Mrs. Goddard's heart stood still as she looked at the wretched man, and
tried to discover her husband's face, even a resemblance to him, in the
haggard features she saw close before her. But he gave her small time for
reflection; so soon as he had recognised her he sprang past her into the
passage and pulling her after him closed the door.
"Mary--don't you know me?" he said, in low tones. "You must save me--they
are after me--" He stood close beside her in the narrow way, beneath
the small lamp; he tried to put his arm around her and he bent down and
brought his ghastly face close to hers. But she drew back as from a
contamination. She was horrified, and it was a natural movement. She knew
his voice even better than his features, now that he spoke. He pressed
nearer to her and she thrust him back with her hands. Then suddenly a
thought struck her; she took him by the sleeve and led him into the
dining-room. There was no light there; she pushed him in.
"Stay there one minute--"
"No--no, you won't call--"
"I will save you--there is--there is somebody in the drawing-room."
Before he could answer her she was gone, leaving him alone in the dark.
He listened intently, not venturing to leave the spot where she had
placed him; he thought he heard voices and footsteps, but no one came out
into the passage. It seemed an eternity to wait. At last she came,
bearing a lighted candle in her hand. She carefully shut the door of the
dining-room behind her and put the light upon the table. She moved like a
person in a dream.
"Sit down," she said, pointing to a chair. "Are you hungry?" His sunken
eyes sparkled. She brought food and ale and set them before him. He ate
and drank voraciously in silence. She sat at the opposite side of the
table--the solitary candle between them, and shading her eyes with one
hand she gazed at his face.
Walter Goddard was a man at least forty years of age. He had been thought
very handsome once. He had light blue eyes and a fair skin with flaxen
hair--now cropped short and close to his head. There was nearly a
fortnight's growth of beard upon his face, but it was not yet sufficient
to hide his mouth and chin. He had formerly worn a heavy moustache and
it was chiefly the absence of it which now made it hard for his wife to
recognise him. A battered hat, drenched and dripping with rain, shaded
his brows. Possibly he was ashamed to remove it. His mouth was small and
weak and his jaw was pointed. His whole expression was singularly
disagreeable--his hands were filthy, and his face was not clean. About
his neck was twisted a ragged woollen comforter, and he wore a
smock-frock which was now soaked with water and clung to his thin figure.
He devoured the food his wife had brought him, shivering from time to
time as though he were still cold.
Mrs. Goddard watched him in silence. She had done mechanically according
to her first instinct, had led him in and had given him food. But she had
not recovered herself sufficiently from her first horror and astonishment
to realise her situation. At last she spoke.
"How did you escape?" she asked. He bent lower than before, over his
plate and would not look at her.
"Don't ask me," he answered shortly.
"Why did you do it?" she inquired again. Goddard laughed harshly; his
voice was hoarse and cracked.
"Why did I do it!" he repeated. "Did you ever hear of any one who would
not escape from prison if he had the chance? Don't look at me like that,
Mary--"
"I am sorry for you," she said.
"You don't seem very glad to see me," he answered roughly. "I might have
known it."
"Yes, you might have known it."
It seemed a very hard and cruel thing to say, and Mary Goddard was very
far from being a cruel woman by nature; but she was stunned by fear and
disgust and horrified by the possibilities of harm suddenly brought
before her.
Goddard pushed his plate away and leaned his elbows upon the table
supporting his chin in his hands. He scowled at her defiantly.
"You have given me a warm reception, after nearly three years
of--separation." There was a bitter sneer in the word.
"I am horrified to see you here," she said simply. "You know very well
that I cannot conceal you--"
"Oh, I don't expect miracles," said Goddard contemptuously. "I don't know
that, when I came here, I expected to cause you any particularly
agreeable sensation. I confess, when a woman has not seen her beloved
husband for three years, one might expect her to show a little feeling--"
"I will do what I can for you, Walter," said his wife, whose unnatural
calm was fast yielding to an overpowering agitation.
"Then give me fifty pounds and tell me the nearest way east," answered
the convict savagely.
