The woman had a queer and almost crazed look; was miserably clad,
with no bonnet on her head, and her hair covered with the “fluff”
which flies about factories and covers the workers. I am not sure if
she had any covering on her feet; if she had, it must have been some
soft material which gave out no more noise than her bare soles would
have done.
Added to this, she smelled strongly of whisky, though she was not in
any way intoxicated. She had come into the Office at the breakfast
hour, and patiently waited till I appeared, without enlightening any
one as to her business. “No one but Mr M^cGovan was of any use to
her,” she said; and when I appeared and heard her begin her strange
story I soon thought that I should be of no use to her either.
Her statements were so wild and improbable, and her delivery so
incoherent, that I speedily decided that if I was not conversing
with a mad woman I was at least beside one suffering from _delirium
tremens_. Her age seemed to be about twenty-five, and she was by no
means bad looking, had she not been such a miserable wreck.
“I want you to help me to hunt for my man,” she said, with perfect
self-possession. “My name is Janet Hanford, and I’m married—maybe
you’ll mind the name.”
I thought for a little—or appeared to do so—and then told her that
she had the advantage of me, for I did not remember the name.
“Your husband has run away from you, then?” I remarked, secretly not
at all surprised at his action.
“No, not that,” she answered, and it was then that I began to doubt
her sanity. “It was not running away. They told me he was dead and
buried, and I believed them; but I saw him to-day riding along in a
carriage with a grand lady—a new wife, as I suppose—and I want you to
hunt him out. I’m not so good as I should be, but I’m still his wife,
surely?”
“Surely,” I echoed, thinking it best to humour the maniac.
“You must know that though I’ve been in jail I’m not a bad woman,”
she continued. “If I had been, he’d have divorced me, or at least put
me away, for he was too poor to afford lawyer’s fees. He’s only a
factory worker like myself.”
“How can that be, when you told me just now that you saw him riding
in a carriage with a grand lady?” I asked, thinking to catch her up.
“That’s the mystery which I can’t understand,” she answered. “You are
to find out all about that. I did not see the lady’s face right, as
the carriage went by so fast, and I was horrified at seeing him, and
could scarcely take my eyes off him; but I know it was Dick Hanford,
my husband.”
“Some one resembling him in features,” I thought. “What were you put
in jail for, pray?” I added aloud.
“I was put in once or twice for drink,” she said, hanging her head a
little. “He wouldn’t pay the fines, and so I had to suffer. It’s my
only failing. I was brought up as a girl behind the bar, and I got
to take drink secretly till I couldn’t keep from it. Then I was put
away, and went into the factory. It’s down in Leith Walk. I used to
be called ‘the Beauty of the Mill,’ and all the men were daft about
me.”
“Good heavens!” was my mental exclamation; “daft about a creature
like this!”
“I could have had my choice of a dozen men, but I took Hanford,
though his wage was the poorest in the place,” she calmly continued.
“I suppose it was because I was daft about him. I’m that yet. I never
loved anybody else, and never can.”
“You said ‘once or twice for drink’—were you ever in jail for
anything else?” I asked, pretty sure that she had kept something back.
“Yes, I was in for two years. It’s only about nine months since I got
out. It was then they told me he was dead, and I believed them.”
“What were you put in for?”
She trembled and grew paler, and tears came into her eyes.
“I don’t remember much about it,” she hurriedly answered; “perhaps
you will. It was after one of my drinking fits. I was always
excitable after them; and they say I sharpened a knife and lay in
wait for him for a whole day and night, saying I meant to kill him. I
couldn’t have meant that, for I love him dearer than my own life. But
when he came he was stabbed, and taken to the Infirmary. They said
that I did it, and I suppose it’s true. I don’t remember doing it.
He was very badly hurt, and they thought he would die. That’s why I
was so long in prison before they tried me. If he had died I should
have wished to be hanged, so as to be done with everything. You look
frightened. Does it seem horrible for me to say these things, when
they are true?”
“They do not sound nice from a woman’s lips,” I gravely replied. “I
remember your case now. You hid in the loft of the factory for two
days after stabbing him, and it was I who had the hunting for you. I
thought it a very bad case at the time, and I remember your husband
in Court giving a picture of your domestic life which would have
melted a heart of stone. I suppose my plain speaking horrifies you
quite as much as yours does me?”
