At this proposition, Hindes went positively grey.
‘But—but—’ he stammered, ‘I thought, Bloxam—I always have been told that the evidence of a wife cannot be taken against her husband in a court of law.’
‘I’ve heard the same, sir; but, bless you, if a woman once got hold of a secret like that, she’d have a hundred ways of bringing the walls of a man’s house about his ears, without meaning it. Women can’t help gossiping. It’s their nature; and if a thing of that sort once gets repeated, the police would soon get hold of it. I wouldn’t trust my neck to Mrs Bloxam’s tender mercies; I know that, though she’s a good woman, and fond of me in her way; but news leaks through women. There’s no other name for it. It leaks through them.’
‘Do you think so?’ asked Hindes, with a shiver.
‘I’m sure of it, sir. Many a woman has been murdered for gossiping alone. They taunt the men with the things they may have done, and threaten to expose them, till they aggravate them into kicking or beating them to death. Half the cases of manslaughter come through women’s taunts. They’re not generous, as a rule.’
‘Don’t you think,’ said Hindes, putting a suppositious case, ‘that it would have been much wiser for Rayner to have gone out to the States or Australia, and have commenced a new life there under another name? He appears to have plenty of money. I think, instead of making confession, that I would sooner leave my wife and children comfortable, and fly the country, pretend to be lost overboard, or to die on reaching my haven—lose myself to the world, in fact, and begin life over anew. I am sure that if I did that—’
‘You—you—if you did that, Mr Henry!’ exclaimed Mr Bloxam, in a voice of surprise.
Henry Hindes, recalled to the trip his tongue had made, changed countenance to a kind of dull red purplish hue.
‘I—I—’ he stammered, ‘did I say I? I must have been dreaming! We were talking of poor Rayner, surely. Why didn’t he take a sum of money and go away and make a new name for himself in a new country? Did you suppose that I was talking of myself, Bloxam? Why should I say such things of myself? Do I look as if I had committed a—a—the thing that Rayner did?’ And he finished up his sentence with a feeble, cackling laugh.
‘God forbid! Mr Henry,’ responded the cashier, solemnly. ‘I knew, of course, you were speaking of that unhappy man! Why shouldn’t he have fled the country instead, sir? Why, because it would have been of no use. Wherever he went he couldn’t have left his conscience behind him, and, once that was awakened, he would have had to confess his guilt, whether he found himself in England or Australia. He might have run away from his wife and children, Mr Hindes, but he couldn’t have run away from his crime. That would have followed him anywhere, even to the ends of the earth. Poor wretch! I pity him from the bottom of my heart. He’d better by far have given himself up to justice at once. Fancy the life he must have been living for the last twenty years, lying down and getting up, with the ghost of his poor murdered victim always by his side, looking at him with his reproachful eyes, and asking him silently what right he had to be eating and drinking and making merry, whilst he lay in his unhallowed grave! But it was bound to come out at last, sir. Murder always does.’