On the morning after the events last described Mr. Ambrose sat at
breakfast opposite his wife. The early post had just arrived, bringing
the usual newspaper and two letters.
"Any news, my dear?" inquired Mrs. Ambrose with great suavity, as she
rinsed her teacup in the bowl preparatory to repeating the dose. "Is not
it time that we should hear from John?"
"There is a letter from him, strange to say. Wait a minute--my dear, the
Tripos is over and he wants to know if he may stop here--"
"The Tripos over already! How has he done? Do tell me, Augustin!"
"He does not know," returned the vicar, quickly looking over the
contents of the letter. "The lists are not out--he thinks he has done
very well--he has had a hint that he is high up--wants to know whether he
may stop on his way to London--he is going to see his father--"
"Of course he shall come," said Mrs. Ambrose with enthusiasm. "He must
stop here till the lists are published and then we shall know--anything
else?"
"The other is a note from a tutor of his side--my old friend Brown--he is
very enthusiastic; says it is an open secret that John will be at the
head of the list--begins to congratulate. Well, my dear, this is very
satisfactory, very flattering."
"One might say very delightful, Augustin."
"Delightful, yes quite delightful," replied the vicar, burying his long
nose in his teacup.
"I only hope it may be true. I was afraid that perhaps John had done
himself harm by coming here at Christmas. Young men are so very
light-headed, are they not, Augustin?" added Mrs. Ambrose with a prim
smile. On rare occasions she had alluded to John's unfortunate passion
for Mrs. Goddard, and when she spoke of the subject she had a tendency to
assume something of the stiffness she affected towards strangers. As has
been seen she had ceased to blame Mrs. Goddard. Generally speaking the
absent are in the wrong in such matters; she could not refer to John's
conduct without a touch of severity. But the Reverend Augustin bent his
shaggy brows; John was now successful, probably senior classic--it was
evidently no time to censure his behaviour.
"You must be charitable, my dear," he said, looking sharply at his wife.
"We have all been young once you know."
"Augustin, I am surprised at you!" said Mrs. Ambrose sternly.
"For saying that I once was young?" inquired her husband. "Strange and
paradoxical as such a statement must appear, I was once a baby."
"I think your merriment very unseemly," objected Mrs. Ambrose in a tone
of censure. "Because you were once a baby it does not follow that you
ever acted in such a very foolish way about a--"
"My dear," interrupted the vicar, handing his cup across the table, "I
wish you would leave John alone, and give me another cup of tea. John
will be here to-morrow. Let us receive him as we should. He has done us
credit."
"He will never be received otherwise in this house, Augustin," replied
Mrs. Ambrose, "whether you allow me to speak my mind or not. I am aware
that Short has done us credit, as you express it. I only hope he always
may do us credit in the future. I am sure, I was like a mother to him. He
ought never to forget it. Why, my dear, cannot you remember how I always
had his buttons looked to and gave him globules when he wanted them? I
think he might show some gratitude."
"I do not think he has failed to show it," retorted the vicar.
"Oh, well, Augustin, if you are going to talk like that it is not
possible to argue with you; but he shall be welcome, if he comes. I hope,
however, that he will not go to the cottage--"
"My dear, I have a funeral this morning. I wish you would not disturb my
mind with these trifles."
"Trifles! Who is dead? You did not tell me."
"Poor Judd's baby, of course. We have spoken of it often enough, I am
sure."
"Oh yes, of course. Poor Tom Judd!" exclaimed Mrs. Ambrose with genuine
sympathy. "It seems to me you are always burying his babies, Augustin!
It is very sad."
"Not always, my dear. Frequently," said the vicar correcting her. "It is
very sad, as you say. Very sad. You took so much trouble to help them
this time, too."
"Trouble!" Mrs. Ambrose cast up her eyes. "You don't know how much
trouble. But I am quite sure it was the fault of that brazen-faced
doctor. I cannot bear the sight of him! That comes of answering
advertisements in the newspapers."
The present doctor had bought the practice abandoned by Mrs. Ambrose's
son-in-law. He had paid well for it, but his religious principles had not
formed a part of the bargain.
"It is of no use to cry over spilt milk, my dear."
"I do not mean to. No, I never do. But it is very unpleasant to have such
people about. I really hope Tom Judd will not lose his next baby. When
is John coming?"
