“I know—I am aware!” cried Vincent, not knowing what he said. “There is no time to be lost.”
She put the paper into his hand, and clasped it tight between both of hers, not knowing in the excitement which she was so well trained to repress, that he had betrayed any special knowledge of her distress. It seemed natural, in that strain of desperation, that everybody should understand her. “Come to-morrow and tell me,” she said, hurriedly, and then hastened away, leaving him with the paper folded close into his hand as her hard grasp had left it. He turned away from the group which awaited his coming with some curiosity and impatience, and read the message by the light of one of the garlanded and festive lamps. “Rachel Russell to Miss Smith, Lonsdale, Devonshire. Immediately on receiving this, take the child to Lonsdale, near Peterborough—to Mrs. Vincent’s; leave the train at some station near town, and drive to a corresponding station on the Great Northern; don’t enter London. Blue veil—care—not to be left for an instant. I trust all to you.” Mr. Vincent put the message in his pocketbook, took it out again—tried it in his purse, his waistcoat pocket, everywhere he could think of—finally, closed his hand over it as at first, and in a high state of excitementwent up to the chattering group at the little platform, the only thought in his mind being how to get rid of them, that he might hasten upon his mission before the telegraph office was closed for the night.
And, as was to be expected, Mr. Vincent found it no easy matter to get rid of the Tozers and Pigeons, who were all overflowing about the tea-party, its provisions, its speeches, and its success. He stood with that bit of paper clenched in his hand, and endured the jokes of his reverend brother, the remarks of Mrs. Tufton, the blushes of Phœbe. He stood for half an hour at least perforce in unwilling and constrained civility—at last he became desperate;—with a wild promise to return presently, he rushed out into the night. The station was about half a mile out of Carlingford, at the new end, a long way past Dr. Rider’s. When Vincent reached it, the telegraph clerk was putting on his hat to go away, and did not relish the momentary detention; when the message was received and despatched, the young minister drew breath—he went out of the office, wiping his hot forehead, to the railway platform, where the last train for town was just starting. As Vincent stood recovering himself and regaining his breath, the sudden flash of a match struck in one of the carriages attracted his attention. He looked, and saw by the light of the lamp inside a man stooping to light his cigar. The action brought the face, bending down close to the window, clearly out against the dark-blue background of the empty carriage; hair light, fine, and thin, in long but scanty locks—a high-featured eagle-face, too sharp for beauty now, but bearing all the traces of superior good looks departed—a light beard, so light that it did not count for its due in the aspect of that remarkable countenance—a figure full of ease and haughty grace: all these particulars Vincent noted with a keen rapid inspection. In another moment the long leash of carriages had plunged into the darkness. With a strange flush of triumph he watched them disappear, and turned away with a smile on his lips. The message of warning was already tingling along the sensitive wires, and must outspeed the slow human traveller. This face, which so stamped itself upon his memory, which he fancied he could see pictured on the air as he returned along the dark road, was the face of the man who had been Lady Western’s companion at the lecture. That it was the same face which had confronted Mrs. Hilyard in the dark graveyard behind Salem Chapel he never doubted. With a thrill of active hatred and fierce enmity which it was difficult to account for, and still more difficult for a man of his profession to excuse, the young man looked forward to the unknown future with a certainty of meeting that face again.
We drop a charitable veil over the conclusion of the night. Mr. Raffles and Mr. Vincent supped at Pigeon’s, along with the Browns and Tozers; and Phœbe’s testimony is on record that it was a feast of reason and a flow of soul.
THEnext morning Vincent awoke with a sense of personal occupation and business, which perhaps is only possible to a man engaged with the actual occurrences of individual life. Professional duties and the general necessities of existing, do not give that thrill of sensible importance and use which a man feels who is busy with affairs which concern his own or other people’s very heart and being. The young Nonconformist was no longer the sentimentalist who had made the gaping assembly at Salem Chapel uneasy over their tea-drinking. That dark and secret ocean of life which he had apostrophised, opened up to him immediately thereafter one of its most mysterious scenes. This had shaken Vincent rudely out of his own youthful vagaries. Perhaps the most true of philosophers, contemplating, however profoundly, the secrets of nature or thought, would come to a sudden standstill over a visible abyss of human guilt, wretchedness, heroic self-restraint, and courage, yawning apparent in the meditative way. What, then, were the poor dialectics of Church and State controversy, or the fluctuations of an uncertain young mind feeling itself superior to its work, to such a spectacle of passionate life, full of evil and of noble qualities—of guilt and suffering more intense thananything philosophy dreams of? The thin veil which youthful ignorance, believing in the supremacy of thought and superior charm of intellectual concerns, lays over the world, shrivelled up under the fiery lurid light of that passionate scene. Two people clearly, who had once loved each other, hating each other to the death, struggling desperately over a lesser thread of life proceeding from them both—the mother, driven to the lowest extremities of existence, standing up like a wild creature to defend her offspring—what could philosophy say to such phenomena? A wild circle of passion sprang into conscious being under the young man’s half-frightened eyes—wild figures that filled the world, leaving small space for the calm suggestions of thought, and even to truth itself so little vantage-ground. Love, Hatred, Anger, Jealousy, Revenge—how many more? Vincent, who was no longer the lofty reasoning Vincent of Homerton, found life look different under the light of those torch-bearers. But he had no leisure on this particular morning to survey the subject. He had to carry his report and explanation to the strange woman who had so seized upon and involved him in her concerns.
Mrs. Hilyard was seated in her room, just as he had seen her before, working with flying needle and nervous fingers at her coarsest needlework. She said, “Come in,” and did not rise when he entered. She gave him an eager, inquiring look, more importunate and commanding than any words, but never stopped working, moving her thin fingers as if there was some spell in the continuance of her labour. Shewas impatient of his silence before he had closed the door—desperate when he said the usual greeting. She opened her pale lips and spoke, but Vincent heard nothing. She was beyond speech.
“The message went off last night, and I wrote to my mother,” said Vincent; “don’t fear. She will do what you wish, and everything will be well.”
