Chapter 20

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_ CHAPTER XX

John Short was in absolute ignorance of what was occurring. He attributed Mrs. Goddard's anxiety to her solicitude for Mr. Juxon, and if he had found time to give the matter serious consideration, he would have argued very naturally that she was fond of the squire. It had been less easy than the latter had supposed to take her home and persuade her to stay there, for she was in a state in which she hardly understood reason. Nothing but John's repeated assurances to the effect that Mr. Juxon was not in the least hurt, and that he would send her word of the condition of the wounded tramp, prevailed upon her to remain at the cottage; for she had come back to consciousness before the dog-cart was fairly out of the park and had almost refused to enter her own home.

The catastrophe had happened, after eight and forty hours of suspense, and her position was one of extreme fear and doubt. She had indeed seen the squire at the very moment when she fainted, but the impression was uncertain as that of a dream, and it required all John's asseverations to persuade her that Mr. Juxon had actually met her and insisted that she should return to the cottage. Once there, in her own house, she abandoned herself to the wildest excitement, shutting herself into the drawing-room and refusing to see anyone; she gave way to all her sorrow and fear, feeling that if she controlled herself any longer she must go mad. Indeed it was the best thing she could do, for her nerves were overstrained, and the hysterical weeping which now completely overpowered her for some time, was the natural relief to her overwrought system. She had not the slightest doubt that the tramp of whom John had spoken, and whom he had described as badly hurt, was her husband; and together with her joy at Mr. Juxon's escape, she felt an intolerable anxiety to know Walter's fate. If in ordinary circumstances she had been informed that he had died in prison, it would have been absurd to expect her to give way to any expressions of excessive grief; she would perhaps have shed a few womanly tears and for some time she would have been more sad than usual; but she no longer loved him and his death could only be regarded as a release from all manner of trouble and shame and evil foreboding. With his decease would have ended her fears for poor Nellie, her apprehensions for the future in case he should return and claim her, the whole weight of her humiliation, and if she was too kind to have rejoiced over such a termination of her woes, she was yet too sensible not to have fully understood and appreciated the fact of her liberation and of the freedom given to the child she loved, by the death of a father whose return could bring nothing but disgrace. But now she did not know whether Walter were alive or dead. If he was alive he was probably so much injured as to preclude all possibility of his escaping, and he must inevitably be given up to justice, no longer to imprisonment merely, but by his own confession to suffer the death of a murderer. If on the other hand he was already dead, he had died a death less shameful indeed, but of which the circumstances were too horrible for his wife to contemplate, for he must have been torn to pieces by Stamboul the bloodhound.

She unconsciously comprehended all these considerations, which entirely deprived her of the power to weigh them in her mind, for her mind was temporarily loosed from all control of the reasoning faculty. She had borne much during the last three days, but she could bear no more; intellect and sensibility were alike exhausted and gave way together. There were indeed moments, intervals in the fits of hysteric tears and acute mental torture, when she lay quite still in her chair and vaguely asked herself what it all meant, but her disturbed consciousness gave no answer to the question, and presently her tears broke out afresh and she tossed wildly from side to side, or walked hurriedly up and down the room, wringing her hands in despair, sobbing aloud in her agony and again abandoning herself to the uncontrolled exaggerations of her grief and terror. One consolation alone presented itself at intervals to her confused intelligence; Mr. Juxon was safe. Whatever other fearful thing had happened, he was safe, saved perhaps by her warning--but what was that, if Walter had escaped death only to die at the hands of the hangman, or had found it in the jaws of that fearful bloodhound? What was the safety even of her best friend, if poor Nellie was to know that her father was alive, only to learn that he was to die again?

But human suffering cannot outlast human strength; as a marvellous adjustment of forces has ordered that even at the pole, in the regions of boundless and perpetual cold, the sea shall not freeze to the bottom, so there is also in human nature a point beyond which suffering cannot extend. The wildest emotions must expend themselves in time, the fiercest passions must burn out. At the end of two hours Mary Goddard was exhausted by the vehemence of her hysteric fear, and woke as from a dream to a dull sense of reality. She knew, now that some power of reflection was restored to her, that the squire would give her intelligence of what had happened, so soon as he was able, and she knew also that she must wait until the morning before any such message could reach her. She took the candle from the table and went upstairs. Nellie was asleep, but her mother felt a longing to look at her again that night, not knowing what misery for her child the morrow might bring forth.

Nellie lay asleep in her bed, her rich brown hair plaited together and thrown back across the pillow. The long dark fringes of her eyelashes cast a shade upon the transparent colour of her cheek, and the light breath came softly through her parted lips. But as Mary Goddard looked she saw that there were still tears upon her lovely face and that the pillow was still wet. She had cried herself to sleep, for Martha had told her that her mother was very ill and would not see her that night; Nellie was accustomed to say her prayers at her mother's knee every evening before going to bed, she was used to having her mother smooth her pillow and kiss her and put out her light, leaving her with sweet words, to wake her with sweet words on the next morning, and to-night she had missed all this and had been told moreover that her mother was very ill and was acting very strangely. She had gone to bed and had cried herself to sleep, and the tears were still upon her cheeks. Shading the light carefully from the child's eyes, Mary Goddard bent down and kissed her forehead once and then feeling that her sorrow was rising again she turned and passed noiselessly from the room.