“No; everybody speaks that way, so I suppose I must bear it, though
I don’t feel so bad as people think me,” she answered, with a
despairing ring in her tones. “If I hadn’t been brought up in a
public house, and so learned to drink, I might have been in a very
different position. Everybody is against me, and sometimes I feel as
if I was against myself.”
“There was a child, too, I think,” I continued. “Didn’t you injure it
in some way, or ill-treat it? I forget the particulars now.”
“Its leg was broken,” she answered, with a quiver in her voice, and
tears again filling her lustrous eyes. “I think the doctor said he
would never walk right if he lived, because it was the thigh that
was broken. It was hurt about the head too. Perhaps it fell down the
stairs and hurt itself. Some of them believed that I flung it down.
I don’t think I could have done that, though I was at the top of the
stair when they picked him up. I don’t remember anything about it.”
“And what has become of the child?” I asked in a low tone, not sure
whether to feel overwhelmed with horror or pity.
“They told me he was dead too when I came out, but perhaps they’ve
told a lie about that too. Perhaps he’s living, and only hidden from
me as Hanford has been. That’s more work for you. I have no money,
and I must have justice. If he is alive, he is bound to support me;
and if he has married that grand lady, he must go to prison for
bigamy.”
Broken and lost though she was, she seemed to know the law pretty
well, but I thought there was little chance of it coming to an appeal
of that kind.
“Who told you that your husband was dead?” I asked.
“His mother. That was when I came out of prison. I went home, of
course, but I found the house let to strangers, and was told it had
been so for two years. Then I went to his mother’s, and she would
scarcely let me in, or speak to me. She has an awful hatred to me. At
last she let me in, and told me he was dead.”
“And you believed it without further inquiry?”
“No, I didn’t believe it at all at first; but then she got out a
certificate from the registrar and showed it to me. I read his name
on it with my own eyes—Richard Hanford. If he isn’t dead, that name
must have been forged. You’ll maybe have to take her for that. I
shouldn’t be sorry at that, for she has caused me many an unhappy
hour.”
Here was a case altogether uncommon. It is usual for injured persons,
not the injurers, to seek our aid.
“You would like your husband to be put in prison too, if he is alive,
and yet you fancy you love him?” I remarked. “It’s a queer kind of
love which seeks a revengeful retaliation like that. I’ve seen women
sunk in degradation of the deepest kind who would make the blush rise
to your cheek.”
The crimson rose to her face there and then under the taunt.
“I don’t wish him any ill, but I am his wife, and he has deserted me
and thrown me off, and I want you to find him. I want to try to do
better, and live a different life. I want to deserve that he should
love me; and I will not allow him to have the love of another while I
am his wife.”
“I am afraid you have made some strange mistake,” I hastened to
observe. “Your husband is probably dead, and beyond the reach of
your love or your neglect. The gentleman you saw in a carriage
possibly resembled him strongly—such cases often come under our
notice. Mistaken identity? why, it’s as common as day. We had a
woman here the other day who insisted upon us arresting a man whom
she alleged was her husband, and she would not be convinced till
he brought his father and mother and a whole host of relatives to
prove that he was another man altogether, and had never been married
in his life. And even supposing your husband were alive, how could
you prevent him loving another? To retain a man’s love is even more
difficult than to win it, and can never be done by running a knife
into him, or throwing dishes at his head.”
“I did not do that; it was the drink did it,” she tearfully pleaded.
“He said I would never be better till the grave closed over me. You
heard him say so at the trial. But I think there’s a chance for me
yet. It’s a dreadful struggle to keep away from drink, but I win the
battle sometimes. No one knows what I have fought against; and I’m
so poor, and despised, and wretched now that nobody cares to ask. If
I were a black savage in a far off country, they’d send missionaries
to me and give me every comfort and help; but I’m only a white savage
living in Scotland; and I tell you I’m _not_ mistaken about seeing
my man. I could not be mistaken. I saw him alive and well in that
carriage as sure as there’s a God in heaven.”
“How could a poor factory worker like him rise to such a position?” I
incredulously remarked.
“I don’t know, but there he was sitting by the lady’s side and
looking as happy as he used to look when he was courting me; and he
saw me too, and turned as white as death at the sight. Perhaps he
thought I should die in prison for want of drink, and so married
again without waiting to see. I thought of going to his mother’s and
asking if he was really dead; but then I changed my mind, and came
here. It would be better for you to go; you know better how to get at
the truth.”