"To-morrow. My dear, if I forget it this morning, will you remember to
speak to Reynolds about the calf?"
"Certainly, Augustin," said his wife. Therewith the good vicar left her
and went to bury Tom Judd's baby, divided in his mind between rejoicing
over his favourite pupil's success and lamenting, as he sincerely did,
the misfortunes which befell his parishioners. When he left the
churchyard an hour later he was met by Martha, who came from the cottage
with a message begging that the vicar would come to Mrs. Goddard as soon
as possible. Martha believed her mistress was ill, she wanted to see Mr.
Ambrose at once. Without returning to the vicarage he turned to the left
towards the cottage.
Mrs. Goddard had slept that night, being exhausted and almost broken down
with fatigue. But she woke only to a sense of the utmost pain and
distress, realising that to-day's anxiety was harder to bear than
yesterday's, and that to-morrow might bring forth even worse disasters
than those which had gone before. Her position was one of extreme doubt
and peril. To tell any one that her husband was in the neighbourhood
seemed to be equivalent to rooting out the very last remnant of
consideration for him which remained in her heart, the very last trace of
what had once been the chief joy and delight of her life. She hesitated
long. There is perhaps nothing in human nature more enduring than the
love of man and wife; or perhaps one should rather say than the love of a
woman for her husband. There appear to be some men capable of being so
completely estranged from their wives that there positively does not
remain in them even the faintest recollection of what they have once
felt, nor the possibility of feeling the least pity for what the women
they once loved so well may suffer. There is no woman, I believe, who
having once loved her husband truly, could see him in pain or distress,
or in danger of his life, without earnestly endeavouring to help him. A
woman may cease to love her husband; in some cases she is right in
forgetting her love, but it would be hard to find a case where, were he
the worst criminal alive, had he deceived her a thousand times, she would
not at least help him to escape from his pursuers or give him a crust to
save him from starvation.
Mary Goddard had done her best for the wretch who had claimed her
assistance. She had fed him, provided him with money, refused to betray
him. But if it were to be a question of giving him up to the law, or of
allowing her best friend to be murdered by him, or even seriously
injured, she felt that pity must be at an end. It would be doubtless a
very horrible thing to give him up, and she had gathered from what he had
said that if he were taken he would pay the last penalty of the law. It
was so awful a thing that she groaned when she thought of it. But she
remembered his ghastly face in the starlight and the threat he had hissed
out against the squire; he was a desperate man, with blood already on his
hands. It was more than likely that he would do the deed he had
threatened to do. What could be easier than to watch the squire on one of
those evenings when he went up the park alone, to fall upon him and take
his life? Of late Mr. Juxon did not even take his dog with him. The
savage bloodhound would be a good protector; but even when he took
Stamboul with him by day, he never brought him at night. It was too long
for the beast to wait, he used to say, from six to nine or half past; he
was so savage that he did not care to leave him out of his sight; he
brought mud into the cottage, or into the vicarage as the case might
be--if Stamboul had been an ordinary dog it would have been different.
Those Russian bloodhounds were not to be trifled with. But the squire
must be warned of his danger before another night came on.
It was a difficult question. Mrs. Goddard at first thought of telling him
herself; but she shrank from the thought, for she was exhausted and
overwrought. A few days ago she would have been brave enough to say
anything if necessary, but now she had no longer the courage nor the
strength. It seemed so hard to face the squire with such a warning; it
seemed as though she were doing something which would make her seem
ungrateful in his eyes, though she hardly knew why it seemed so. She
turned more naturally to the vicar, to whom she had originally come in
her first great distress; she had only once consulted him, but that one
occasion seemed to establish a precedent in her mind, the precedent of a
thing familiar. It would certainly be easier. After much thought and
inward debate, she determined to send for Mr. Ambrose.
The fatigue and anxiety she had undergone during the last two days had
wrought great changes in her face. A girl of eighteen or twenty years may
gain delicacy and even beauty from the physical effects of grief, but a
woman over thirty years old gains neither. Mrs. Goddard's complexion,
naturally pale, had taken a livid hue; her lips, which were never very
red, were almost white; heavy purple shadows darkened her eyes; the two
or three lines that were hardly noticeable, but which were the natural
result of a sad expression in her face, had in two days become distinctly
visible and had almost assumed the proportions of veritable wrinkles. Her
features were drawn and pinched--she looked ten years older than she was.
