A Tale of a Lonely Parish Part 22

"Because I was unfortunate!"

"Unfortunate!" repeated Mary G.o.ddard 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. G.o.ddard 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 G.o.ddard.

"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 G.o.ddard, thoughtfully. "I am almost sure he would. He is the justice of the peace here--he would be bound to."

"Do you know him?" G.o.ddard thought he detected a slight nervousness in his wife's manner.

"Very well. This house belongs to him."

"Oh!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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 G.o.ddard 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 pa.s.sage, 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. G.o.ddard 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 G.o.ddard was almost overcome with exhaustion. It was a terrible struggle to maintain her composure under such circ.u.mstances; 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 pa.s.s for a tramp."

There was a terrible earnestness in the simple statement, which did more to make Mary G.o.ddard 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. G.o.ddard 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. G.o.ddard 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 pa.s.sage 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. G.o.ddard, "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. G.o.ddard 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 a.s.sistance, he opened the door and went out into the pouring rain. The door shut behind him and Mary G.o.ddard heard his retreating footsteps on the path outside. When he was fairly gone she suddenly broke down, and falling upon her knees in the pa.s.sage 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 G.o.ddard 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 G.o.d he had not, she thought.

There were other things besides his crime of forgery which had acted far more powerfully upon Mary G.o.ddard's mind, and which had broken for ever all ties of affection; circ.u.mstances 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 impa.s.sable 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 partic.i.p.ating 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 a.s.sistance 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 pa.s.sed very quickly through her overwrought brain, as she knelt in the pa.s.sage; kneeling because she felt she could no longer stand, the pa.s.sionate 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 G.o.ddard 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 rea.s.sured. Mrs. G.o.ddard 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."