‘No thank you!’ he answered, shuddering at the idea of using anything that belonged to Henry Hindes. ‘I am a poor man now, and not used to such luxuries. The station will suit me best.’
And then, without any greeting less formal than an inclination of his head, Frederick Walcheren passed out of the hall door and went on his way. Hannah guessed the reason. Dearly as she had loved the dead girl, he could not persuade himself to shake hands with the wife of her murderer. Perhaps it was best so. Frederick Walcheren would now pass out of their lives for ever.
Henry Hindes, with his ears quickened by fear, had heard the opening and shutting of the front door, and the slight conversation passing in the hall. He had sprung out of his bed to listen, and crouched behind his bedroom door. He had recognised Frederick Walcheren’s voice, and caught the word ‘station’ twice repeated. Why had he come? What was he there for? And what ‘station’ could he be speaking off? There was but one solution of the mystery in the morbid ideas of Henry Hindes. The conscience that makes cowards of us all, had transformed him into a trembling poltroon, incapable of judging or arguing. Frederick Walcheren was in The Old Hall, and there could be but one reason for his coming there—to publicly denounce him as a murderer—to have him arrested and dragged to prison—to pursue him until he landed him on the scaffold, and saw the rope pulled that should hang him by the neck till he was dead. But he shouldn’t—he shouldn’t—he had means by which he could escape it yet. Why didn’t Hannah come up to tell him what was going on? Could she be in league with his tormentors, after all the protestations she had made to him an hour ago? Perhaps—it was not unlikely—women were such arch deceivers, they would smile in your face one moment, and draw a knife across your throat the next. Well! he would escape her too!—no one should triumph over his public fall. As he thought thus, Henry Hindes crept round to his chest of drawers and groped in the dark for the lock, which he opened with the keys he kept beneath his pillow. He found a bottle there—a bottle the shape of which he knew full well, for had it not been his daily and nightly companion for many months past? He knew it, and it knew him, he said to himself, with a sardonic smile, that was half a sneer, and they had never known each other better, nor valued each other more, than they would do that night. But as he was about to re-enter his bed, he remembered his little Wally lying in the next room, and thought he would like to take a look at him first. So he crept into the adjoining chamber, where the boy lay fast asleep, with one arm, thinned by sickness, thrown above his head. Hindes put his lips reverently on the little arm and then softly lay down beside his child.
Meanwhile, Hannah was feeling almost too thankful for words. How happy she would make poor Henry when he next woke. No need for packing up in a hurry now, and slinking out of England like a condemned criminal. He might stay on in safety till he had wound up his own affairs, and could start for the new land surrounded by his family.
‘What a relief! what a relief!’ she thought, as she went upstairs. ‘I shall love and pray for the name of Walcheren to the last day of my life!’
She peeped into Wally’s chamber first! There lay her child flushed with sleep, and beside him, with one arm thrown round the boy’s body, was her husband, white and weary looking, but apparently sound asleep as well.
‘Poor fellow!’ mused Hannah, as she stood and gazed at him. ‘He is utterly worn-out. I wonder what made him fancy getting into bed with the child. Perhaps it was to make sure that I should not come up without waking him. Henry dear,’ she said aloud, as she touched the sleeper gently. ‘Henry! I have such good news, such lovely news for you. Our worst troubles are over, darling! Wake up and hear what I have to tell you!’
She stooped and kissed his cold cheek as she spoke, and the truth was instantly revealed to her. Her husband slept so deeply that he would never wake in this world again.
At the very moment when his doubts and fears were to be set at rest, he had taken the law into his own hands and gone from this sphere to work out his life’s punishment in another.