Nothing remained of her beauty but her soft waving brown hair and her
deep, pathetic, violet eyes. Even her small hands seemed to have grown
thin and looked unnaturally white and transparent.
She was sitting in her favourite chair by the fire, when the vicar
arrived. She had not been willing to seem ill, in spite of what Martha
had said, and she had refused to put cushions in the chair. She was
making an effort, and even a little sense of physical discomfort helped
to make the effort seem easier. She was so much exhausted that she felt
she must not for one moment relax the tension she imposed upon herself
lest her whole remaining strength should suddenly collapse and leave her
at the mercy of events. But Mr. Ambrose was startled when he saw her and
feared that she was very ill.
"My dear Mrs. Goddard," he said, "what is the matter? Are you ill? Has
anything happened?"
As he spoke he changed the form of his question, suddenly recollecting
that Mr. Juxon had probably on the previous afternoon told her of her
husband's escape, as he had meant to do. This might be the cause of her
indisposition.
"Yes," she said in a voice that did not sound like her own, "I have asked
you to come because I am in great trouble--in desperate trouble."
"Dear me," said the vicar, "I hope not!"
"Not desperate? Perhaps not. Dear Mr. Ambrose, you have always been so
kind to me--I am sure you can help me now." Her voice trembled.
"Indeed I will do my best," said the vicar who judged from so unusual an
outburst that there must be really something wrong. "If you could tell me
what it is--" he suggested.
"That is the hardest part of it," said the unhappy woman. She paused a
moment as though to collect her strength. "You know," she began again,
"that my husband has escaped?"
"A terrible business!" exclaimed the good man, nodding, however, in
affirmation to the question she asked.
"I have seen him," said Mary Goddard very faintly, looking down at her
thin hands. The vicar started in astonishment.
"My dear friend--dear me! Dear, dear, how very painful!"
"Indeed, you do not know what I have suffered. It is most dreadful, Mr.
Ambrose. You cannot imagine what a struggle it was. I am quite worn out."
She spoke with such evident pain that the vicar was moved. He felt that
she had more to tell, but he had hardly recovered from his surprise.
"But, you know," he said, "that was the whole object of warning you. We
did not really believe that he would come here. We were so much afraid
that he would startle you. Of course Mr. Juxon told you he consulted
me--"
"Of course," answered Mrs. Goddard. "It was too late. I had seen him the
night before."
"Why, that was the very night we were here!" exclaimed Mr. Ambrose, more
and more amazed. Mrs. Goddard nodded. She seemed hardly able to speak.
"He came and knocked at that window," she said, very faintly. "He came
again last night."
"Dear me--I will send for Gall at once; he will have no difficulty in
arresting him--"
"Oh please!" interrupted Mrs. Goddard in hysterical tones. "Please,
please, dear Mr. Ambrose, don't!"
The vicar was silent. He rose unceremoniously from his chair and walked
to the window, as he generally did when in any great doubt. He realised
at once and very vividly the awful position in which the poor lady was
placed.
"Pray do not think I am very bad," said she, almost sobbing with fear and
emotion. "Of course it must seem dreadful to you that I should wish him
to escape!"
The vicar came slowly back and stood beside her leaning against the
chimney-piece. It did not take him long to make up his mind. Kind-hearted
people are generally impulsive.
"I do not, my dear lady. I assure you I fully understand your position.
The fact is, I was too much surprised and I am too anxious for your
safety not to think immediately of securing that--ahem--that unfortunate
man."
"Oh, it is not my safety! It is not only my safety--"
"I understand--yes--of course you are anxious about him. But it is
doubtless not our business to aid the law in its course, provided we do
not oppose it."
"It is something else," murmured Mrs. Goddard. "Oh! how shall I tell
you," she moaned turning her pale cheek to the back of the chair.
The vicar looked at her and began to think it was perhaps some strange
case of conscience with which he had to deal. He had very little
experience of such things save in the rude form they take among the
labouring classes. But he reflected that it was likely to be something of
the kind; in such a case Mrs. Goddard would naturally enough have sent
for him, more as her clergyman than as her friend. She looked like a
person suffering from some great mental strain. He sat down beside her
and took her passive hand. He was moved, and felt as though he might have
been her father.