It was some time before Mrs. Hilyard quite conquered her agitation; when she succeeded, she spoke so entirely in her usual tone that Vincent started, being inexperienced in such changes. He contemplated her with tragic eyes in her living martyrdom; she, on the contrary, more conscious of her own powers, her own strength of resistance and activity of life, than of any sacrifice, had nothing about her the least tragical, and spoke according to nature. Instead of any passionate burst of self-revelation, this is what she said—
“Thank you. I am very much obliged to you. How everything is to be well, does not appear to me; but I will take your word for it. I hope I may take your word for your mother also, Mr. Vincent. You have a right to know how this is. Do you claim it, and must I tell you now?”
Here for the first time Vincent recollected in what an unjustifiable way he had obtained his information. Strangely enough, it had never struck him before. He had felt himself somehow identified with the woman in the strange interview he had overheard. The man was a personal enemy. His interest in the matter was so honest and simple amid all the complication of his youthful superficial insincerities,that this equivocal action was one of the very few which Vincent had actually never questioned even to himself. He was confounded now when he saw how the matter stood. His face became suddenly crimson;—shame took possession of his soul.
“Good heavens, I have done the most dishonourable action!” cried Vincent, betrayed into sudden exclamation by the horror of the discovery. Then he paused, turning an alarmed look upon his new friend. She took it very calmly. She glanced up at him with a comic glance in her eyes, and a twitch at the corners of her mouth. Notwithstanding last night—notwithstanding the anxiety which she dared not move in her own person to alleviate—she was still capable of being amused. Her eyes said, “What now?” with no very alarming apprehensions. The situation was a frightful one for poor Vincent.
“You will be quite justified in turning me out of your house,” he said, clearing his throat, and in great confusion; “but if you will believe it, I never till this moment saw how atrocious—— Mrs. Hilyard, I was in the vestry; the window was open; I heard your conversation last night.”
For a moment Vincent had all the punishment he expected, and greater. Her eyes blazed upon him out of that pale dark face with a certain contempt and lofty indifference. There was a pause. Mr. Vincent crushed his best hat in his hands, and sat speechless doing penance. He was dismayed with the discovery of his own meanness. Nobody coulddeliver such a cutting sentence as he was pronouncing on himself.
“All the world might have listened, so far as I am concerned,” she said, after a while, quietly enough. “I am sorry you did it; but the discovery is worse for yourself than for me.” Then, after another pause, “I don’t mean to quarrel. I am glad for my own sake, though sorry for yours. Now you know better than I can tell you. There were some pleasant flowers of speech to be gathered in that dark garden,” she continued, with another odd upward gleam of her eyes. “We must have startled your clerical ideas rather. At the moment, however, Mr. Vincent, people like Colonel Mildmay and myself mean what we say.”
“If I had gained my knowledge in a legitimate way,” said the shame-stricken minister, not venturing to look her in the face, “I should have said that I hoped it was only for the moment.”
Mrs. Hilyard laid down her work, and looked across at him with undisguised amusement. “I am sorry there is nobody here to perceive this beautiful situation,” she said. “Who would not have their ghostly father commit himself, if he repented after this fashion? Thank you, Mr. Vincent, for what you don’t say. And now we shall drop the subject, don’t you think? Were the deacons all charmed with the tea-meeting last night?”
“You want me to go now,” said Vincent, rising, with disconcerted looks.
“Not because I am angry. I am not angry,” she said, rising and holding out her hand to him. “Itwas a pity, but it was an inadvertence, and no dishonourable action. Yes, go. I am best to be avoided till I hear how this journey has been managed, and what your mother says. It was a sudden thought, that sending them to Lonsdale. I know that, even if he has not already found the right one, he will search all the others now. And your Lonsdale has been examined and exhausted; all is safe there. Yes, go. I am glad you know; but don’t say anything to Alice, if you see her, as she is sure to seek you out. You know who I mean by Alice? Lady Western—yes. Good-bye. I trust you, notwithstanding the vestry window; but close it after this on January nights.”
She had sunk into her seat again, and was absorbed in her needlework, before Vincent left the room. He looked back upon her before he shut the door, but she had no look to spare from that all-engrossing work; her thin fingers were more scarred than ever, and stained with the coarse blue stuff. All his life after the young man never saw that colour without thinking of the stains on those poor hands.
He went about his work assiduously all that day, visiting sick people, poor people, men and women, “which were sinners.” That dark ocean of life with which he had frightened the Salem people last night, Mr. Vincent made deeper investigations into this day than he had made before during all the time he had been in Carlingford. He kept clear of the smug comfort of the leading people of “the connection.” Absolute want, suffering, and sorrow, were comparatively new to him; and being as yet a stranger to philanthropic schemes, and not at all scientific in the distribution of his sympathies, the minister of Salem conducted himself in a way which would have called forth the profoundest contempt and pity of the curate of St. Roque’s. He believed everybody’s story, and emptied his purse with the wildest liberality; for, indeed, visitation of the poor had not been a branch of study at Homerton. Tired and all but penniless, he did not turn his steps homeward till the wintry afternoon was sinking into night, and the lamps began to be lighted about the cheerful streets. As he came into George Street he saw Lady Western’s carriage waiting at the door of Masters’s. Alice! that was the name they called her. He looked at the celestial chariot wistfully. He had nothing to do with it or its beautiful mistress—never, as anything but a stranger, worshipping afar off, could the Dissenting minister of Carlingford approach that lovely vision—never think of her but as of a planet, ineffably distant—never——
“My lady’s compliments,” said a tall voice on a level with Vincent’s eyebrows: “will you please to step over and speak to her ladyship?” The startled Nonconformist raised his eyes. The big footman, whose happy privilege it was to wait upon that lady of his dreams, stood respectful by his side, and from the carriage opposite the fairest face in the world was beaming, the prettiest of hands waving to him. Vincent believed afterwards that he crossed the entire breadth of George Street in a single stride.