"I have not got fifty pounds in the house," protested Mary Goddard, in
some alarm. "I never keep much money--I can get it for you--"
"I have a great mind to look," returned her husband suspiciously. "How
soon can you get it?"
"To-morrow night--the time to get a cheque cashed--"
"So you keep a banker's account?"
"Of course. But a cheque would be of no use to you--I wish it were!"
"Naturally you do. You would get rid of me at once." Suddenly his voice
changed. "Oh, Mary--you used to love me!" cried the wretched man, burying
his face in his hands.
"I was very wrong," answered his wife, looking away from him. "You did
not deserve it--you never did."
"Because I was unfortunate!"
"Unfortunate!" repeated Mary Goddard with rising scorn.
"Unfortunate--when you were deceiving me every day of your life. I could
have forgiven a great deal--Walter--but not that, not that!"
"What? About the money?" he asked with sudden fierceness.
"The money--no. Even though you were disgraced and convicted, Walter, I
would have forgiven that, I would have tried to see you, to comfort you.
I should have been sorry for you; I would have done what I could to help
you. But I could not forgive you the rest; I never can."
"Bah! I never cared for her," said the convict. But under his livid skin
there rose a faint blush of shame.
"You never cared for me--that is the reason I--am not glad to see you--"
"I did, Mary. Upon my soul I did. I love you still!" He rose and came
near to his wife, and again he would have put his arm around her. But she
sprang to her feet with an angry light in her eyes.
"If you dare to touch me, I will give you up!" she cried. Goddard shrank
back to his chair, very pale and trembling violently.
"You would not do that, Mary," he almost whined. But she remained
standing, looking at him very menacingly.
"Indeed I would--you don't know me," she said, between her teeth.
"You are as hard as a stone," he answered, sullenly, and for some minutes
there was silence between them.
"I suppose you are going to turn me out into the rain again?" asked the
convict.
"You cannot stay here--you are not safe for a minute. You will have to
go. You must come back to-morrow and I will give you the money. You had
better go now--"
"Oh, Mary, I would not have thought it of you," moaned Goddard.
"Why--what else can I do? I cannot let you sleep in the house--I have no
barn. If any one saw you here it would be all over. People know about
it--"
"What people?"
"The vicar and his wife and Mr. Juxon at the Hall."
"Mr. Juxon? What is he like? Would he give me up if he knew?"
"I think he would," said Mary Goddard, thoughtfully. "I am almost sure he
would. He is the justice of the peace here--he would be bound to."
"Do you know him?" Goddard thought he detected a slight nervousness in
his wife's manner.
"Very well. This house belongs to him."
"Oh!" ejaculated the convict. "I begin to see."
"Yes--you see you had better go," said his wife innocently. "How can you
manage to come here tomorrow? You cannot go on without the money--"
"No--and I don't mean to," he answered roughly. Money was indeed an
absolute necessity to him. "Give me what you have got in the house,
anyhow. You may think better of it to-morrow. I don't trust people of
your stamp."
Mary Goddard rose without a word and left the room. When she was gone the
convict set himself to finish the jug of ale she had brought, and looked
about him. He saw objects that reminded him of his former home. He
examined the fork with which he had eaten and remembered the pattern and
the engraved initials as he turned it over in his hand. The very table
itself had belonged to his house--the carpet beneath his feet, the chair
upon which he sat. It all seemed too unnatural to be true. That very
night, that very hour, he must go forth again into the wild February
weather and hide himself, leaving all these things behind him; leaving
behind too his wife, the woman he had so bitterly injured, but who was
still his wife. It seemed impossible. Surely he might stay if he pleased;
it was not true that detectives were on his track--it was all a dream,
since that dreadful day when he had written that name, which was not his,
upon a piece of paper. He had waked up and was again at home. But he
started as he heard a footstep in the passage, being now accustomed to
start at sounds which suggested pursuit; he started and he felt the wet
smock-frock, which was his disguise, clinging to him as he moved, and the
reality of the present returned to him with awful force. His wife again
entered the room.
"There are over nine pounds," she said. "It is all I have." She laid the
money upon the table before him and remained standing. "You shall have
the rest to-morrow," she added.
