

“How do you account for their disappearance, then?”

“I think they must have been moved inadvertently.”

“No one could so move them except Mr. Godolphin or Mr. George,” rejoined Isaac.

“Mr. Godolphin has not moved them,” returned the clerk in a testy tone of reproof. “Mr. Godolphin is too accurate a man of business to move deeds inadvertently, or to move them and forget it the next moment. Mr. George may have done it. In searching for anything in the strong-room, if he has had more than one case open at once, he may have put these deeds back in their wrong place, or even brought them upstairs.”

Isaac considered for a minute, and then shook his head. “I should not think it,” he answered.

“Well, it is the only supposition I can come to,” was the concluding remark of Mr. Hurde. “It is next to an impossibility, Mr. Godolphin excepted, that any one else can have got to the deeds.”

He was drawing on his gloves as he spoke, to depart. Isaac went out with him, but their roads lay different ways. Isaac turned towards All Souls’ Rectory, and walked along in deep reverie.

The Rectory hours were early, and he found them at tea: his mother, Rose, and Grace. Grace—Mrs. Akeman by her new name—was spending the evening with them with her baby. The Rector, who had gone out in the afternoon, had not yet returned.

Isaac took his tea and then strolled into the garden. Rose and the baby were making a great noise, and Grace was helping them. It disturbed Isaac in his perplexed thought, and he made a mental vow that if he was ever promoted to a home of his own with babies in it, they should be confined to some top room, out of sight and hearing.

By-and-by, when he was leaning over the gate, looking into the road, Mr. Hastings came up. Isaac told him that tea was over: but Mr. Hastings said he had taken a cup with one of his parishioners. He had apparently walked home quickly, and he lifted his hat and wiped his brow.

“Glorious weather for the haymaking, Isaac!”

“Is it?” returned Isaac abstractedly.

“Is it!” repeated Mr. Hastings. “Where are your senses, boy?”

Isaac laughed and roused himself. “I fear they were buried just then, sir. I was thinking of something that has happened at the Bank to-day. A loss has been discovered.”

“A loss?” repeated Mr Hastings. “A loss of what?”

Isaac explained. He dropped his voice to a low tone, and spoke confidentially. They were leaning over the gate side by side. Mr. Hastings rather liked to take recreative moments there, exchanging a nod and a word with the passers-by. At this hour of the evening, however, the road was generally free.

“How can the deeds have gone?” exclaimed Mr. Hastings. As every one else had said.

“I don’t know,” replied Isaac, breaking off a spray from the hedge, and beginning to bite the thorns. “I suppose it is all right,” he presently added.

“Right in what way?” asked Mr. Hastings.

“I suppose George Godolphin’s all right, I mean.”

The words were as an unknown tongue to Mr. Hastings. He did not fathom them. “You suppose that George Godolphin is all right!” he exclaimed. “You speak in riddles, Isaac.”

“I cannot say I suspect anything wrong, sir; but the doubt has crossed me. It never would have done so, but for George Godolphin’s manner.”

Mr. Hastings turned his penetrating gaze on his son, “Speak out,” said he. “Tell me what you mean.”

Isaac did so. He related the circumstances of the loss; the confused manner he had observed in Mr. George Godolphin, on the visits of Lord Averil, and his reluctance to receive them. One little matter he suppressed: the stolen visit of George to London, and deceit to Maria, relative to it. Isaac did not see what that could have had to do with the loss of the deeds, and his good feeling told him that it was not a pleasant thing to name to his father. Mr. Hastings did not speak for a few minutes.

“Isaac, I see no reasonable grounds for your doubts,” he said at length. “The Bank is too flourishing for that. Perhaps you meant only as to George?”

“I can scarcely tell whether I really meant anything,” replied Isaac. “The doubts arose to me, and I thought I would mention them to you. I dare say my fancy is to blame: it does run riot sometimes.”