“I am so glad to see you, Mr. Vincent,” said Lady Western, giving him her hand; “I did so want to see you after the other night. Oh, how could you besoclever and wicked—so wicked to your friends! Indeed, I shall never be pleased till you recant, and confess how wrong you were. I must tell you why I went that night. I could not tell what on earth to do with my brother, and I took him to amuse him; or else, you know, I never could have gone to hear the poor dear old Church attacked. And how violent you were too! Indeed I must not say how clever I thought it, or I should feel I was an enemy to the Church. Now I want you to dine with me, and I shall have somebody to come who will be a match for you. I am very fond of clever society, though there is so little of it in Carlingford. Tell me, will you come to-morrow? I am disengaged. Oh, pray, do! and Mr. Wentworth shall come too, and you shall fight.”
Lady Western clapped her pretty hands together with the greatest animation. As for Vincent, all the superior thoughts in which he would probably have indulged—the contrast he would have drawn between the desperate brother and this butterfly creature, fluttering on the edge of mysteries so dark and evil, had she been anybody else—deserted him totally in the present crisis. She was not anybody else—she was herself. The words that fell from those sweetest lips were of a half-divine simplicity to the bewildered young man. He would have gone off straightway to the end of the world if she had chosen to command him. All unwarned by hisprevious failure, paradise opened again to his delighted eyes.
“And I want to consult you about our friend,” said Lady Western; “it will be so kind of you to come. I am so pleased you have no engagement. I am sure you thought us very stupid last time; and I am stupid, I confess,” added the beauty, turning those sweet eyes, which were more eloquent than genius, upon the slave who was reconquered by a glance; “but I like clever people dearly. Good-bye till to-morrow. I shall quite reckon upon to-morrow. Oh, there is Mr. Wentworth! John, call Mr. Wentworth to speak to me. Good morning—remember, half-past six—now, you must not forget.”
Spite of the fact that Mr. Wentworth took his place immediately by the side of the carriage, Vincent passed on, a changed man. Forget! He smiled to himself at the possibility, and as he walked on to his lodging, a wonderful maze of expectation fell upon the young man’s mind. Why, he asked, was he brought into this strange connection with Her relations and their story? what could be, he said to himself with a little awe, the purpose of that Providence which shapes men’s ends, in interweaving his life with Hers by these links of common interest? The skies throbbed with wonder and miracle as soon as they were lighted up by her smile. Who could predict what might be coming, through all the impossibilities of fact and circumstance? He would not dissipate that delicious haze by any definite expectations like those which brought him to sudden grief on a former occasion. He was content to believeit was not for nothing that all these strange circles of fate were weaving round his charmed feet.
In this elevated frame of mind, scarcely aware of the prosaic ground he trod, Vincent reached home. The little maid at the door said something about a lady, to which he paid no attention, being occupied with his own thoughts. With an unconscious illumination on his face he mounted the stair lightly, three steps at a time, to his own rooms. The lamp was lighted in his little sitting-room, and some one rose nervously from the table as he went in at the door. What was this sudden terror which fell upon the young man in the renewed glory of his youthful hopes? It was his mother, pale and faint, with sleepless tearful eyes, who, with the cry of an aching heart, worn out by fatigue and suspense, came forward, holding out anxious hands to him, and dropped in an utterabandonof weariness and distress into his astonished arms.
“WHAThas happened? For heaven’s sake tell me, mother,” cried Vincent, as she sank back, wiping her eyes, and altogether overpowered, half with the trouble which he did not know, half with the joy of seeing him again—“say it out at once, and don’t keep me in this dreadful suspense. Susan? She is not married? What is wrong?”
“Oh, my dear boy!” said Mrs. Vincent, recovering herself, but still trembling in her agitation—“oh, my affectionate boy, always thinking of us in his good heart! No, dear. It’s—it’s nothing particular happened. Let me compose myself a little, Arthur, and take breath.”
“But, Susan?” cried the excited young man.
“Susan, poor dear!—she is very well; and—and very happy up to this moment, my darling boy,” said Mrs. Vincent, “though whether she ought to be happy under the circumstances—or whether it’s only a cruel trick—or whether I haven’t been foolish and precipitate—but, my dear, what could I do but come to you, Arthur? I could not have kept it from her if I had stayed an hour longer at home. And to put such a dreadful suspicion into her head, when it might be all a falsehood, would have only been killing her; and, my dear boy, now I see your faceagain, I’m not so frightened—and surely it can be cleared up, and all will be well.”
Vincent, whose anxiety conquered his impatience, even while exciting it, kneeled down by his mother’s side and took her hands, which still trembled, into his own. “Mother, think that I am very anxious; that I don’t know what you are referring to; and that the sudden sight of you has filled me with all sort of terrors—for I know you would not lightly take such a journey all by yourself,” said the young man, growing still more anxious as he thought of it—“and try to collect your thoughts and tell me what is wrong.”
His mother drew one of her hands out of his, laid it on his head, and fondly smoothed back his hair. “My dear good son! you were always so sensible—I wish you had never left us,” she said, with a little groan; “and indeed it was a great thought to undertake such a journey; and since I came here, Arthur, I have felt so flurried and strange, that I have not, as you see, even taken off my bonnet; but I think now you’ve come, dear, if you would ring the bell and order up the tea? When I see you, and see you looking so well, Arthur, it seems as if things could never be so bad, you know. My dear,” she said at last, with a little quiver in her voice, stopping and looking at him with a kind of nervous alarm, “it was about Mr. Fordham, you may be sure.”
“Tea directly,” said Vincent to the little maid, who appeared just at this crisis, and who was in her turn alarmed by the brief and peremptory order.
“What about Mr. Fordham?” he said, helping his mother to take off the cloak and warm wraps in which she had been sitting, in her nervous tremor and agitation, while she waited his return.
“Oh, my dear, my dear,” cried poor Mrs. Vincent, wringing her hands, “if he should not turn out as he ought, how can I ever forgive myself? I had a kind of warning in my mind the first time he came to the house, and I have always dreamt such uncomfortable dreams of him, Arthur. Oh! ifyouonly could have seen him, my dear boy! But he was such a gentleman, and had such ways. I am sure he must have mixed in the very highest society—and he seemed so toappreciateSusan—not only to be in love with her, you know, my dear, as any young man might, but to really appreciate my sweet girl. Oh, Arthur, Arthur, if he should turn out badly, it will kill me, for my Susan will break her heart.”