"Can't I see Nellie?" he asked suddenly. It was the first time he had
spoken of his child. Mrs. Goddard hesitated.
"No," she said at last. "You cannot see her now. She must not be told;
she thinks you are dead. You may catch a glimpse of her to-morrow--"
"Well--it is better she should not know, I suppose. You could not
explain."
"No, Walter, I could not--explain. Come later to-morrow night--to the
same window. I will undo the shutters and give you the money." Mary
Goddard was almost overcome with exhaustion. It was a terrible struggle
to maintain her composure under such circumstances; but necessity does
wonders. "Where will you sleep to-night?" she asked presently. She pitied
the wretch from her heart, though she longed to see him leave her house.
"I will get into the stables of some public-house. I pass for a tramp."
There was a terrible earnestness in the simple statement, which did more
to make Mary Goddard realise her husband's position than anything else
could have done. To people who live in the country the word "tramp" means
so much.
"Poor Walter!" said Mrs. Goddard softly, and for the first time since she
had seen him the tears stood in her eyes.
"Don't waste your pity on me," he answered. "Let me be off."
There was half a loaf and some cheese left upon the table. Mrs. Goddard
put them together and offered them to him.
"You had better take it," she said. He took the food readily enough and
hid it under his frock. He knew the value of it. Then he got upon his
feet. He moved painfully, for the cold and the wet had stiffened his
limbs already weakened with hunger and exhaustion.
"Let me be off," he said again, and moved towards the door. His wife
followed him in silence. In the passage he paused again.
"Well, Mary," he said, "I suppose I ought to be grateful to you for not
giving me up to the police."
"You know very well," answered Mrs. Goddard, "that what I can do to save
you, I will do. You know that."
"Then do it, and don't forget the money. It's hanging this time if I'm
caught."
Mrs. Goddard uttered a low cry and leaned against the wall.
"What?" she faltered. "You have not--"
"I believe I killed somebody in getting away," answered the felon with a
grim laugh. Then, without her assistance, he opened the door and went out
into the pouring rain. The door shut behind him and Mary Goddard heard
his retreating footsteps on the path outside. When he was fairly gone she
suddenly broke down, and falling upon her knees in the passage beat her
forehead against the wall in an agony of despair.
Murderer--thief, forger and murderer, too! It was more than she could
bear. Even now he was within a stone's throw of her house; a moment ago
he had been here, beside her--there beyond, too, in the dining-room,
sitting opposite to her at her own table as he had sat in his days of
innocence and honour for many a long year before his crime. In the sudden
necessity of acting, in the unutterable surprise of finding herself again
face to face with him, she had been calm; now that he was gone she felt
as though she must go mad. She asked herself if this filthy tramp, this
branded villain, was the husband she had loved and cherished for years,
whose beauty she had admired, whose hand she had held so often, whose
lips she had kissed--if this was the father of her lovely child. It was
all over now. There was blood upon his hands as well as other guilt. If
he were caught he must die, or at the very least be imprisoned for life.
He could never again be free to come forth after the expiation of his
crimes and to claim her and his child. If he escaped now, it must be to
live in a distant country under a perpetual disguise. If he were caught,
the news of his capture would be in all the papers, the news of his trial
for murder, the very details of his execution. The Ambroses would know
and the squire, even the country folk, would perhaps at last know the
truth about her. Life even in the quiet spot she had chosen would become
intolerable, and she would be obliged to go forth again into a more
distant exile. She bitterly repented having written to her husband in his
prison to tell him where she was settled. It would have been sufficient
to acquaint the governor with the fact, so that Goddard might know where
she was when his term expired. She had never written but once, and he had
perhaps not been allowed to answer the letter. His appearance at her door
proved that he had received it. Would to God he had not, she thought.
