Part 5 (1/2)

”Not on _my_ premises?” I said anxiously.

”Of course not. Do you take me for a monster of ingrat.i.tude? I'll manage that all right.”

I suddenly remembered that she must have food to take with her. I went to the larder, and when I came back I looked at her with renewed amazement.

My dressing-gown and slippers were laid carefully on a chair. The astonis.h.i.+ng woman was a tramp once more, squatting on the brick floor, drawing on to her bare feet the shapeless excuses for boots which had been toasting before the fire.

Then she leaned over the hearth, rubbed her hands in the ashes, and pa.s.sed them gently over her face, her neck, her wrists and ankles. She drew forward and tangled her hair before the kitchen gla.s.s. Then she rolled up her convict clothes into a compact bundle, wiped her right hand carefully on the kitchen towel, and held it out to me.

”Remember,” I said gravely, taking it in both of mine and pressing it, ”if ever you are in need of a friend, you know to whom to apply. Marion Dalrymple, Rufford, will always find me.”

I thought I ought not to let her go away without letting her know who I was. But my name seemed to have no especial meaning for her. Perhaps she had lived beyond the pale too long.

”You have indeed been a friend to me,” she said. ”G.o.d bless you, you good Samaritan! May the world go well with you! Good-night, and thank you, and good-bye. If you'll give me the stable key, I'll let myself in.

It's a pity you should come out; its raining again. And I'll leave the stable locked when I go. And the key will be in the lavender bush at the door. Good-bye again.”

I did not sleep that night, and in the morning I was so tired that I made no attempt to work. I had, of course, stolen out before six to retrieve the stable key from the lavender bush, and hang it on its accustomed nail. I looked into the stable first. My guest had departed.

I spent an idle morning musing on the events of the previous evening, if time thus spent can be called idling. It may seem so to others, but in my own experience these apparently profitless hours are often more fruitful than those spent in belabouring the brain to a forced activity.

But then I have always preferred to remain, as the great Molinos advises, a learner rather than a teacher in the school of life. Early in the afternoon, as I was on my way to the post-office, my landlord, Mr.

Ledbury, met me. He looked excited, an open telegram in his hand.

”Have you heard about the escaped convict?” he said. ”She has been taken. She was traced to Bronsal Heath yesterday, and run to earth this morning at Framlingham.”

He turned and walked with me. He was too much taken up with the news to notice how I started and how my colour changed. But indeed I flush and turn pale at nothing. All my life it has been a vexation to me that a chance word or allusion should bring the colour to my cheek.

”Poor soul!” he said. ”I could almost wish she had made good her escape.

She got out, Heaven alone knows how, to see her child, which she had heard was ill. But the ground she must have covered in the time! She was absolutely dead beat when she was taken. And she was not in her prison clothes. That is so inexplicable. How she got others she alone knows.

Some one must have befriended her, and given them to her--some one very poor, for she was miserably clad, and the extraordinary thing is that though she was traced to the deserted cottage on the heath yesterday, and taken at Framlingham to-day, her prison clothes were found hidden in my wood-yard, _here_ in my wood-yard, by Zack when he went to his work.

And this place is not on the way to Framlingham. How in the name of fortune could she have hidden her clothes _here_?”

”She must have wandered here in the dark,” I suggested.

”I don't understand it,” he said, turning in at his own gate. ”But anyhow, the poor thing has been caught.”

My story should end here. Indeed, to my mind it does end here. And if I have been persuaded by my family to add a few more lines on the subject, it is sorely against the grain and against my artistic sense. And I am conscious that I have been unwise in allowing myself to be over-ruled by those who have not given their lives to literature as I have done, and who therefore cannot judge as I can when a story should be brought to a close.

I need hardly say that I often thought of my unhappy visitant, often wondered how she was getting on. A year later I was staying with a friend in Ipswich who was a visitor at the prison there, and I remembered how it was to Ipswich she had been brought back, and I asked to see her. My friend knew her, and told me that she had made no further attempt to escape, and that she believed the child was dead. It had been an old promise that she would one day take me over the prison. I claimed it, and begged that I might be allowed to have a few words with that particular inmate. It was not according to the regulations, but my friend was a privileged person. That afternoon I pa.s.sed with her under that dreary portal, and after walking along interminable white-washed pa.s.sages, and past how many locked and numbered doors, my friend whispered to a warder, who motioned me to a cell.

A woman was sitting on her bed with her head in her hands.

”You have not forgotten me, I hope,” I said gently. It may be weak, but I have never been able to speak ungently to any one in trouble, whatever the cause may be. I have known too much trouble myself.

She raised her head slowly, pushed back her hair, and looked at me.