“Mother, you drive me frantic. What has he done?” cried poor Vincent.
“He has done nothing, my dear, that I know of. It is not him, Arthur, for he has been gone for a month, arranging his affairs, you know, before the wedding, and writes Susan regularly and beautiful letters. It is a dreadful scrawl I got last night. I have it in my pocket-book. It came by the last post when Susan was out, thank heaven. I’ll show it you presently, my dear, as soon as I can find it, but I have so many papers in my pocket-book. She saw directly when she came in that something had happened, and oh, Arthur, it was so hard to keep itfrom her. I don’t know when I have kept anything from her before. I can’t tell how we got through the night. But this morning I made up the most artful story I could—here is the dreadful letter, my dear, at last—about being determined to see you, and making sure that you were taking care of yourself; for she knew as well as I did how negligent you always are about wet feet. Are you sure your feet are dry now, Arthur? Yes, my dear boy, it makes me very uncomfortable. You don’t wonder to see your poor mother here, now, after that?”
The letter which Vincent got meanwhile, and anxiously read, was as follows—the handwriting very mean, with a little tremor in it, which seemed to infer that the writer was an old man:—
“Madam,—Though I am but a poor man, I can’t abear to see wrong going on, and do nothink to stop it. Madam, I beg of you to excuse me, as am unknown to you, and as can’t sign my honest name to it like a man. This is the only way as I can give you a word of warning. Don’t let the young lady marry him as she’s agoing to, not if her heart should break first. Don’t have nothink to do with Mr. Fordham. That’s not his right name, and he has got a wife living—and this I say is true, as sure as I have to answer at the judgment;—and I say to you as a friend, Stop it, stop it! Don’t let it go on a step, if you vally the young lady’s charackter and her life. I don’t add no more, because that’s all I dare say, being only a servant; but I hope it’s enough to save the poor young lady out of hisclutches, as is a man that goeth about seeking whom he may devour.—From a well-wisher, thoughA Stranger.”
“Madam,—Though I am but a poor man, I can’t abear to see wrong going on, and do nothink to stop it. Madam, I beg of you to excuse me, as am unknown to you, and as can’t sign my honest name to it like a man. This is the only way as I can give you a word of warning. Don’t let the young lady marry him as she’s agoing to, not if her heart should break first. Don’t have nothink to do with Mr. Fordham. That’s not his right name, and he has got a wife living—and this I say is true, as sure as I have to answer at the judgment;—and I say to you as a friend, Stop it, stop it! Don’t let it go on a step, if you vally the young lady’s charackter and her life. I don’t add no more, because that’s all I dare say, being only a servant; but I hope it’s enough to save the poor young lady out of hisclutches, as is a man that goeth about seeking whom he may devour.—From a well-wisher, though
A Stranger.”
Mrs. Vincent’s mind was easier when this epistle was out of her hands. She stood up before the mirror to take off her bonnet, and put her cap tidy; she glided across the room to take up the shawl and cloak which her son had flung upon the little sofa anyhow, and to fold them and lay them together on a chair. Then the trim little figure approached the table, on which stood a dimly burning lamp, which smoked as lamps will when they have it all their own way. Mrs. Vincent turned down the light a little, and then proceeded to remove the globe and chimney by way of seeing what was wrong—bringing her own anxious patient face, still retaining many traces of the sweet comeliness which had almost reached the length of beauty in her daughter, into the full illumination of the smoky blaze. Notwithstanding the smoke, the presence of that little woman made the strangest difference in the room. She took note of various evidences of litter and untidiness with her mind’s eye as she examined the lamp. She had drawn a long breath of relief when she put the letter into Arthur’s hand. The sense of lightened responsibility seemed almost to relieve her anxiety as well. She held the chimney of the lamp in her hand, when an exclamation from her son called her back to the consideration of that grievous question. She turned to him with a sudden deepening of all the lines in her face.
“Oh, Arthur dear! don’t you think it may be an enemy? don’t you think it looks like some cruel trick? You don’t believe it’s true?”
“Mother, have you an enemy in the world?” cried Vincent, with an almost bitter affectionateness. “Is there anybody living that would take pleasure in wounding you?”
“No, dear; but Mr. Fordham might have one,” said the widow. “He is not like you or your dear father, Arthur. He looks as if he might have been in the army, and had seen a great deal of life. That is what has been a great consolation to me. A man like that, you know, dear, is sure to have enemies; so very different from our quiet way of life,” said Mrs. Vincent, holding up the chimney of the lamp, and standing a little higher than her natural five feet, with a simple consciousness of that grandeur of experience: “some one that wished him ill might have got some one else to write the letter. Hush, Arthur, here is the maid with the tea.”
The maid with the tea pushed in, bearing her tray into a scene which looked very strange to her awakened curiosity. The minister stood before the fire with the letter in his hand, narrowly examining it, seal, post-mark, handwriting, even paper. He did not look like the same man who had come up-stairs three steps at a time, in the glow and exhilaration of hope, scarcely half an hour ago. His teeth were set, and his face pale. On the table the smoky lamp blazed into the dim air, unregulated by the chimney, which Mrs. Vincent was nervously rubbing with her handkerchief before she put it on. The little maid,with her round eyes, set down the tray upon the table with an answering thrill of excitement and curiosity. There was “somethink to do” with the minister and his unexpected visitor. Vincent himself took no notice of the girl; but his mother, with feminine instinct, proceeded to disarm this possible observer. Mrs. Vincent knew well, by long experience, that when the landlady happens to be one of the flock, it is as well that the pastor should keep the little shocks and crises of his existence studiously to himself.
“Does it always smoke?” said the gentle Jesuit, addressing the little maid.
The effect of so sudden and discomposing a question, at a moment when the person addressed was staring with all her soul at the minister, open-mouthed and open-eyed, may be better imagined than described. The girl gave a start and stifled exclamation, and made all the cups rattle on the tray as she set it down. Did what smoke?—the chimney, or the minister, or the landlady’s husband down-stairs?
