We will spend no time over the death of Major Maitland. The tragic interest, as one of our greatest masters has said, lies not with the corpse but with the mourners, and we turn back to Zachariah. Ogden’s office was shut. On the night after the breakdown at Stockport a note in pencil was left at Zachariah’s house, in Pauline’s handwriting. It was very short:—“Fly for your life—they will have you tonight—P.”
Fly for his life! But how could he fly, with his wife in bed and with no work before him? Would it not be base to leave her? Then it occurred to him that if he were taken and imprisoned, he would be altogether incapable of helping her. He determined to speak to Mrs. Carter. He showed her the note, and she was troubled with no hesitation of any kind.
“My good man,” she said, “you be off this minute. That’s what you’ve got to do. Never mind your wife; I’ll see after her. Expense? Lord, Mr. Coleman what’s that? She don’t eat much. Besides, we’ll settle all about that afterwards.”
Zachariah hesitated.
“Now don’t stand shilly-shallying and a-thinking and a-thinking—that never did anybody any good. I can’t a-bear a man as thinks and thinks when there’s anything to be done as plain as the nose in his face. Where’s your bag?”
Mrs. Carter was out of the room in an instant, and in ten minutes came back with a change of clothes.
“Now, let us know where you are; but don’t send your letters here. You write to my sister; there’s her address. You needn’t go up there; your wife’s asleep. I’ll bid her goodbye for you. Take my advice—get out of this county somewhere, and get out of Manchester tonight.”
“I must go upstairs to get some money,” and Zachariah stole into his bedroom to take half a little hoard which was in a desk there. His wife, as Mrs. Carter had said, was asleep. He went to her bedside and looked at her. She was pale and worn. Lying there unconscious, all the defects which had separated him from her vanished. In sleep and death the divine element of which we are compounded reappears, and we cease to hate or criticise; we can only weep or pray. He looked and looked again. The hours of first love and courtship passed before him; he remembered what she was to him then, and he thought that perhaps the fault, after all, might have been on his side, and that he had perhaps not tried to understand her. He thought of her loneliness—taken away by him into a land of strangers—and now he was about to desert her; he thought, too, that she also was one of God’s children just as much as he was; perhaps more so. The tears filled his eyes, although he was a hard, strong man not used to tears, and something rose in his throat and almost choked him. He was about to embrace her; but he dared not disturb her. He knelt down at the foot of the bed, and in an agony besought his God to have mercy on him. “God have mercy on me! God have mercy on her!” That was all he could say—nothing else, although he had been used to praying habitually. His face was upon her feet, as she lay stretched out there, and he softly uncovered one of them, so gently that she could not perceive it. Spotlessly white it was, and once upon a time she was so attractive to him because she was so exquisitely scrupulous! He bent his lips over it, kissed it—she stirred, but did not wake; a great cry almost broke from him, but he stifled it and rose. There was a knock at the door, and he started. It was Mrs. Carter.
“Come,” she said as he went out, “you have been here long enough. Poor dear man!—there, there—of course it’s hard to bear—poor dear man!”—and the good creature put her hand affectionately on his shoulder.
“I don’t know how it is,” she continued, wiping her eyes with her apron, “I can’t a-bear to see a man cry. It always upsets me. My husband ain’t done it above once or twice in his life, and, Lord, I’d sooner a cried myself all night long. Goodbye, my dear, goodbye, goodbye; God bless you! It will all come right.”
In another minute Zachariah was out of doors. It was dark, and getting late. The cold air revived him but he could not for some time come to any determination as to what he ought to do next. He was not well acquainted with
