Could Mrs Crawley undertake to say that he would appear?  Mrs Crawley did undertake either that her husband should appear on the Thursday, or else that she would send over in the early part of the week and declare her inability to ensure his appearance.  In that case it was understood the policeman must come.  Then Mr Walker had suggested that Mr Crawley had better employ a lawyer.  Upon this Mrs Crawley had looked beseechingly up into Mr Walker’s face, and had asked him to undertake the duty.  He was of course obliged to explain that he was already employed on the other side.  Mr Soames had secured his services, and though he was willing to do all in his power to mitigate the sufferings of the family, he could not abandon the duty he had undertaken.  He named another attorney, however, and then sent the poor woman home in his wife’s carriage.  ‘I fear that unfortunate man is guilty.  I fear he is,’ Mr Walker had said to his wife within ten minutes of the departure of the visitor.

Mrs Crawley would not allow herself to be driven up to the garden gate before her own house, but had left the carriage some three hundred yards off down the road and from thence she walked home.  It was now quite dark.  It was nearly six in the evening on a wet December night, and although cloaks and shawls had been supplied to her, she was wet and cold when she reached her home.  But at such a moment, anxious as she was to prevent the additional evil which would come to them from illness to herself she could not pass through to her room till she had spoken to her husband.  He was sitting in the one sitting-room on the left side of the passage as the house was entered, and with him was their daughter Jane, a girl now nearly sixteen years of age.  There was no light in the room, and hardly more than a spark of fire showed in the grate.  The father was sitting on one side of the hearth, in an old arm-chair, and there he had sat for the last hour without speaking.  His daughter had been in and out of the room, and had endeavoured to gain his attention now and again by a word, but he had never answered her, and had not even noticed her presence.  At the moment when Mrs Crawley’s step was heard upon the gravel which led to the door, Jane was kneeling before the fire with a hand upon her father’s arm.  She had tried to get her hand into his, but he had either been unaware of the attempt, or rejected it.

‘Here is mamma, at last,’ said Jane, rising to her feet as her mother entered the house.

‘Are you all in the dark,’ said Mrs Crawley, striving to speak in a voice that should not sound sorrowful.

’Yes, mamma; we are in the dark.  Papa is here.  Oh, mamma, how wet you are!’

’Yes, dear.  It is raining.  Get a light out of the kitchen, Jane, and I will go upstairs in two minutes.’  Then when Jane was gone, the wife made her way in the dark over to her husband’s side, and spoke a word to him.  ‘Josiah,’ she said, ‘will you not speak to me?’