Chapter 16.

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_ CHAPTER XVI.

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. _

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