A Tale of a Lonely Parish

by F. Marion Crawford

"No," said Mr. Juxon firmly. "It would be an intolerable ordeal for the poor woman. I think I see your objection. Perhaps you think that Mrs. Ambrose—"

"Exactly, Mrs. Ambrose," echoed the vicar with a grim smile.

"Oh precisely—then I will do it," said the squire. And he forthwith did, and was very much surprised at the result.

CHAPTER XV.

It was late in the afternoon when Mr. Juxon walked down towards the cottage, accompanied by the vicar. In spite of their mutual anxiety to be of service to Mrs. Goddard, when they had once decided how to act they had easily fallen into conversation about other matters, the black letter Paracelsus had received its full share of attention and many another rare volume had been brought out and examined. Neither the vicar nor his host believed that there was any hurry; if Goddard ever succeeded in getting to Billingsfield it would not be to-day, nor to-morrow either.

The weather had suddenly changed; the east was already clear and over the west, where the sun was setting in a fiery mist, the huge clouds were banked up against the bright sky, fringed with red and purple, but no longer threatening rain or snow. The air was sharp and the plentiful mud in the roads was already crusted with a brittle casing of ice.

The squire took leave of Mr. Ambrose at the turning where the road led into the village and then walked back to the cottage. Even his solid nerves were a little unsettled at the prospect of the interview before him; but he kept a stout heart and asked for Mrs. Goddard in his usual quiet voice. Martha told him that Mrs. Goddard had a bad headache, but on inquiry found that she would see the squire. He entered the drawing-room softly and went forward to greet her; she was sitting in a deep chair propped by cushions.

Mary Goddard had spent a miserable day. The grey morning light seemed to reveal her troubles and fears in a new and more terrible aspect. During the long hours of darkness it seemed as though those things were mercifully hidden which the strong glare of day must inevitably reveal, and when the night was fairly past she thought all the world must surely know that Walter Goddard had escaped and that his wife had seen him. Hourly she expected a ringing at the bell, announcing the visit of a party of detectives on his track; every sound startled her and her nerves were strung to such a pitch that she heard with supernatural acuteness. She had indeed two separate causes for fear. The one was due to her anxiety for Goddard's safety; the other to her apprehensions for Nellie. She had long determined that at all hazards the child must be kept from the knowledge of her father's disgrace, by being made to believe in his death. It was a falsehood indeed, but such a falsehood as may surely be forgiven to a woman as unhappy as Mary Goddard. It seemed monstrous that the innocent child, who seemed not even to have inherited her father's looks or temper, should be brought up with the perpetual sense of her disgrace before her, should be forced to listen to explanations of her father's crimes and tutored to the comprehension of an inherited shame. From the first Mary Goddard had concealed the whole matter from the little girl, and when Walter was at last convicted, she had told her that her father was dead. Dead he might be, she thought, before twelve years were out, and Nellie would be none the wiser. In twelve years from the time of his conviction Nellie would be in her twenty-first year; if it were ever necessary to tell her, it would be time enough then, for the girl would have at least enjoyed her youth, free of care and of the horrible consciousness of a great crime hanging over her head. No child could grow up in such a state as that implied. No mind could develop healthily under the perpetual pressure of so hideous a secret; from her earliest childhood her impressions would be warped, her imagination darkened and her mental growth stunted. It would be a great cruelty to tell her the truth; it was a great mercy to tell her the falsehood. It was no selfish timidity which had prompted Mary Goddard, but a carefully weighed consideration for the welfare of her child.

If now, within these twenty-four hours, Nellie should discover who the poor tramp was, who had frightened her so much on the previous evening, all this would be at an end. The child's life would be made desolate for ever. She would never recover from the shock, and to injure lovely Nellie so bitterly would be worse to Mary Goddard than to be obliged to bear the sharpest suffering herself. For, from the day when she had waked to a comprehension of her husband's baseness, the love for her child had taken in her breast the place of the love for Walter.

She did not think connectedly; she did not realise her fears; she was almost wholly unstrung. But she had procured the fifty pounds her husband required and she waited for the night with a dull hope that all might yet be well—as well as anything so horrible could be. If only her husband were not caught in Billingsfield it would not be so bad, perhaps. And yet it may be that her wisest course would have been to betray him that very night. Many just men would have said so; but there are few women who would do it. There are few indeed, so stonyhearted as to betray a man once loved in such a case; and Mary Goddard in her wildest fear never dreamed of giving up the fugitive. She sat all day in her chair, wishing that the day were over, praying that she might be spared any further suffering or that at least it might be spared to her child whom she so loved. She had sent Nellie down to the vicarage with Martha. Mrs. Ambrose loved Nellie better than she loved Nellie's mother, and there was a standing invitation for her to spend the afternoons at the vicarage. Nellie said her mother had a terrible headache and wanted to be alone.