"My dear," he said kindly, almost as though he were speaking to a child,
"have you anything upon your mind, anything which distresses you? Do you
wish to tell me? If so I will do my very best to help you."
Mrs. Goddard's fingers pressed his hand a little, but her face was still
turned away.
"It is Mr. Juxon," she almost whispered. If she had been watching the
vicar she would have noticed the strange air of perplexity which came
over his face when he heard the squire's name.
"Yes--Mr. Juxon," she moaned. Then the choked-down horror rose in her
throat. "Walter means to murder him!" she almost screamed. "Oh, my God,
my God, what shall I do!" she cried aloud clasping her hands suddenly
over her face and rocking herself to and fro.
The vicar was horror-struck; he could hardly believe his ears, and
believing them his senses swam. In his wildest dreams--and the good man's
dreams were rarely wild--he had never thought that such things could come
near him. Being a very good man and, moreover, a wise man when he had
plenty of time for reflection, he folded his hands quietly and bent his
head, praying fervently for the poor tortured woman who moaned and tossed
herself beside him. It was a terrible moment. Suddenly she controlled
herself and grasping one of the arms of the chair looked round at her
silent companion.
"You must save him," she said in agonised tones, "you must save them
both! Do not tell me you cannot--oh, do not tell me that!"
It was a passionate and heart-broken appeal, such a one as few men would
or could resist, coming as it did from a helpless and miserably unhappy
woman. Whether the vicar was wise in giving the answer he did, it would
be hard to say: but he was a man who honestly tried to do his best.
"I will try, my dear lady," he said, making a great resolution. Mrs.
Goddard took his hand and pressed it in both of hers, and the long
restrained tears flowed fast and softly over her worn cheeks. For some
moments neither spoke.
"If you cannot save both--you must save--Mr. Juxon," she said at last,
breathing the words rather than speaking them.
The vicar knew or guessed what it must cost her to hint that her husband
might be captured. He recognised that the only way in which he could
contribute towards the escape of the convict was by not revealing his
hiding-place, and he accordingly refrained from asking where he was
concealed. He shuddered as he thought that Goddard might be lying hidden
in the cottage itself, for all he could tell, but he was quite sure that
he ought not to know it. So long as he did not know where the forger was,
it was easy to hold his peace; but if once he knew, the vicar was not
capable of denying the knowledge. He had never told a lie in his life.
"I will try," he repeated; and growing calmer, he added, "You are
quite sure this was not an empty threat, my dear friend? Was there any
reason--a--I mean to say, had this unfortunate man ever known Mr. Juxon?"
"Oh no!" answered Mrs. Goddard, sinking back into her chair. "He never
knew him." Her tears were still flowing but she no longer sobbed aloud;
it had been a relief to her overwrought and sensitive temperament to give
way to the fit of weeping. She actually felt better, though ten minutes
earlier she would not have believed it possible.
"Then--why?" asked Mr. Ambrose, hesitating.
"My poor husband was a very jealous man," she answered. "I accidentally
told him that the cottage belonged to Mr. Juxon and yesterday--do you
remember? You walked on with Mr. Juxon beyond the turning, and then he
came back to see me--to tell me of my husband's escape. Walter saw that
and--and he thought, I suppose--that Mr. Juxon did not want you to see
him coming here."
"But Mr. Juxon had just promised me to go and see you," said the honest
vicar.
"Yes," said poor Mrs. Goddard, beginning to sob again, "but Walter--my
husband--thinks that I--I care for Mr. Juxon--he is so jealous," cried
she, again covering her face with her hands. The starting tears trickled
through her fingers and fell upon her black dress. She was ashamed, this
time, for she hated even to speak of such a possibility.
"I understand," answered Mr. Ambrose gravely. It certainly did not strike
him that it might be true, and his knowledge of such characters as Walter
Goddard was got chiefly from the newspapers. He had often noticed in
reports of trials and detailed descriptions of crimes that criminals seem
to become entirely irrational after a certain length of time, and it was
one of the arguments he best understood for demonstrating that bad men
either are originally, or ultimately become mad. To men like the vicar,
almost the only possible theory of crime is the theory of insanity. It is
positively impossible for a man who has passed thirty or forty years in a
quiet country parish to comprehend the motives or the actions of great
criminals. He naturally says they must be crazy or they would not do such
things. If Goddard were crazy enough to commit a forgery, he was crazy
enough for anything, even to the extent of suspecting that his wife loved
the squire.