A silence ensued. Mr. Hastings broke it. “With a keen man of business, such as Mr. Thomas Godolphin, at the head of affairs, George could not go far wrong, I should presume. I think he spends enough on his own score, mark you, Isaac; but that has nothing to do with the prosperity of the Bank.”

“Of course not. Unless–”

“Unless what? Why don’t you speak out?”

“Because I am not sure of my premises, sir,” frankly answered Isaac. “Unless he were to have become irretrievably embarrassed, and should be using the Bank’s funds for his own purposes, I believe I was about to say.”

“Pretty blind moles some of you must be, in that case! Could such a thing be done without the cognizance of the house? Of Mr. Hurde and of Thomas Godolphin?”

“Well—no—I don’t much think it could,” hesitated Isaac, who was not at all certain upon the point. “At any rate, not to any extent. I suppose one of my old crotchets—as Grace, used to call them—has taken possession of me, rendering me absurdly fanciful. I dare say it is all right: except that the deeds are mislaid.”

“I dare say it is,” acquiesced the Rector. “I should be sorry to think it otherwise—for many reasons. Grace is here, is she not?”

“Grace is here, and Grace’s son and heir, making enough noise for ten. I can’t think why Grace–”

“What are you taking my name in vain for?” interrupted Grace’s own voice. She had come up to them carrying the very son and heir that Isaac had been complaining of: a young gentleman with a bald head, just beginning to exercise his hands in dumb fights; as well as his lungs. “Papa, mamma says are you not going in to tea?”

Before the Rector could answer, or Isaac extricate his hair from the unconsciously mischievous little hands which had seized upon it by Grace’s connivance, there came a gay party of equestrians round the corner of the road. Charlotte Pain, with the two young ladies, her guests; Lady Sarah and Miss Grame, who sometimes hired horses for a ride; and three or four gentlemen. Amongst the latter were George Godolphin and Lord Averil. Lord Averil had met them accidentally and joined their party. He was riding by the side of Charlotte Pain.

“I say, Grace!” hastily exclaimed Isaac, twitching away his head, “take that baby in, out of sight. Look there!”

“Take my baby in!” resentfully spoke Grace. “What for? I am not ashamed to be seen holding it. Keeping only two servants, I must turn nurse sometimes: and people know it. I am not situated as Maria is, with a dozen at her beck and call.”

Isaac did not prolong the discussion. He thought if he owned an ugly baby with no hair, he should not be so fond of showing it off. Grace stood her ground, and the baby stood his, and lifted its head and its arms by way of greeting. Isaac wondered that it did not lift its voice as well.

The party exchanged bows as they rode past. George Godolphin—he was riding by the side of Sarah Anne Grame—withdrew his horse from the throng and rode up.

“How are you, Grace? How is the baby?”

“Look at him,” returned Grace in answer, holding the gentleman up to him.

“Shall I take him for a ride?” asked George, laughing.

“Not if you paid me his value in gold,” answered Grace bluntly.

George’s gay blue eyes twinkled. “What may that value be? Your estimation of it, Grace?”

“Never mind,” said Grace. “I can tell you that your Bank would not meet it. No, not if all its coffers were filled to the brim.”

“I see,” observed George: “he is inestimable. Do not set your heart too much upon him, Grace,” he continued, his voice changing.

“Why not?” she asked.

“Maria had to lose some, equally dear.”

“That is true,” said Grace in softened tones. “How is Maria to-day?”

“Quite well, thank you. She went to Ashlydyat this afternoon, and I dare say has remained there. Famous weather for the hay, is it not, sir?” he added to the Rector.

“Couldn’t be better,” replied Mr. Hastings.

George rode off at a canter. The baby burst into a cry; perhaps that he could not go off at a canter too: and Grace, after a vain attempt to hush him, carried him into the house. The Rector remained, looking over the gate.

“Things going wrong with him!—No! He could not be so easy under it,” was his mental conclusion. “It is all right, depend upon it,” he added aloud to his son.

“I think it must be, sir,” was the reply of Isaac Hastings.