A Tale of a Lonely Parish Part 35

"C.J. JUXON.

_N.B._--I am not hurt."

Having ascertained that Reynolds was still in the kitchen, the missive was given to the old man with an injunction to use all speed, as the vicar might be going to bed and the note was important.

John, meanwhile, being left alone sat down near the wounded man's bed and waited, glancing at the flushed face and staring eyes from time to time, and wondering whether the fellow would recover. The young scholar had been startled by all that had occurred, and his ideas wandered back to the beginning of the evening, scarcely realising that a few hours ago he had not met Mrs. G.o.ddard, had not experienced a surprising change in his feelings towards her, had not witnessed the strange scene under the trees. It seemed as though all these things had occupied a week at the very least, whereas on that same afternoon he had been speculating upon his meeting with Mrs. G.o.ddard, calling up her features to his mind as he had last seen them, framing speeches which when the meeting came he had not delivered, letting his mind run riot in the delicious antic.i.p.ation of appearing before her in the light of a successful compet.i.tor for one of the greatest honours of English scholars.h.i.+p. And yet in a few hours all his feelings were changed, and to his infinite surprise, were changed without any suffering to himself; he knew well that, for some reason, Mrs. G.o.ddard had lost the mysterious power of making him blush, and of sending strange thrills through his whole nature when he sat at her side; with some justice he attributed his new indifference to the extraordinary alteration in her appearance, whereby she seemed now so much older than himself, and he forthwith moralised upon the mutability of human affairs, with all the mental fluency of a very young man whose affairs are still extremely mutable. He fell to musing on the accident in the park, wondering how he would have acted in Mr. Juxon's place, wondering especially what object could have led the wretched tramp to attack the squire, wondering too at the very great anxiety shown by Mrs. G.o.ddard.

As he sat by the bedside, the sick man suddenly moved and turning his eyes full upon John's face stared at him with a look of dazed surprise.

He thrust out his wounded hand, bound up in a white handkerchief through which a little blood was slowly oozing, and to John's infinite surprise he spoke.

"Who are you?" he asked in a strange, mumbling voice, as though he had pebbles in his mouth.

John started forward in his chair and looked intently at G.o.ddard's face.

"My name is Short," he answered mechanically. But the pa.s.sing flash of intelligence was already gone, and G.o.ddard's look became a gla.s.sy and idiotic stare. Still his lips moved. John came nearer and listened.

"Mary G.o.ddard! Mary G.o.ddard! Let me in!" said the sick man quite intelligibly, in spite of his uncertain tone. John uttered an exclamation of astonishment; his heart beat fast and he listened intently. The sick man mumbled inarticulate sounds; not another word could be distinguished.

John looked for the bell, thinking that Mr. Juxon should be informed of the strange phenomenon at once; but before he could ring the squire himself entered the room, having finished and despatched his note to Mr.

Ambrose.

"It is most extraordinary," said John. "He spoke just now--"

"What did he say?" asked Mr. Juxon very quickly.

"He said first, 'Who are you?' and then he said 'Mary G.o.ddard, let me in!' Is it not most extraordinary? How in the world should he know about Mrs. G.o.ddard?"

The squire turned a little pale and was silent for a moment. He had left John with the wounded man feeling sure that, for some time at least, the latter would not be likely to say anything intelligible.

"Most extraordinary!" he repeated presently. Then he looked at G.o.ddard closely, and turned him again upon his back and put his injured hand beneath the sheet.

"Do you understand me? Do you know who I am?" he asked in a loud tone close to his ear.

But the unfortunate man gave no sign of intelligence, only his inarticulate mumbling grew louder though not more distinct. Mr. Juxon turned away impatiently.

"The fellow is in a delirium," he said. "I wish the doctor would come."

He had hardly turned his back when the man spoke again.

"Mary G.o.ddard!" he cried. "Let me in!"

"There!" said John. "The same words!"

Mr. Juxon shuddered, and looked curiously at his companion; then thrust his hands into his pockets and whistling softly walked about the room.

John was shocked at what seemed in the squire a sort of indecent levity; he could not understand that his friend felt as though he should go mad.

Indeed the squire suffered intensely. The name of Mary G.o.ddard, p.r.o.nounced by the convict in his delirium brought home more vividly than anything could have done the relation between the wounded tramp and the woman the squire loved. It was positively true, then--there was not a shadow of doubt left, since this wretch lay there mumbling her name in his ravings! This was the husband of that gentle creature with sad pathetic eyes, so delicate, so refined that it seemed as though the coa.r.s.er breath of the world of sin and shame could never come near her--this was her husband! It was horrible. This was the father of lovely Nellie, too. Was anything wanting to make the contrast more hideous?

Mr. Juxon felt that it was impossible to foresee what Walter G.o.ddard might say in the course of another hour. He had often seen people in a delirium and knew how strangely that inarticulate murmuring sometimes breaks off into sudden incisive speech, astonis.h.i.+ng every one who hears.