There were other things besides his crime of forgery which had acted far
more powerfully upon Mary Goddard's mind, and which had broken for ever
all ties of affection; circumstances which had appeared during his trial
and which had shown that he had not only been unfaithful to those who
trusted him, but had been unfaithful to the wife who loved him. That was
what she could not forgive; it was the memory of that which rose like an
impassable wall between her and him, worse than his frauds, his forgery,
worse almost than his murder. He had done that which even a loving woman
could not pardon, that which was past all forgiveness. That was why his
sudden appearance roused no tender memories, elicited seemingly so little
sympathy from her. She was too good a woman to say it, but she knew in
her heart that she wished him dead, the very possibility of ever seeing
him again gone from her life for ever, no matter how.
But she must see him again, nevertheless, and to-morrow. To-morrow, too,
she would have to meet the squire, and appear to act and talk as though
nothing had happened in this terrible night. That would be the hardest of
all, perhaps; even harder than meeting her husband for a brief moment in
order to give him the means of escape. She felt that in helping him she
was participating in his crimes, and yet, she asked herself, what woman
would have acted differently? What woman, even though she might hate her
husband with her whole soul, and justly, would yet be so hard-hearted as
to refuse him assistance when he was flying for his life? It would be
impossible. She must help him at any cost; but it was hard to feel that
she must see the squire and behave with indifference, while her husband
was lurking in the neighbourhood, when a detective might at any moment
come to the door, and demand to search the house.
These thoughts passed very quickly through her overwrought brain, as she
knelt in the passage; kneeling because she felt she could no longer
stand, the passionate tears streaming down her face, her small hands
pressing her temples. Then she struggled to her feet and dried her eyes,
steadying herself against the wall for a moment. She had almost forgotten
little Nellie whom she had left in the drawing-room. She had told the
child, when she went back to her, leaving Goddard alone in the dark, that
the man was a poor starving tramp, but that she did not want Nellie to
see him, because he looked so miserable. She would give him something to
eat and send him away, she said, and meanwhile Nellie should sit by the
drawing-room fire and wait for her. The child trusted her mother
implicitly and was completely reassured. Mrs. Goddard dried her eyes,
and re-entered the room. Nellie was curled up in a big chair with a book;
she looked up quickly.
"Why, mamma," she said, "you have been crying!"
"Have I, darling? I daresay it was the sight of that poor man. He was
very wretched."
"Is he gone?" asked the child.
It was unusually late and Nellie was beginning to be sleepy, so that she
was more easily quieted than she could have been in ordinary
circumstances. It might have struck her as strange that a wandering tramp
should know her mother's Christian name, as still more inexplicable that
her mother should have been willing to admit such a man at so late an
hour. She had been badly frightened, but trusting her mother as she did,
her terror had quickly disappeared and had been quickly followed by
sleepiness.
But Mrs. Goddard. did not sleep that night. She felt as though she could
never sleep again, and for many hours she lay thinking of the new element
of fear which had so suddenly come into her life at the very time when
she believed herself to be safe for many years to come. She longed to
know where her wretched husband was; whether he had found shelter for the
night, whether he was still free or whether he had even then fallen into
the hands of his pursuers. She knew that she could not have concealed him
in the house and that she had done all that lay in her power for him. But
she started at every sound, as the rain rattled against the shutters and
the wind howled down the chimney.