“Does it always smoke?” repeated Mrs. Vincent, calmly, putting on the chimney. “I don’t think it would if you were very exact in putting this on. Look here: always at this height, don’t you see? and now it burns perfectly well.”
“Yes, ma’am; I’ll tell missis, ma’am,” said the girl, backing out, with some alarm. Mrs. Vincent sat down at the table with all the satisfaction of success and conscious virtue. Her son, for his part, flung himself into the easy-chair which she had given up,and stared at her with an impatience and wonder which he could not restrain.
“To think you should talk about the lamp at such a time, or notice it at all, indeed, if it smoked like fifty chimneys!” he exclaimed, with a tone of annoyance; “why, mother, this is life or death.”
“Yes, yes, my dear!” said the mother, a little mortified in her turn: “but it does not do to let strangers see when you are in trouble. Oh, Arthur, my own boy, you must not get into any difficulty here. I know what gossip is in a congregation; you never would bear half of what your poor dear papa did,” said the widow, with tears in her eyes, laying her soft old fingers upon the young man’s impatient hand. “You have more of my quick temper, Arthur; and whatever you do, dear, you must not expose yourself to be talked of. You are all we have in the world. You must be your sister’s protector; for oh, if this should be true, what a poor protector her mother has been! And, dear boy, tell me, what are we to do?”
“Had he any friends?” asked Vincent, half sullenly; for he did feel an instinctive desire to blame somebody, and nobody seemed so blamable as the mother, who had admitted a doubtful person into her house. “Did he know anybody—in Lonsdale, or anywhere? Did he never speak of his friends?”
“He had been living abroad,” said Mrs. Vincent, slowly. “He talked of gentlemen sometimes, at Baden, and Homburg, and such places. I am afraid you would think it very silly, and—and perhaps wrong, Arthur; but he seemed to know so much ofthe world—so different from our quiet way of life—that being so nice and good and refined himself with it all—I am afraid it was rather an attraction to Susan. It was so different to what she was used with, my dear. We used to think a man who had seen so much, and known so many temptations, and kept his nice simple tastes through it all—oh, dear, dear! If it is true, I was never so deceived in all my life.”
“But you have not told me,” said Arthur, morosely, “if he had any friends?”
“Nobody in Lonsdale,” said Mrs. Vincent. “He came to see some young relative at school in the neighbourhood——”
At this point Mrs. Vincent broke off with a half scream, interrupted by a violent start and exclamation from her son, who jumped off his seat, and began to pace up and down the room in an agitation which she could not comprehend. This start entirely overpowered his mother. Her overwrought nerves and feelings relieved themselves in tears. She got up, trembling, approached the young man, put her hand, which shook, through his arm, and implored him, crying softly all the time, to tell her what he feared, what he thought, what was the matter? Poor Vincent’s momentary ill-humour deserted him: he began to realise all the complications of the position; but he could not resist the sight of his mother’s tears. He led her back gently to the easy-chair, poured out for her a cup of the neglected tea, and restrained himself for her sake. It was while she took this much-needed refreshment that he unfolded to her thestory of the helpless strangers whom, only the night before, he had committed to her care.
“The mother you shall see for yourself to-morrow. I can’t tell what she is, except a lady, though in the strangest circumstances,” said Vincent. “She has some reason—I cannot tell what—for keeping her child out of the father’s hands. She appealed to me to let her send it to you, because he had been at Lonsdale already, and I could not refuse. His name is Colonel Mildmay; he has been at Lonsdale; did you hear of such a man?”
Mrs. Vincent shook her head—her face grew more and more troubled.
“I don’t know about reasons for keeping a child from its father,” she said, still shaking her head. “My dear, dear boy, I hope no designing woman has got a hold upon you. Why did you start so, Arthur? what had Mr. Fordham to do with the child? Susan would open my letters, of course, and I daresay she will make them very comfortable; but, Arthur dear, though I don’t blame you, it was very imprudent. Is Colonel Mildmay the lady’s husband? or—or what? Dear boy, you should have thought of Susan—Susan, a young girl, must not be mixed up with anybody of doubtful character. It was all your good heart, I know, but it was very imprudent, to be sure.”
Vincent laughed, in a kind of agony of mingled distress, anxiety, and strange momentary amusement. His mother and he were both blaming each other for the same fault. Both of them had equally yielded to kind feelings, and the natural impulse of generoushearts, without any consideration of prudence. But his mistake could not be attended by any consequences a hundredth part so serious as hers.
“In the mean time, we must do something,” he said. “If he has no friends, he has at least an address, I suppose. Susan”—and a flush of indignation and affectionate anger crossed the young man’s face—“Susan, no doubt, writes to the rascal. Susan! my sister! Good heaven!”
“Arthur!” said Mrs. Vincent. “Your dear papa always disapproved of such exclamations: he said they were just a kind of oath, though people did not think so. And you ought not to call him a rascal without proof—indeed, it is very sinful to come to such hasty judgments. Yes, I have got the address written down—it is in my pocket-book. But what shall you do? Will you write to himself, Arthur? or what? To be sure, it would be best to go to him and settle it at once.”
“Oh, mother, have a little prudence now,” cried the afflicted minister; “if he were base enough to propose marriage to Susan (confound him! that’s not an oath—my father himself would have said as much) under such circumstances, don’t you think he has the courage to tell a lie as well? I shall go up to town, and to his address to-morrow, and see what is to be found there. You must rest in the mean time. Writing is out of the question; what is to be done, I mustdo—and without a moment’s loss of time.”
The mother took his hand again, and put her handkerchief to her eyes—“God bless my dear boy,” she said, with a mother’s tearful admiration—“Oh,what a thing for me, Arthur, that you are grown up and a man, and able to do what is right in such a dreadful difficulty as this! You put me in mind more and more of your dear father when you settle so clearly what is to be done. He was always ready to act when I used to be in a flutter, which was best. And, oh, how good has the Father of the fatherless been to me in giving me such a son!”
“Ah, mother,” said the young minister, “you gave premature thanks before, when you thought the Father of the fatherless had brought poor Susan a happy lot. Do you say the same now?”
