The Crime and the Criminal Part 78

When Mrs. Tennant was ready to start, while she was still in the privacy of her own room, she knelt upon the floor and drew the little child into her arms.

"Minna, I am going to see papa. Shall I tell him that you send your love?"

A small, pleading face looked into hers.

"Can't I come with you? I want to see him too."

"I cannot take you with me, Minna, but I will take your love. I think it would please papa to know you sent it."

"Of course you are to tell papa I love him. He knows I do. And, mamma, you're to give him that." The child kissed her mother. "And you're to tell him that he is to come back soon."

Mrs. Tennant went with the little one downstairs, not daring to trust herself in further speech. Her mother came to receive the child, and to put to her a last inquiry.

"Are you quite sure, Lucy, that you would not like to have me with you--nor any one--even as far as Lewes? Consider, dear, all you are undertaking, and think before you speak." Mrs. Tennant's answer was quietly conclusive. "I would rather go quite alone, mother, thanking you." There was a knocking at the hall door. Since bad news had come crowding so fast upon the household, every fresh knock had seemed to be the precursor of more ill-tidings. The two women looked at each other with frightened faces, a question in their very silence. While they still were looking there came, bursting into the room, no less a personage than that eminent counsel, Bates, Q.C., who had defended Mr.

Tennant at his trial.

Mr. Bates seemed to be in a condition of very unlawyerlike excitement.

"Mrs. Tennant, I bring you good news!"

Mrs. Tennant shrunk back.

"Good news! For me!"

"The best of all possible news. I have only just heard it. I have come rushing off at once to tell you. Your husband is pardoned!"

"Pardoned! Do you mean that his sentence is commuted?"

"Nothing of the sort! He is a free man--as free as air! He has told us all along the absolute truth. He had nothing to do with the woman falling out of the carriage--she isn't even dead! It's an extraordinary story, and you shall hear all the details another time; but he had no more to do with the death of the poor girl who actually was murdered than you or I. Mrs. Tennant, your husband is a hardly used and a deeply injured man."

Mrs. Tennant had sunk into a chair. She was crying. Mr. Bates blew his nose; he wiped his eyes.

"Don't cry madam, don't cry! This isn't a case for tears! I am told that a Queen's messenger is taking the official pardon to Lewes by the next train. If you make haste, you'll be able to travel with him. And I'll come with you if you like!"

"Thank you, Mr. Bates, I will go alone."

And, practically, she went alone. In the same compartment of the train was the official messenger, but they did not exchange half a dozen words. Sitting in a corner of the railway carriage, with her veil down, she cried all the way to Lewes, smiling through her tears. They had a carriage from the station up to the prison on the hill. And Mrs.

Tennant was suffered to be the bearer of the glad tidings to her husband.

In the condemned cell, locked in each other's arms, the man and woman cried as if their hearts would break.

And very shortly the prison gates closed after them, as, out of the valley of the shadow of death, they pa.s.sed to face the world again, the husband and the wife, together, hand in hand.

THE END.