Henry Wood - The Shadow of Ashlydyat

“How you talk!” returned she peevishly. “As if Lady Godolphin would allow me to go all that way under your escort! As if I would go myself!”

“You might have a less safe one, Charlotte mia,” cried Mr. George somewhat saucily. “No lion should come near you, to eat you up.”

“George,” resumed Charlotte, after a pause, “I wish you would tell me whether Mrs. Verrall– Good Heavens! what’s that?”

Sounds of distress were sounding in their ears. They turned hastily. Maria Hastings, her camp-stool overturned, her sketching materials scattered on the ground, was flying towards them, calling upon George Godolphin to save her. There was no mistaking that she was in a state of intense terror.

Charlotte Pain wondered if she had gone mad. She could see nothing to alarm her. George Godolphin cast his rapid glance to the spot where she had sat, and could see nothing, either. He hastened to meet her, and caught her in his arms, into which she literally threw herself.

Entwined round her left wrist was a small snake, or reptile of the species, more than a foot long. It looked like an eel, writhing there. Maria had never come into personal contact with anything of the sort: but she remembered what had been said of the deadly bite of a serpent; and terror completely overmastered her.

He seized it and flung it from her; he laid her poor terrified face upon his breast, that she might there sob out her fear; he cast a greedy glance at her wrist, where the thing had been: and his own face had turned white with emotion.

“My darling, there is no injury,” he soothingly whispered. “Be calm! be calm!” And, utterly regardless of the presence of Charlotte Pain, he laid his cheek against hers, as if to reassure her, and kept it there.

Less regardless, possibly, had he seen Charlotte Pain’s countenance. It was dark as night. The scales were rudely torn from her eyes: and she saw, in that moment, how fallacious had been her own hopes touching George Godolphin.

“What ever is the matter?”

The interruption came from Lady Godolphin. Charlotte Pain had perceived her approach, but had ungraciously refrained from intimating it to her companions. My lady, a coquettish white bonnet shading her delicate face, and her little person enveloped in a purple velvet mantle trimmed with ermine, was on her way to pay a visit to her ex-maid, Selina. She surveyed the group with intense astonishment. Maria Hastings, white, sobbing, clinging to George Godolphin in unmistakable terror; Mr. George soothing her in rather a marked manner; and Charlotte Pain, erect, haughty, her arms folded, her head drawn up, giving no assistance, her countenance about as pleasant as a demon’s my lady had once the pleasure of seeing at the play. She called out the above words before she was well up with them.

George Godolphin did not release Maria; he simply lifted his head. “She has been very much terrified, Lady Godolphin; but no harm is done. A reptile of the snake species fastened itself on her wrist. I have flung it off.”

He glanced towards the spot where stood Lady Godolphin, as much as to imply that he had flung the offender there . My lady shrieked, caught up her petticoats, we won’t say how high, and leaped away nimbly.

“I never heard of such a thing!” she exclaimed. “A snake! What should bring snakes about, here?”

“Say a serpent!” broke from the pale lips of Charlotte Pain.

Lady Godolphin did not detect the irony, and felt really alarmed. Maria, growing calmer, and perhaps feeling half ashamed of the emotion which fear had caused her to display, drew away from George Godolphin. He would not suffer that, and made her take his arm. “I am sorry to have alarmed you all so much,” she said. “Indeed, I could not help it, Lady Godolphin.”

“A serpent in the grass!” repeated her ladyship, unable to get over the surprise. “How did it come to you, Maria? Were you lying down?”

“I was sitting on the camp-stool, there; busy with my drawing,” she answered. “My left hand was hanging down, touching, I believe, the grass. I began to feel something cold at my wrist, but at first did not notice it. Then I lifted it and saw that dreadful thing wound round it. I could not shake it off. Oh, Lady Godolphin! I felt—I hardly know how I felt—almost as if I should have died, had there been no one near to run to.”

Lady Godolphin, her skirts still lifted, the tips of her toes touching the path gingerly, to which they had now hastened, and her eyes alert, lest the serpent should come trailing forth from any unexpected direction, remarked that it was a mercy Maria had escaped with only fright. “You seem to experience enough of that,” she said. “Don’t faint, child.”

Maria’s lips parted with a sickly smile, which she meant should be a brave one. She was both timid and excitable; and, if terror did attack her, she felt it in no common degree. What would have been but a passing fear to another, forgotten almost as soon as felt, was to her agony. Remarkably susceptible, was she, to the extreme of pleasure and the extreme of pain. “There is no fear of my fainting,” she answered to Lady Godolphin. “I never fainted in my life.”

“I am on my road to see an old servant who lives in that house,” said Lady Godolphin, pointing to the tenement, little thinking how far it had formed their theme of discourse. “You shall come with me and rest, and have some water.”

“Yes, that is the best thing to be done,” said George Godolphin. “I’ll take you there, Maria, and then I’ll have a hunt after the beast. I ought to have killed him at the time.”

Lady Godolphin walked on, Charlotte Pain at her side. Charlotte’s lip was curling.

The house door, to which they were bound, stood open. Across its lower portion, as if to prevent the exit of children, was a board, formerly placed there for that express purpose. The children were grown now and scattered, but the board remained; the inmates stepping over it at their will. Sandy Bray, who must have skulked back to his home by some unseen circuit, made a rush to the board at sight of Lady Godolphin, and pulled it out of its grooves, leaving the entrance clear. But for his intense idleness, he, knowing she was coming, would have removed it earlier.

They entered upon a large room, half sitting-room, half kitchen, its boarded floor very clean. The old Welshwoman, a cleanly, well-mannered, honest-faced old woman, was busy knitting then, and came forward, curtseying: no vestige of pipe to be seen or smelt. “Selina was in bed,” Bray said, standing humbly before Lady Godolphin. “Selina had heard bad news of one of the brats, and had worried herself sick over it, as my lady knew it was in the stupid nature of Selina to do. Would my lady be pleased to step up to see her?”

Yes; my lady would be pleased to do so by-and-by. But at present she directed a glass of water to be brought to Miss Hastings. Bray brought the water in a cracked yellow cup.

“Eh, but there is some of them things about here,” he said, when the cause of alarm was mentioned. “I think there must be a nest of ’em. They are harmless, so far as I know.”

“Why don’t you find the nest?” asked Mr. George Godolphin.

“And what good, if I did find ’em, sir?” said he.

“Kill the lot,” responded George.

He strode out of the house, Bray following in his wake, to look for the reptile which had caused the alarm. Bray was sure nothing would come of it: the thing had had time to get clear away.

In point of fact, nothing did come of it. George Godolphin could not decide upon the precise spot where they had stood when he threw away the reptile; and, to beat over the whole field, which was extensive, would have been endless work. He examined carefully the spot where Maria had sat, both he and Bray, but could see no trace of anything alarming. Gathering up her treasures, including the camp-stool, he set off with them. Bray made a feeble show of offering to bear the stool. “No,” said George, “I’ll carry it myself: it would be too much trouble for you.”