“Always the same, Arthur dear,” cried his mother, with tears—“always the same. If it is even so, is it me, do you think, or is itHimthat knows best?”
After this the agitation and distress of the first meeting gradually subsided. That mother, with all her generous imprudence and innocence of heart, was, her son well knew, the tenderest, the most indulgent, the most sympathetic of all his friends. Though the little—the very little insight he had obtained into life and the world had made him think himself wiser than she was in some respects, nothing had ever come between them to disturb the boy’s half-adoring, half-protecting love. He bethought himself of providing for her comfort, as she sat looking at him in the easy-chair, with her eyes smiling on him through their tears, patiently sipping the tea, which was a cold and doubtful infusion, nothing like the fragrant lymph of home. He poked the fire till it blazed, and drew her chair towards it, and hunted up a footstool which he had himselfkicked out of the way, under the sofa, a month before. When he looked at the dear tender fresh old face opposite to him, in that close white cap which even now, after the long fatiguing journey, looked fresher and purer than other people’s caps and faces look at their best, a thaw came upon the young man’s heart. Nature awoke and yearned in him. A momentary glimpse crossed his vision of a humble happiness long within his reach, which never till now, when it was about to become impossible for ever, had seemed real or practicable, or even desirable before.
“Mother, dear,” said Vincent, with a tremulous smile, “you shall come here, Susan and you, to me; and we shall all be together again—and comfort each other,” he added, with a deeper gravity still, thinking of his own lot.
His mother did not answer in many words. She said, “My own boy!” softly, following him with her eyes. It was hard, even with Susan’s dreadful danger before her, to help being tearfully happy in seeing him again—in being his guest—in realising the full strength of his manhood and independence. She gave herself up to that feeling of maternal pride and consolation as she once more dried the tears which would come, notwithstanding all her efforts. Then he sat down beside her, and resigned himself to that confidential talk which can rarely be but between members of the same family. He had unburdened his mind unconsciously in his letters about Tozer and the deacons; and it cannot be told what a refreshment it was to be able to utter roundly in wordshis sentiments on all those subjects. The power of saying it out with no greater hindrance than her mild remonstrances, mingled, as they were, with questions which enabled him to complete his sketches, and smiles of amusement at his descriptive powers, put him actually in better humour with Salem. He felt remorseful and charitable after he had said his worst.
“And are you sure, dear,” said Mrs. Vincent, at last resuming the subject nearest her heart, “that you can go away to-morrow without neglecting any duty? You must not neglect a duty, Arthur—not even for Susan’s sake. Whatever happens to us, you must keep right.”
“I have no duty to detain me,” said Vincent, hastily. Then a sudden glow came over the young man, a flush of happiness which stole upon him like a thief, and brightened his own personal firmament with a secret unacknowledgable delight; “but I must return early,” he added, with a momentary hesitation—“for if you won’t think it unkind to leave you, mother, I am engaged to dinner. I should scarcely like to miss it,” he concluded, after another pause, tying knots in his handkerchief, and taking care not to look at her as he spoke.
“To dinner, Arthur? I thought your people only gave teas,” said Mrs. Vincent, with a smile.
“The Salem people do; but this—is not one of the Salem people,” said the minister, still hesitating. “In fact, it would be ungracious of me not to go, and cowardly, too—forthatcurate, I believe, isto meet me—and Lady Western would naturally think——”
“Lady Western!” said Mrs. Vincent, with irrestrainable pleasure; “is that one of the great people in Carlingford?” The good woman wiped her eyes again with the very tenderest and purest demonstration of that adoration of rank which is said to be an English instinct. “I don’t mean to be foolish, dear,” she said, apologetically; “I know these distinctions of society are not worth your caring about; but to see my Arthur appreciated as he should be, is——” She could not find words to say what it was—she wound up with a little sob. What with trouble and anxiety, and pride and delight, and bodily fatigue added to all, tears came easiest that night.
Vincent did not say whether or not these distinctions of society were worth caring about. He sat abstractedly, untying the knots in his handkerchief, with a faint smile on his face. Then, while that pleasurable glow remained, he escorted his mother to his own sleeping-room, which he had given up to her, and saw that her fire burned brightly, and that all was comfortable. When he returned to poke his solitary fire, it was some time before he took out the letter which had disturbed his peace. The smile died away first by imperceptible degrees from his face. He gradually erected himself out of the meditative lounge into which he had fallen; then, with a little start, as if throwing dreams away, he took out and examined the letter. The more he looked at it, the graver and deeper became the anxiety in his face. It had every appearance of being genuine in its badwriting and doubtful spelling. And Vincent started again with an unexplainable thrill of alarm when he thought how utterly unprotected his mother’s sudden journey had left that little house in Lonsdale. Susan had no warning, no safeguard. He started up in momentary fright, but as suddenly sat down again with a certain indignation at his own thoughts. Nobody could carry her off, or do any act of violence; and as for taking advantage of her solitude, Susan, a straightforward, simple-minded English girl, was safe in her own pure sense of right.
NEXTmorning Mr. Vincent got up early, with an indescribable commotion in all his thoughts. He was to institute inquiries which might be life or death to his sister, but yet could not keep his mind to the contemplation of that grave necessity. A flicker of private hope and expectation kept gleaming with uncertain light over the dark weight of anxiety in his heart. He could not help, in the very deepest of his thoughts about Susan, breaking off now and then into a momentary digression, which suddenly carried him into Lady Western’s drawing-room, and startled his heart with a thrill of conscious delight, secret and exquisite, which he could neither banish nor deny. In and out, and round about that grievous doubt which had suddenly disturbed the quiet history of his family, this capricious fairy played, touching all his anxious thoughts with thrills of sweetness. It seemed an action involuntary to himself, and over which he had no power; but it gave the young man an equally involuntary and causeless cheer and comfort. It did not seem possible that any dreadful discovery could be made that day, in face of the fact that he was to meet Her that night.
