“And when shall you be back again?”
“Soon. Good-bye, my darling.”
He held his wife folded in his arms, as he had recently held Meta. The tears were raining down her cheeks.
“Don’t grieve, Maria. It will blow over, I say. God bless you. Take care of Meta.”
Maria’s heart felt as if it were breaking. But in the midst of her own distress, she remembered the claims of others. “That ten-pound note, George? If you are not back in a day or two, how shall I have it? The woman may come for it.”
“Oh, I shall be back. Or you can ask Thomas.”
In his careless indifference he thought he should be back before long. He was not going to run away: only to absent himself from the brunt of the explosion. That his delinquencies would be patent to Thomas and to others by Monday morning, he knew: it would be just as well to let some of their astonishment and anger evaporate without his presence; be far more agreeable to himself, personally. In his careless indifference, too, he had spoken the words, “You can ask Thomas.” A moment’s consideration would have told him that Thomas would have no ten-pound notes to spare for Maria. George Godolphin was one who never lost heart. He was indulging, now, the most extravagantly sanguine hopes of raising money in London, by some means or other. Perhaps Verrall could help him?
He strained his wife to his heart, kissed her again, and was gone. Maria sat down in the midst of her blinding tears.
Walking round to the stables, he waited there while his horse was got ready, mounted him, the small black case in front, and rode away alone. The groom thought his master was only going out for a ride, as he did on other days: but the man did wonder that Mr. George should go that day. Crancomb was a small place about five miles off: it had a railway station, and the ordinary trains stopped there. What motive induced him to go there to take the train, he best knew. Probably, he did not care to excite the observation and comment, which his going off from Prior’s Ash on that day would be sure to excite. Seriously to fear being stopped, he did not.
He rode along at a leisurely pace, reaching Crancomb just before the up-train was expected. Evidently the day’s great disaster had not yet travelled to Crancomb. George was received with all the tokens of respect, ever accorded to the Godolphins. He charged the landlord of the inn to send his horse back to Prior’s Ash on Monday morning, changed Mrs. Bond’s ten-pound note, and chatted familiarly to the employés at the station, after taking his ticket.