“You charge him with deserting you and marrying another woman?” I
said, scarcely able to restrain myself.
To this she replied with a wavering affirmative, and then she
produced the certificates of her marriage and of the birth of her
child, and gave me the address of her mother-in law. She then
described minutely the place and circumstances of the meeting with
her husband’s counterpart, and left the Office. She left her own
address also, but I had no expectation of ever needing that. It
seemed to me that the supposed fraud, forgery, and bigamy were
entirely the offspring of her own drink-sodden brain, and that to
ascertain that her husband was dead and buried would be so simple a
matter that there was not the slightest occasion for her putting the
task upon us. Still I remember thinking—“If the man is really alive,
I hope he will really be nimble enough to escape me. It would be an
actual blessing to such a man if the jade fell downstairs and broke
her neck.”
In the afternoon I went to the address of the mother. The house
was a small one in Greenside, but the woman appeared a respectable
widow, and I found her quietly preparing the supper of her sons, two
of whom supported her. She seemed a superior person to be in such
a situation; and noting that fact I guessed that her son, though a
poor worker, must have had some natural refinement. I told her I had
called to make some inquiries about her son, and she probably thought
I meant one of the younger members of her family, for she smiled
brightly, and invited me to enter. While I accepted the offer I
studied her quiet and somewhat shadowed features, and quickly decided
that I had before me a woman who, if she had occasion, could throw as
many obstacles in my way as any one who ever hampered a detective.
“It is your son Richard, I mean,” I quietly continued, as I sat down
at the clean little fireplace.
The mother gave a great start, and I saw the hands busy at the supper
grow suddenly tremulous. She looked at me, too, but it was not so
much a look of surprise as of searching inquiry or suspicion.
“What about him?” she cautiously returned, when she had recovered
somewhat.
“I want to know where he lives, what he does, and all about him,” I
quickly answered. I fully expected her to blurt out, possibly with
tears, that her son was dead, but no such words rose to her lips. She
stared at me keenly for a moment or two, as if trying to discover
from my appearance what was the nature of my occupation, and then she
said—
“What are you? a sheriff-officer or something of that kind?”
“Something of that kind,” I lightly returned. “Now, about your son
Richard. Is it true that he is dead?”
“I suppose that fiend that he married has sent ye here?” she said
with great energy; “but if she has, ye’ll get naething oot o’ me.”
“Well, but you told her he was dead,” I persisted; “either he is dead
or he is not.”
“Ay.”
“And you showed her a certificate of death bearing his name?”
“Did I?”
“If you altered that name you committed a felony, and are liable to
arrest and imprisonment.”
“Am I? I’m no feared,” she answered, with a sneer and a toss of the
head.
“Will you let me see that certificate?”
“Humph! will I, indeed! Ye’ll see nae papers here, I can tell ye.”
“We can force it.”
“Force awa’ then—naebody’s hinderin’ ye.”
“Come, come now—it is quite evident to me that you have something to
conceal,” I said, fairly baffled.
“Everybody has,” she grimly returned.
“Perhaps your son has paid you to be silent?”
A flashing look was the answer; it said scornfully—“As if that would
be necessary!”
“Did you forge the certificate?”
“Humph!” The grunt was utterly derisive of me and my powers. After
trying her for nearly half an hour I gave the old woman up in despair
and left, determined to overhaul the books of the registrar for the
district. I did so for a period extending over the two years, but
could find no record of such a death. I had not expected to find
it. The strange reticence of the mother had convinced me that I had
misjudged the broken wife, and that the man was really alive. My
visit to the registrar was productive of one discovery, however,
which pointed to a solution to one mystery. I found recorded the
death of one Richard Hanford, aged 58 years, spouse of the old woman
who had proved so intractable under my questioning. By referring to
the broken wife I discovered that she had never thought of looking
at the _age_ of the deceased as recorded in the certificate; and
I had a strong suspicion that it had been the certificate of the
father’s death which had been shown her, with a view to severing the
connection for ever.
Back I went to the old woman’s home, only to find her flown, and the
house shut up and empty. She had taken alarm, then, and deemed flight
the most easy way out of her difficulties.