When he met his mother at breakfast, the recollection of Mrs. Hilyard and the charge she had committedto him, came to his mind again. No doubt Susan would take the wanderers in—no doubt they were as safe in the cottage as it was possible to be in a humble inviolable English home, surrounded by all the strength of neighbours and friends, and the protection of a spotless life which everybody knew; but yet—— That was not what his strange acquaintance had expected or bargained for. He felt as if he had broken faith with her when he realised his mother’s absence from her own house. Yet somehow he felt a certain hesitation in broaching the subject, and unconsciously prepared himself for doubts and reluctance. The certainty of this gave a forced character to the assumed easiness with which he spoke.
“You will go to see Mrs. Hilyard,” he said; “I owe it to her to explain that you were absent before her child went there. They will be safe enough at home, no doubt, with Susan; but still, you know, it would have been different had you been there.”
“Yes, Arthur,” said Mrs. Vincent, with an indescribable dryness in her voice.
“You will find her a very interesting woman,” said her son, instinctively contending against that unexpressed doubt—“the strangest contrast to her surroundings. The very sound of her voice carries one a thousand miles from Salem. Had I seen her in a palace, I doubt whether I should have been equally impressed by her. You will be interested in spite of yourself.”
“It is, as you say, very strange, Arthur,” said Mrs. Vincent—the dryness in her voice increasing to theextent of a short cough; “when does your train start?”
“Not till eleven,” said Vincent, looking at his watch; but you must please me, and go to see her, mother.”
“That reminds me, dear,” said Mrs. Vincent, hurriedly, “that now I am here, little as it suits my feelings, you must take me to see some of your people, Arthur. Mrs. Tufton, and perhaps the Tozers, you know. They might not like to hear that your mother had been in Carlingford, and had not gone to see them. It will be hard work visiting strangers while I am in this dreadful anxiety, but I must not be the means of bringing you into any trouble with your flock.”
“Oh, never mind my flock,” said Vincent, with some impatience; “put on your bonnet, and come and see her, mother.”
“Arthur, you are going by the first train,” said his mother.
“There is abundant time, and it is not too early forher,” persisted the minister.
But it was not so easy to conquer that meek little woman. “I feel very much fatigued to-day,” she said, turning her eyes, mild but invincible, with the most distinct contradiction of her words to her son’s face; “if it had not been my anxiety to have all I could of you, Arthur, I should not have got up to-day. A journey is a very serious matter, dear, for an old woman. One does not feel it so much at first,” continued this plausible defendant, still with her mild eyes on her son’s face, secure in the perfectreasonableness of her plea, yet not unwilling that he should perceive it was a pretence; “it is the next day one feels it. I shall lie down on the sofa, and rest when you are gone.”
And, looking into his mother’s soft eyes, the young Nonconformist retreated, and made no more attempts to shake her. Not the invulnerability of the fortress alone discouraged him—though that was mildly obdurate, and proof to argument—but a certain uneasiness in the thought of that meeting, an inclination to postpone it, and stave off the thought of all that might follow, surprised himself in his own mind. Why he should be afraid of the encounter, or how any complication could arise out of it, he could not by any means imagine, but such was the instinctive sentiment in his heart.
Accordingly he went up to London by the train, leaving Mrs. Hilyard unwarned, and his mother reposing on the sofa, from which, it is sad to say, she rose a few minutes after he was gone, to refresh herself by tidying his bookcase and looking over all his linen and stockings, in which last she found a very wholesome subject of contemplation, which relieved the pressure of her thoughts much more effectually than could have been done by the rest which she originally proposed. Arthur, for his part, went up to London with a certain nervous thrill of anxiety rising in his breast as he approached the scene and the moment of his inquiries; though it was still only by intervals that he realised the momentous nature of those inquiries, on the result of which poor Susan’s harmless girlish life, all unconscious of thedanger that threatened it, hung in the balance. Poor Susan! just then going on with a bride’s preparations for the approaching climax of her youthful existence. Was she, indeed, really a bride, with nothing but truth and sweet honour in the contract that bound her, or was she the sport of a villanous pastime that would break her heart, and might have shipwrecked her fair fame and innocent existence? Her brother set his teeth hard as he asked himself that question. Minister as he was, it might have been a dangerous chance for Fordham, had he come at that moment without ample proofs of guiltlessness in the Nonconformist’s way.
When he got to town, he whirled, as fast as it was possible to go, to the address where Susan’s guileless letters were sent almost daily. It was in a street off Piccadilly, full of lodging-houses, and all manner of hangers-on and ministrants to the world of fashion. He found the house directly, and was somewhat comforted to find it really an actual house, and not a myth or Doubtful Castle, or a post-office window. He knocked with the real knocker, and heard the bell peal through the comparative silence in the street, and insensibly cheered up, and began to look forward to the appearance of a real Mr. Fordham, with unquestionable private history and troops of friends. A quiet house, scrupulously clean, entirely respectable, yet distinct in all its features of lodging-house; a groom in the area below, talking to an invisible somebody, also a man, who seemed to be cleaning somebody else’s boots; up-stairs, at the first-floor balcony, a smart little tiger making afashion of watering plants, and actually doing his best to sprinkle the conversational groom below; altogether a superabundance of male attendants, quite incompatible with the integrity of the small dwelling-place as a private house. Another man, who evidently belonged to the place, opened the door, interrupting Vincent suddenly in his observations—an elderly man, half servant, half master, in reality the proprietor of the place, ready either to wait or be waited on as occasion might require. Turning with a little start from his inspection of the attendant circumstances, Vincent asked, did Mr. Fordham live there?
The man made a momentary but visible pause; whatever it might betoken, it was not ignorance. He did not answer with the alacrity of frank knowledge or simple non-information. He paused, then said, “Mr. Fordham, sir?” looking intently at Vincent, and taking in every particular of his appearance, dress, and professional looks, with one rapid glance.
“Mr. Fordham,” repeated Vincent, “does he live here?”
Once more the man perused him, swiftly and cautiously. “No, sir, he does not live here,” was the second response.
“I was told this was his address,” said Vincent. “I perceive you are not ignorant of him; where does he live? I know his letters come here.”