But Nellie was dreaming peacefully and knew nothing of her mother's visit; she slept on not knowing that scarcely a quarter of a mile away her own father, whom she had been taught to think of as dead, was lying at the Hall, wounded and unconscious while half the detectives in the kingdom were looking for him. Had Nellie known that, her sleep would have been little and her dreams few.

There was little rest at the Hall that night. When Reynolds had driven John back to the great house he found his way to the kitchen and got his beer, and he became at once a centre of interest, being overwhelmed with questions concerning the events of the evening. But he was able to say very little except that while waiting before the cottage he had heard strange noises from the park, that Master John had run up the avenue, that Mrs. Goddard had taken Miss Nellie into the house and had then insisted upon being driven towards the Hall, that they had met Master John and the squire and that Mrs. Goddard had been "took wuss."

Meanwhile John entered the room where Mr. Juxon was watching over Walter Goddard. John looked pale and nervous; he had not recovered from the unpleasant sensation of being left alone with what he believed to be a dead body, in the struggling moonlight and the howling wind. He was by no means timid by nature, but young nerves are not so tough as old ones and he had felt exceedingly uncomfortable. He stood a moment within the room, then glanced at the bed and started with surprise.

"Why--he is not dead after all!" he exclaimed, and going nearer he looked hard at Goddard's flushed face.

"No," said Mr. Juxon, "he is not dead. He may be dying for all I know. I have sent for the doctor."

"Was he much hurt?" asked John, still looking at the sick man. "He looks to me as though he were in a fever."

"He does not seem so badly hurt. I cannot make it out at all. At first I thought he was badly frightened, but I cannot bring him to consciousness. Perhaps he has a fever, as you say. This is a most unpleasant experience, Mr. Short--your first night at the Hall, too. Of course I am bound to look after the man, as Stamboul did the damage--it would have served him right if he had been killed. It was a villainous blow he gave me--I can feel it still. The moral of it is that one should always wear a thick ulster when one walks alone at night."

"I did not know he struck you," said John in some surprise.

"Jumped out of the copse at the turning and struck at me with a bludgeon," said Mr. Juxon. "Knocked my hat off, into the bargain, and then ran away with Stamboul after him. If I had not come up in time there would have been nothing left of him."

"I should say the dog saved your life," remarked John, much impressed by the squire's unadorned tale. "What object can the fellow have had in attacking you? Strange--his eyes are open, but he does not seem to understand us."

Mr. Juxon walked to the bedside and contemplated the sick man's features with undisguised disgust.

"You villain!" he said roughly. "Why don't you answer for yourself?" The man did not move, and the squire began to pace the room. John was struck by Mr. Juxon's tone: it was not like him, he thought, to speak in that way to a helpless creature. He could not understand it. There was a long silence, broken only by the heavy breathing of Goddard.

"Really, Mr. Short," said the squire at last, "I have no intention of keeping you up all night. The village doctor must have been out. It may be more than an hour before my man finds another."

"Never mind," said John quietly. "I will wait till he comes at all events. You may need me before it is over."

"Do you think he looks as if he were going to die?" asked the squire doubtfully, as he again approached the bedside.

"I don't know," answered John, standing on the other side. "I never saw any one die. He looks very ill."

"Very ill. I have seen many people die--but somehow I have a strong impression that this fellow will live."

"Let us hope so," said John.

"Well--" The squire checked himself. Probably the hope he would have expressed would not have coincided with that to which John had given utterance. "Well," he repeated, "I daresay he will. Mr. Short, are you at all nervous? Since you are so good as to say you will wait until the doctor comes, would you mind very much being left alone here for five minutes?"

"No," answered John, stoutly, "not in the least." To be left in a well-lighted room by the bedside of Walter Goddard, ill indeed, but alive and breathing vigorously, was very different from being requested to watch his apparently dead body out in the park under the moonlight.

With a word of thanks, the squire left the room, and hastened to his study, where he proceeded to write a note, as follows:--

"MY DEAR MR. AMBROSE--The man we were speaking of yesterday morning actually attacked me this evening. Stamboul worried him badly, but he is not dead. He is lying here, well cared for, and I have sent for the doctor. If convenient to you, would you come in the morning? I need not recommend discretion.--Sincerely yours,

"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. Goddard, 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. Goddard, 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 anticipation of appearing before her in the light of a successful competitor for one of the greatest honours of English scholarship. 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. Goddard 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. Goddard.

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 Goddard's face.

"My name is Short," he answered mechanically. But the passing flash of intelligence was already gone, and Goddard's look became a glassy and idiotic stare. Still his lips moved. John came nearer and listened.

"Mary Goddard! Mary Goddard! 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 Goddard, let me in!' Is it not most extraordinary? How in the world should he know about Mrs. Goddard?"

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 Goddard 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 Goddard!" 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 Goddard, pronounced 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 coarser 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 Goddard 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, astonishing every one who hears. The man had already betrayed that he knew Mary Goddard; 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. Goddard'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. Goddard, which accounts for his having found his way to Billingsfield. Yes--I know what you are going to say--Mrs. Goddard 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 assault 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 Goddard'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." _

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