I had now no clue whatever to the discovery of Hanford, and, truth to
tell, was not sorry. I heartily hoped that he, too, had taken alarm
and left the city, and that I should thus hear no more of the case.
But the broken wife, from the hour of the first meeting, had never
rested. She was continually on the prowl, never going to her work,
seldom eating or sleeping, and almost forgetting to drink. The result
was that one night, in watching a quiet hotel or boarding-house at
the West End, she saw a man come out and hurry towards a waiting
cab, and flew across and pinned him in her arms with his foot on the
steps.
“Dick! Dick Hanford! look at me and say why you have tried to make me
believe you were dead?” she cried in frenzied tones.
The man was alone, and did not seem greatly surprised, though he was
labouring under great excitement and emotion.
“Call me John Ferguson,” he said, tremulously, without trying to push
her off or escape. “Dick Hanford is dead—dead to everyone.”
“Not to me, for I am still your wife,” she excitedly returned. “Oh,
Dick! I am bad and weak, and foolish—maybe mad at times—but I love
you; and I want to be better, and get back my bairn that they say I
nearly killed. I think it would keep me from falling. Oh, give me one
more chance! I thought you were both in the grave, and that I had put
you there, but when I found you alive a new life seemed to spring up
in me.”
“Call me John Ferguson—Dick Hanford is dead,” he still answered, in
low husky tones.
He dismissed the cab, and motioned to the broken wife to follow him
out to the dark road beyond the city, where they could converse
unseen and unheard. He would not say he was married to another woman,
nor would he admit that he was Hanford, or this broken woman’s
husband; though his grave, earnest manner, his gentleness, and
every thrill of his voice, convinced her of his identity, if such
convincing had been needed.
“I am nothing to you, or you to me,” he said; and with a pang she
noticed that he never even touched her or offered her his arm.
“We are strangers; our ways are different—far apart; just as much
sundered as if we were both dead, and buried at different sides of
the globe. But I have money now, and I am willing to give you that,
if it will do you any good, just to relieve my own mind, if you will
let me go in peace. Why should we fight over a dead past? Say how
much you want, and it shall be yours, though it should be every penny
I own.”
“I don’t want money, but the bairn I nearly killed,” cried the
weeping wife. “Money would curse me, but the bairn might lift me up.
I’m not the first lost woman who has been pulled up to heaven by a
bairn’s wee hand.”
“That can never be,” said the husband, decidedly. “More likely you
would drag him down with you. Be content with the ill you’ve done.
Freddy is dead.”
“I don’t believe it,” screamed the broken wife. “He is hidden from
me, not dead. I will make a bargain with you. If your love for me
is dead, go your way in peace, but leave me the bairn. I’ll sell my
rights for him. Is it a bargain? or must I put you in prison?”
“You can do neither,” was the agitated reply. “You cannot put me in
prison, and you cannot touch the boy. You will never see him again.
He is far beyond your reach.”
They quarrelled over that point, and had to separate without an
arrangement. Janet Hanford came to me the same night, demanding that
I should arrest the “bigamist,” as she declared him to be, and also
hunt out her boy, wherever he was hidden, as the care of the child
would legally fall to her, who had committed no offence against the
moral law. A light task, certainly!
In the first place, I found that the accused persisted that he
was not Richard Hanford, but John Ferguson. He had been at the
Cape for nearly two years, so he had no one to whom he could refer
in confirmation of his statement. He was very hazy as to his
antecedents. He had prospered at the Cape, he admitted, but would
not say that the money he now possessed had come to him by marriage;
he would not admit that he was married at all to the lady who
accompanied him, though it was proved that at the private hotel at
which they resided they were known as Mr and Mrs Ferguson. The lady
herself, being referred to, declined to say whether she was married
or not; and when _she_ took up that position, I need not say that our
chance of bringing home to him a charge of bigamy became poor indeed.
Then there remained the charge of desertion, but that could scarcely
be brought forward, seeing that the wife had been in prison, serving
a term of two years, while he had been away at the Cape and had but
recently returned, and so might be supposed not to know that she was
alive.
But the weaker Janet Hanford’s case grew, the more determined
and desperate she seemed to become. John Ferguson’s wife had a
maid-servant to attend her, and Janet Hanford appears to have
taken to watching the girl. One forenoon, when the case was at its
most critical point—that is, when there were evidences that John
Ferguson and his wife would soon be out of the country—the broken
wife saw this girl leave the hotel with two letters in her hand.