Walter Goddard, however, was safe for the present and was even
luxuriously lodged, considering his circumstances, for he was comfortably
installed amongst the hay in the barn of the "Feathers" inn. He had been
in Billingsfield since early in the afternoon and had considered
carefully the question of his quarters for the night. He had observed
from a distance the landlord of the said inn, and had boldly offered to
do a "day's work for a night's lodging." He said he was "tramping" his
way back from London to his home in Yorkshire; he knew enough of the
sound of the rough Yorkshire dialect to pass for a native of that county
amongst ignorant labourers who had never heard the real tongue. The
landlord of the Feathers consented to the bargain and Goddard was told
that he might sleep in the barn if he liked, and should take a turn at
cutting chaff the next day to pay for the convenience. The convict slept
soundly; he was past lying awake in useless fits of remorse, and he was
exhausted with his day's journey. Moreover he had now the immediate
prospect of obtaining sufficient money to carry him safely out of the
country, and once abroad he felt sure of baffling pursuit. He was an
accomplished man and spoke French with a fluency unusual in Englishmen;
he determined to get across the channel in some fishing craft; he would
then make his way to Paris and enlist in the Foreign Legion. It would be
safer than trying to go to America, where people were invariably caught
as they landed. It was a race for life and death, and he knew it. Had he
been able to obtain clothes, money and a disguise in London he would have
travelled by rail. But that had been impossible and it now seemed a wiser
plan to "tramp" it. His beard was growing rapidly and would soon make a
complete disguise. Village constables are generally simple people, easily
imposed upon, very different from London detectives; and hitherto he felt
sure that he had baffled pursuit by the mere simplicity of his
proceedings. The intelligent officials of Scotland Yard were used to
forgers and swindlers who travelled by express trains and crossed to
America by fashionable steamers. It did not strike them as very likely
that a man of Walter Goddard's previous tastes and habits could get
through the country in the guise of a tramp. If he had been possessed at
the time of his escape of the money he so much desired he would probably
have been caught; as it was, he got away without difficulty, and at the
very time when every railway station and every port in the kingdom were
being watched for him, he was lurking in the purlieus of Whitechapel, and
then tramping his way east in comparative safety, half starved, it is
true, but unmolested.
That he was disappointed at the reception his wife had given him did not
prevent him from sleeping peacefully that night. One thing alone
disturbed him, and that was her mention of Mr. Juxon, in whose house, as
she had told him, she lived. It seems incredible that a man in Walter
Goddard's position, lost to every sense of honour, a criminal of the
worst type, who had deceived his wife before he was indicted for forgery,
who had certainly cared very little for her at any time, should now, in a
moment of supreme danger, feel a pang of jealousy on hearing that his
wife lived in the vicinity of the squire and occupied a house belonging
to him. But he was too bad himself not to suspect others, especially
those whom he had wronged, and the feeling was mingled with a strong
curiosity to know whether this woman, who now treated him so haughtily
and drew back from him as from some monstrous horror, was as good as she
pretended to be. He said to himself that on the next day at dawn he would
slip out of the barn and try whether he could not find some hiding-place
within easy reach of the cottage, so as to be able to watch her dwelling
at his ease throughout the day. The plan seemed a good one. Since he was
obliged to wait twenty-four hours in order to get the money he wanted, he
might as well employ the time profitably in observing his wife's habits.
It would be long, he said to himself with a bitter sneer, before he
troubled her again--he would just like to see.
Having come to this decision he drew some of the hay over his body and in
spite of cold and wet was soon peacefully asleep. But at early dawn he
awoke with the alacrity of a man who constantly expects pursuit, and
slipped down from the hayloft into the barn. There was no one stirring
and he got over the fence at the back of the yard and skirted the fields
in the direction of the church, finally climbing another stile and
entering what he supposed to be the park. On this side the back of the
church ran out into a broad meadow, where the larger portion of the
ancient abbey had once stood. Goddard walked along close by the church
walls. He knew from his observation on the previous afternoon that he
could thus come out into the road in the vicinity of the cottage, unless
his way through the park were interrupted by impassable wire fences. The
ground was very heavy and he was sure not to meet anybody in the meadows
in such weather.
Suddenly he stopped and looked at a buttress that jutted out from the
church and for the existence of which there seemed to be no ostensible
reason. He examined it and found that it was not a buttress but
apparently a half ruined chamber, which at some former period had been
built upon the side of the abbey. Low down by the ground there was a
hole, where a few stones seemed to have been removed and not replaced.
Goddard knelt down in the long wet grass and put in his head; then he
crept in on his hands and knees and presently disappeared.
He found himself in a room about ten feet square, dimly lighted by a
small window at the top, and surrounded by long horizontal niches. The
floor, which was badly broken in some places, was of stone. Goddard
examined the place carefully. It was evidently an old vault of the kind
formerly built above ground for the lords of the manor; but the coffins,
if there had ever been any, had been removed elsewhere. Goddard laughed
to himself.
"I might stay here for a year, if I could get anything to eat," he said
to himself.