The man had already betrayed that he knew Mary G.o.ddard; at the next interval in his ravings he might betray that she was his wife. John was still standing by the bedside, not having recovered from his astonishment; if John heard any more, he would be in possession of Mrs.

G.o.ddard's secret. The squire was an energetic man, equal to most emergencies; he suddenly made up his mind.

"Mr. Short," he said, "I will tell you something. You will see the propriety of being very discreet, in fact it is only to ensure your discretion that I wish to tell you this much. I have reason to believe that this fellow is a convict--do not be surprised--escaped from prison.

He is a man who once--was in love with Mrs. G.o.ddard, which accounts for his having found his way to Billingsfield. Yes--I know what you are going to say--Mrs. G.o.ddard is aware of his presence, and that accounts for her excitement and her fainting. Do you understand?"

"But--good heavens!" exclaimed John in amazement. "Why did she not give information, if she knew he was in the neighbourhood?"

"That would be more than could be expected of any woman, Mr. Short. You forget that the man once loved her."

"And how did you--well, no. I won't ask any questions."

"No," said the squire, "please don't. You would be placing me in a disagreeable position. Not that I do not trust you implicitly, Mr.

Short," he added frankly, "but I should be betraying a confidence. If this fellow dies here, he will be buried as an unknown tramp. I found no trace of a name upon his clothes. If he recovers, we will decide what course to pursue. We will do our best for him--it is a delicate case of conscience. Possibly the poor fellow would very much prefer being allowed to die; but we cannot let him. Humanity, for some unexplained reason, forbids euthanasia and the use of the hemlock in such cases."

"Was he sentenced for a long time?" asked John, very much impressed by the gravity of the situation.

"Twelve years originally, I believe. Aggravated by his escape and by his a.s.sault on me, his term might very likely be extended to twenty years if he were taken again."

"That is to say, if he recovers?" inquired John.

"Precisely. I do not think I would hesitate to send him back to prison if he recovered."

"I do not wonder you think he would rather die here, if he were consulted," said John. "It would not be murder to let him die peacefully--"

"In the opinion of the law it might be called manslaughter, though I do not suppose anything would be said if I had simply placed him here and omitted to call in a physician. He cannot live very long in this state, unless something is done for him immediately. Look at him."

There was no apparent change in G.o.ddard's condition. He lay upon his back staring straight upward and mumbling aloud with every breath he drew.

"He must have been ill, before he attacked me," continued Mr. Juxon, very much as though he were talking to himself. "He evidently is in a raging fever--brain fever I should think. That is probably the reason why he missed his aim--that and the darkness. If he had been well he would have killed me fast enough with that bludgeon. As you say, Mr. Short, there is no doubt whatever that he would prefer to die here, if he had his choice.

In my opinion, too, it would be far more merciful to him and to--to him in fact. Nevertheless, neither you nor I would like to remember that we had let him die without doing all we could to keep him alive. It is a very singular case."

"Most singular," echoed John.

"Besides--there is another thing. Suppose that he had attacked me as he did, but that I had killed him with my stick--or that Stamboul had made an end of him then and there. The law would have said it served him right--would it not? Of course. But if I had not quite killed him, or, as has actually happened, he survived the embraces of my dog, the law insists that I ought to do everything in my power to save the remnant of his life. What for? In order that the law may give itself the satisfaction of dealing with him according to its lights. I think the law is very greedy, I object to it, I think it is ridiculous from that point of view, but then, when I come to examine the thing I find that my own conscience tells me to save him, although I think it best that he should die. Therefore the law is not ridiculous. Pleasant dilemma--the impossible case! The law is at the same time ridiculous and not ridiculous. The question is, does the law deduce itself from conscience, or is conscience the direct result of existing law?"

The squire appeared to be in a strangely moralising mood, and John listened to him with some surprise. He could not understand that the good man was talking to persuade himself, and to concentrate his faculties, which had been almost unbalanced by the events of the evening.

"I think," said John with remarkable good sense, "that the instinct of man is to preserve life when he is calm. When a man is fighting with another he is hot and tries to kill his enemy; when the fight is over, the natural instinct returns."

"The only thing worth knowing in such cases is the precise point at which the fight may be said to be over. I once knew a young surgeon in India who thought he had killed a cobra and proceeded to extract the fangs in order to examine the poison. Unfortunately the snake was not quite dead; he bit the surgeon in the finger and the poor fellow died in thirty-five minutes."

"Dreadful!" said John. "But you do not think this poor fellow could do anything very dangerous now--do you?"

"Oh, dear me, no!" returned the squire. "I was only stating a case to prove that one is sometimes justified in going quite to the end of a fight. No indeed! He will not be dangerous for some time, if he ever is again. But, as I was saying, he must have been ill some time. Delirium never comes on in this way, so soon--"

Some one knocked at the door. It was Holmes, who came to say that the physician, Doctor Longstreet, had arrived.

"Oh--it is Doctor Longstreet is it?" said the squire. "Ask him to come up."