The girl walked rapidly along Princes Street, with the intention of
posting them at the General Post Office; but before she had gone two
divisions, Janet Hanford became a highway robber, by snatching the
letters from her hand and vanishing like magic. One of the letters
was addressed to “Master Frederick Hanford,” at a boarding-school
some miles from the city; and almost before the amazed girl got back
to her master, Janet Hanford was in a railway carriage and speeding
towards that school.
The letter she had stolen proved beyond a doubt that John Ferguson
was Richard Hanford, and father of the boy, and also revealed the
fact that it had been Hanford’s intention to remove the boy in a day
or two, as he was “leaving the country.” Janet Hanford stopped all
that by taking a policeman with her, and demanding that the boy—who
readily recognised her as his mother—should be delivered up to her.
The grief and consternation of the father were terrible to behold,
and we had now the singular case of two persons charging each other
with a crime, and each demanding the other’s arrest.
Hanford made the most strenuous attempts to get back the custody of
his boy—who was lame and rather weakly—but failed completely, though
he had money and lawyers to help him. An inquiry had been by that
time despatched to the Cape, to ascertain whether the so-called John
Ferguson had been legally married to Rosa Gladwin, the girl who in
Scotland had passed as his wife. In anticipation of the answer to
that question being against him, Hanford redoubled his exertions to
quicken the slow processes of law which were to give him charge of
his boy; but with almost the same result as if he had single-handed
tried to push on some great Juggernaut. The ponderous thing moved
none the faster, but all the heat and turmoil and excitement fell to
Hanford. He was continually running between his temporary home and
his lawyers, and in one of these races he caught a chill which he
“had not time to attend to.”
When the pain became unbearable, he was forced to lie down and send
for a doctor. By that time he was almost delirious and in a high
fever. The doctor pronounced the trouble inflammation of the lungs,
and the case critical.
The moment Janet Hanford heard of the illness she came to see her
husband, bringing with her the boy, whom she had hitherto kept
studiously out of sight. She was loud in her self-recriminations. She
blamed herself for the calamity; in grovelling grief cried aloud to
heaven to witness her vow, that if Hanford’s life were only spared
she would restore his boy, suffer him to leave the country with his
father, and nevermore seek to molest either, or wish for anything
but their welfare and happiness. The cry was vain; the resolve came
too late. Hanford scarcely knew her, and appeared to be living the
misfortunes of his life over again; for when his eye did light on
her face, he implored those present to take her from him, or at
least to save the boy from her remorseless hands. In a day or two he
died, to the very last turning from her with aversion, and speaking
of his other attendant as his true and only wife, and denouncing
Janet Hanford as a curse to herself and all mankind. Of course these
delirious utterances could not be taken for his real feelings;
indeed, his second wife afterwards assured Janet that the love he
bore her was greater than that which he had conceived for herself—it
was merely the outside shell of wretchedness and debauchery which
he loathed and detested. There was no more concealment of the truth
then. It was freely admitted that Hanford had married again out at
the Cape, getting a rich settler’s daughter and a little fortune by
the union, as well as the unselfish devotion of a woman who knew the
whole of his past life, and yet did not hesitate to sacrifice her all
for his sake. A strange result sprang from that death-bed scene. The
second wife imbibed a strong affection for the lame boy, and could
not think of parting with him; at the same time a feeling of pity
grew up in her breast for the broken wife, who was so prostrated by
her great loss that for weeks her life was despaired of. Rosa Gladwin
nursed her through it all, and, I suppose, must have discovered in
her some good qualities which were hidden from ordinary onlookers,
for when Mrs Hanford fairly recovered they did not separate. At first
Rosa offered to provide for her by settling on her an annuity quite
sufficient for her wants, but the proposal was never carried out.
They went out to the Cape together, and no sisters could have been
more firmly bound together in affection. Neither of them ever married
again, but their lives have been spent in watching the development of
Hanford’s son, who is no longer a lame boy, but a strong man, bidding
fair to leave a big mark in the world’s history. The most singular
thing in the case, however, is the fact that Janet Hanford left her
drunkenness and debasement in the grave which swallowed her husband.
Truly there is hope for all, even for the White Savage.