The Shadow of Ashlydyat. Henry Wood

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СКАЧАТЬ my dear father! what are you doing here?”

      “I thought I’d go to the station, Thomas, and see about a special train. I must go back to Ashlydyat to die.”

      Thomas climbed over the stile. The tone, the manner, the words, altogether had betrayed to him an unhappy fact—that his father’s mind was not in a state of perfect sanity. He trembled for his health, too. It was a cold raw night, and here was Sir George in evening dress, without so much as an overcoat thrown on! He, who had only been out since the last fainting-fit in a close carriage: and then well wrapped up.

      “Where is your hat, father?”

      The old knight lifted his hand to his head, as if he had not known that his hat was not there. “I must have come out without it, Thomas,” he said. “What was that noise over there?” he continued, pointing above the stile to the way Thomas had come, his frame shivering with cold as he spoke.

      “I think it was a sea-gull. Or some screaming night-bird.”

      “I could not get over the stile, Thomas. The walk seemed to have taken the strength out of me. How did you come here? I thought you were at Prior’s Ash.”

      Thomas Godolphin was busy. He had taken off his great coat, and was putting it upon his father, buttoning it up carefully. A smaller man than Sir George, it did not fit well: but Sir George had shrunk. The hat fitted better.

      “But you have no hat yourself!” said Sir George, surveying his son’s head, when he had submitted in patient silence to the dressing.

      “I don’t want one,” replied Thomas. “The night air will not hurt me.” Nevertheless, all the way to Broomhead, he was looking on either side, if perchance he might come upon Sir George’s hat, lying in the road.

      Thomas drew his father close, to support him on his arm, and they commenced their walk to the house. Not until then did Thomas know how very weak his father was. Stooping, shivering, tripping, with every other step, it appeared impossible that he could walk back again: the wonder was, how he had walked there.

      Thomas Godolphin halted in dismay. How was he to get his father home? Carry him, he could not: it was of course beyond his strength. The light in Bray’s window suggested a thought to him.

      “Father, I think you had better go to Bray’s and stay there, while I see about your hand-chair. You are not able to walk.”

      “I won’t go to Bray’s,” returned the knight, with a touch of vehemence. “I don’t like Bray, and I will not put my foot inside his threshold. Besides, it’s late, and my lady will miss us.”

      He pressed on somewhat better towards home, and Thomas Godolphin saw nothing else that could be done, except to press on with him, and give him all the help in his power. “My dear father, you should have waited until the morning,” he said, “and have gone out then.”

      “But I wanted to see about a train, Thomas,” remonstrated the knight. “And I can’t do it in the day. She will not let me. When we drive past the railway station, she won’t get out, and won’t let me do so. Thomas, I want to go back to Ashlydyat.”

      “I have come to take you back, my dear father.”

      “Ay, ay. And mind you are firm when she says I must not go because of the fever. The fever will not hurt me, Thomas. I can’t be firm. I have grown feeble, and people take my will from me. You are my first-born son, Thomas.”

      “Yes.”

      “Then you must be firm for me, I say.”

      “I will be, father.”

      “This is a rough road, Thomas.”

      “No, it is smooth; and I am glad that it is so. But you are tired.”

      The old knight bent his head, as if choosing his steps. Presently he lifted his head:

      “Thomas, when do they leave Ashlydyat?”

      “Who, sir? The Verralls? They have not had notice yet.”

      Sir George stopped. He drew up his head to its full height, and turned to his son. “Not had notice? When, then, do I go back? I won’t go to Lady Godolphin’s Folly. I must go to Ashlydyat.”

      “Yes, sir,” said Thomas soothingly. “I will see about it.”

      The knight, satisfied, resumed his walk. “Of course you will see about it. You are my son and heir, Thomas. I depend upon you.”

      They pursued their way for some little time in silence, and then Sir George spoke again, his tone hushed. “Thomas, I have put on mourning for her. I mourn her as much as you do. And you did not get there in time to see her alive!”

      “Not in time. No,” replied Thomas, looking hard into the mist overhead.

      “I’d have come to the funeral, Thomas, if she had let me. But she was afraid of the fever. George got there in time for it?”

      “Barely.”

      “When he came back to Broomhead, and heard of it, he was so cut up, poor fellow. Cut up for your sake, Thomas. He said he should be in time to follow her to the grave if he started at once, and he went off then and there. Thomas”—dropping his voice still lower—“whom shall you take to Ashlydyat now?”

      “My sisters.”

      “Nay. But as your wife? You will be replacing Ethel sometime.”

      “I shall never marry now, father.”

      At length Broomhead was reached. Thomas held open the gate of the shrubbery to his father, and guided him through it.

      “Shall we have two engines, Thomas?”

      “Two engines, sir! What for?”

      “They’d take us quicker, you know. This is not the station!” broke forth Sir George in a sharp tone of complaint, as they emerged beyond the shrubbery, and the house stood facing them. “Oh, Thomas! you said you were taking me to Ashlydyat! I cannot die away from it!”

      Thomas Godolphin stood almost confounded. His father’s discourse, the greater part of it, at any rate, had been so rational that he had begun to hope he was mistaken as to his weakness of mind. “My dear father, be at rest,” he said: “we will start if you like with to-morrow’s dawn. But to go now to the station would not forward us: it is by this time closed for the night.”

      They found the house in a state of commotion. Sir George had been missed, and servants were out searching for him. Lady Godolphin gazed at Thomas with all the eyes she possessed, thunderstruck at his appearance. “What miracle brought you here?” she exclaimed, wonderingly.

      “No miracle, Lady Godolphin. I am thankful that I happened to come. What might have become of Sir George without me, I know not. I expect he would have remained at the stile where I found him until morning; and might have caught his death there.”

      “He will catch that speedily enough if he is to wander out of the house at midnight in this mad manner,” peevishly rejoined my lady.

      CHAPTER XVI.

      THE LAST JOURNEY

      “I СКАЧАТЬ