"I think," said Mr. Ambrose, "that if you agree with me it will be best
to warn Mr. Juxon of his danger."
"Of course," murmured Mrs. Goddard. "You must warn him at once!"
"I will go to the Hall now," said the vicar bravely. "But--I am very
sorry to have to dwell on the subject, my dear lady, but, without wishing
in the least to know where the--your husband is, could you tell me
anything about his appearance? For instance, if you understand what I
mean, supposing that Mr. Juxon knew how he looked and should happen to
meet him, knowing that he wished to kill him--he might perhaps avoid him,
if you understand me?"
The vicar's English was a little disturbed by his extreme desire not to
hurt Mrs. Goddard's feelings. If the squire and his dog chanced to meet
Walter Goddard they would probably not avoid him as the vicar expressed
it; that was a point Mr. Ambrose was willing to leave to Mrs. Goddard's
imagination.
"Yes--must you know?" she asked anxiously.
"We must know that," returned the vicar.
"He is disguised as a poor tramp," she said sorrowfully. "He wears a
smock-frock and an old hat I think. He is pale--oh, poor, poor Walter!"
she cried again bursting into tears.
Mr. Ambrose could say nothing. There was nothing to be said. He rose and
took his hat--the old tall hat he wore to his parishioners' funerals.
They were very primitive people in Billingsfield.
"I will go at once," he said. "Believe me, you have all my sympathy--I
will do all I can."
Mary Goddard thanked him more by her looks than with any words she was
able to speak. But she was none the less truly grateful for his sympathy
and aid. She had a kind of blind reliance on him which made her feel that
since she had once confided her trouble and danger nothing more could
possibly be done. When he was gone, she sobbed with relief, as before she
had wept for fear; she was hysterical, unstrung, utterly unlike herself.
But as the vicar went up towards the Hall he felt that he had his hands
full, and he felt moreover an uneasy sensation which he could not have
explained. He was certainly no coward, but he had never been in such a
position before and he did not like it; there was an air of danger about,
an atmosphere which gave him a peculiarly unpleasant thrill from time to
time. He was not engaged upon an agreeable errand, and he had a vague
feeling, due, the scientists would have told him, to unconscious
ratiocination, which seemed to tell him that something was going to
happen. People who are very often in danger know that singular uneasiness
which warns them that all is not well; it is not like anything else that
can be felt. No one really knows its cause, unless it be true that the
mind sometimes reasons for itself without the consciousness of the body,
and communicates to the latter a spasmodic warning, the result of its
cogitations.
To say to the sturdy squire, "Beware of a man in a smock-frock, one
Goddard the forger, who means to murder you," seemed of itself simple
enough. But for the squire to distinguish this same Goddard from all
other men in smock-frocks was a less easy matter. The vicar, indeed,
could tell a strange face at a hundred yards, for he knew every man,
woman and child in his parish; but the squire's acquaintance was more
limited. Obviously, said Mr. Ambrose to himself, the squire's best course
would be to stay quietly at home until the danger was passed, and to pass
word to Policeman Gall to lay hands on any particularly seedy-looking
tramps he happened to see in the village. It was Gall's duty to do so in
any case, as he had been warned to be on the look-out. Mr. Ambrose
inwardly wondered where the man could be hiding. Billingsfield was not,
he believed, an easy place to hide in, for every ploughman knew his
fellow, and a new face was always an object of suspicion. Not a gipsy
tinker entered the village but what every one heard of it, and though
tramps came through from time to time, it would be a difficult matter for
one of them to remain two days in the place without attracting a great
deal of attention. It was possible that Walter Goddard might have been
concealed for one night in his wife's house, but even there he could not
have remained hidden for two days without being seen by Mrs. Goddard's
two women servants. The vicar walked rapidly through the park, looking
about him suspiciously as he went. Goddard might at that very moment be
lurking behind any one of those oaks; it would be most unpleasant if he
mistook the vicar for the squire. But that, the vicar reflected, was
impossible on account of his clerical dress. He reached the Hall in
safety and stood looking down among the leafless trees, waiting for the
door to be opened.