BESS MAKES A CONFESSION.
George, I want to tell you something.’
George and Bess were sitting upstairs in the little room which they
occupied in Heckett’s house. Josh had fallen into a doze, and Bess, who
had nursed him devotedly, had stolen upstairs to her husband, for her
mind was troubled.
She had been round to Mrs. Jarvis that morning, and Mrs. Jarvis had
started off down to the late Squire Heritage’s with a note for Gertie.
The sands of the old man’s life were running fast, and he yearned for
the presence of his granddaughter—‘Gertie’s gal,’ as he called her.
Bess had seen the Jarvises once or twice, for hers was not a nature to
forget such service as these simple, good-hearted people had rendered
her and her husband in their hour of peril.
Mr. Jarvis had emerged from his adventure with the police with flying
colours. They were unable to obtain the slightest proof that he had
ever thoroughly harboured the runaway, since he had boldly declared
that when the detectives had the confounded impudence to come searching
for convicts at his residence he had declared they should find one, and
so had donned the clothes which he had found in Mrs. Smith’s rooms.
‘Oh,’ said the Inspector, ‘then he was there?’
‘Of course he was,’ answered Mr. Jarvis; ‘the gentleman came to see his
wife, but he didn’t stop. I didn’t know as he was a conwick; he didn’t
come and say “Guvnor, I’m a conwick,” he dissembled, like willuns
always does in the dramer. I thought he was a respectable cove come
from a woyage.’
‘Then why didn’t you say he had been at your house when the officer
came with a warrant, instead of deceiving him?’
‘Deceiving him!’ exclaimed Mr. Jarvis; ‘me deceive the police! Get out,
guvuor! Why, I wouldn’t do it. I tell you, I put on the clos for to see
if they’d fit me, ’cos I’m a-going to play a conwick in a new drama
what my son wrote for the show. Clever boy he is, I can tell you; he’ll
be a writer for Drury Lane afore long.’
‘Nevermind about Drury Lane,’ said the Inspector. ‘Why did you deceive
the officer?’
‘I’m a cornin’ to it; you can’t have all five hacs at once, yer know.
Well, I was a-tryin’ on the clos, when my missus calls up as the
perlice is at the door. “This is hockard, I sez, goessin’ what they
wanted; ’blest if they won’t take me for the conwick!” So I hides under
the bed, not a-wantin’ for to be dragged through the streets for the
public to see the part gratis, as might interfere with the receipts,
’cos if the public can see you for nothink as a conwick they ain’t
likely for to pay, are they?’
It was in vain that the Inspector cross-examined the showman; the
latter stuck to his talc, and produced undoubted evidence of his
respectability.
‘Of course,’ said the Inspector, ‘we could charge you with being in
possession of the Government clothing, you know.’
Mr. Jarvis looked down the convict’s suit.
‘These the Government’s clothes!’ he exclaimed, with a comic look of
astonishment. ‘Well, I should advise the Government to change its
tailor.’
Mr. Jarvis was at last allowed to return to his home, but not before
Mrs. Jarvis had been sent for to bring him a suit to return in. The
convict’s dress was retained at the station, and Mr. Jarvis was
informed that he might go home, but he might be charged at any time.
The Inspector, who was a shrewd man, fancied that it was quite
possible, if there was collusion, by watching Mr. Jarvis, the police
might come upon the escaped felon.
But George never left Heckett’s house when once he got into it, and
Bess was so thickly veiled, and had so altered her style of dress, that
the men, who had only had an occasional glimpse of her once, quite
failed to recognise her as the convict’s wife on the one or two
occasions that she called at the Jarvises’.
Early on the morning on which the events to be narrated in this chapter
happened, Bess had been round, and despatched Mrs. Jarvis with a note
to Gertie, at Heritage Hall, bidding her accompany the messenger if she
would see her old grandfather alive.
‘George, I want to tell you something.’
George looked up.
‘What is it, my darling? No bad news, I hope?’
Bess put her arms round her husband’s neck.
‘I don’t think you’ll blame me, dear, for what I did. Now that unhappy
man is dead who caused us all our trouble, I think you will be glad. I
warned his wife, George, of what was going to be done.’
For a moment George looked doubtfully in his wife’s eyes. Then he
stooped down and kissed her tenderly.
‘Bess, my own faithful, long-suffering little wife, you might have
ruined all, but you obeyed the promptings of your woman’s heart. The
shadow of his fate cannot rest upon us now. We dragged no loving wife
through such misery as he dragged you.’
‘I did it for the best, George.’
‘I know it, my darling. It was God who sent you on your errand of
mercy: We shall but have to wait a little longer. God will lift the
stain from my name, and let the whole world see my innocence in His own
way. Something tells me that the days of our pilgrimage are nearly
over.’
Bess took her husband’s hand.
‘Do you remember, George, how we used to arrange in our old days,
before the trouble came, what we would do when we had made a fortune?’
George sighed.
‘Ah! they were happy days—happy dreams. But there may be a bright
future before us yet.’
Bess knew that George, in his heart of hearts, would approve what she
had done, but she dared not tell him before, lest it should seem that
she too was leagued with his enemies.
But when the news of Marston’s death came, she was thankful that no act
of theirs had helped him to his doom. She had seen Ruth but once, and
had read her goodness in her face.
The woman’s heart of George Heritage’s wife went over in sympathy to
the woman whose husband might one day be torn from her arms, and she
determined at least to warn her of the peril that encompassed them.
She thanked God all her life that she had done so, and she thanked God
that all his trouble and his great wrongs had not crushed out all
tenderness and human sympathy from the big, noble heart of George
Heritage, her husband and her idol.