“There are a many gentlemen in the house in the course of the season,” answered the man, still on the alert to find out Vincent’s meaning by his looks—“sometimes letters keep on coming monthsafter they are gone. When we knows their home address, sir, we sends them; when we don’t, we keeps them by us till we see if any owner turns up. Gen’leman of the name of Fordham?—do you happen to know, sir, what part o’ the countryhecomes from? There’s the Lincolnshire Fordhams, as you know, sir, and the Northumberland Fordhams; but there’s no gen’leman of that name lives here.”
“I am sure you know perfectly whom I mean,” said Vincent, in his heat and impatience. “I don’t mean Mr. Fordham any harm—I only want to see him, or to get some information about him, if he is not to be seen. Tell me where he does live, or tell me which of his friends is in town, that I may ask them. I tell you I don’t mean Mr. Fordham any harm.”
“No, sir?—nor I don’t know as anybody means any harm,” said the man, once more examining Vincent’s appearance. “What was it as you were wishing to know? Though I ain’t acquainted with the gen’leman myself, the missis or some of the people may be. We have a many coming and going, and I might confuse a name.—What was it as you were wishful to know?”
“I wish to see Mr. Fordham,” said Vincent, impatiently.
“I have told you, sir, he don’t live here,” said the guardian of the house.
“Then, look here; you don’t deceive me, remember. I can see you know all about him,” said Vincent; “and, as I tell you, I mean him no harm; answer me one or two simple questions, and I willeither thank or reward you as you like best. In the first place, Is this Mr. Fordham a married man? and, Has he ever gone by another name?”
As he asked these questions the man grinned in his face. “Lord bless you, sir, we don’t ask no such questions here. A gen’leman comes and has his rooms, and pays, and goes away, and gives such name as he pleases. I don’t ask a certificate of baptism, not if all’s right in the pay department. We don’t take ladies in, being troublesome; but if a man was to have a dozen wives, what could we know about it? Sorry to disoblige a clergyman, sir; but as I don’t know nothing about Mr. Fordham, perhaps you’ll excuse me, as it’s the busiest time of the day.”
“Well, then, my good man,” said Vincent, taking out his purse, “tell me what friend he has that I can apply to; you will do me the greatest service, and I——”
“Sorry to disoblige a clergyman, as I say,” said the man, angrily; “but, begging your pardon, I can’t stand jabbering here. I never was a spy on a gen’leman, and never will be. If you want to know, you’ll have to find out. Time’s money to me.”
With which the landlord of No. 10 Nameless Street, Piccadilly, shut the door abruptly in Vincent’s face. A postman was audibly approaching at the moment. Could that have anything to do with the sudden breaking off of the conference? The minister, exasperated, yet, becoming more anxious, stood for a moment in doubt, facing the blank closed door. Then, desperate, turned round suddenly, andfaced the advancing Mercury. He had no letters for No. 10; he was hastening past, altogether regardless of Vincent’s look of inquiry. When he was addressed, however, the postman responded with immediate directness. “Fordham, sir—yes—a gentleman of that name lives at No. 10—leastways he has his letters there—No. 10—where you have just been, sir.”
“But they say he doesn’t live there,” said Vincent.
“Can’t tell, sir—has his letters there,” said the public servant, decidedly.
More than ever perplexed, Vincent followed the postman to pursue his inquiries. “What sort of a house is it?” he asked.
“Highly respectable house, sir,” answered the terse and decisive functionary, performing an astounding rap next door.
In an agony of impatience and uncertainty, the young man lingered opposite the house, conscious of a helplessness and impotence which made him furious with himself. That he ought to be able to get to the bottom of it was clear; but that he was as far as possible from knowing how to do that same, or where to pursue his inquiries, was indisputable. One thing was certain, that Mr. Fordham did not choose to be visible at this address to which his letters were sent, and that it was hopeless to attempt to extract any information on the subject by such frank inquiries as the minister had already made. He took a half-hour’s walk, and thought it over with no great enlightenment on the subject. Then, coming back,applied once more at the highly respectable uncommunicative door. He had entertained hopes that another and more manageable adherent of the house might possibly appear this time—a maid, or impressionable servitor of some description, and had a little piece of gold ready for the propitiatory tip in his hand. His hopes were, however, put to flight by the appearance of the same face, increased in respectability and composure by the fact that the owner had thrown off the jacket in which he had formerly been invested, and now appeared in a solemn black coat, the essence of respectable and dignified servitude. He fixed his eyes severely upon Vincent as soon as he opened the door. He was evidently disgusted by this return to the charge.
“Look here,” said Vincent, somewhat startled and annoyed to find himself confronted by the same face which had formerly defied him; “could you get a note conveyed from me to Mr. Fordham?—the postman says he has his letters here.”
“If he gets his letters here they come by the post,” said the man, insolently. “There’s a post-office round the corner, but I don’t keep one here. If one reaches him, another will. It ain’t nothing to me.”
“But it is a great deal to me,” said Vincent, with involuntary earnestness. “You have preserved his secret faithfully, whatever it may be; but it surely can’t be any harm to convey a note to Mr. Fordham. Most likely, when he hears my name,” said the young man, with a little consciousness that what he said was more than he believed, “he will see me; and Ihave to leave town this evening. You will do me a great service if you will save me the delay of the post, and get it delivered at once. And you may do Mr. Fordham a service too.”
The man looked with less certainty in Vincent’s face.—“Seems to me some people don’t know what ‘No’ means, when it’s said,” he replied, with a certain relenting in his voice. “There’s things as a gen’leman ought to know, sure enough—something happened in the family or so; but you see, he don’t live here; and since you stand it out so, I don’t mind saying that he’s a gen’leman as can’t be seen in town to-day, seeing he’s in the country, as I’m informed, on urgent private affairs. It’s uncommon kind of a clergyman, and a stranger, to take such an interest in my house,” continued the fellow, grinning spitefully; “but what I say first I say last—he don’t live here.”
“And he is not in town?” asked Vincent eagerly, without noticing the insolence of the speech. The man gradually closed the door upon himself till he had shut it, and stood outside, facing his persistent visitor.
“In town or out of town,” he said, folding his arms upon his chest, and surveying Vincent with all the insolence of a lackey who knows he has to deal with a man debarred by public opinion from the gratifying privilege of knocking him down, “there ain’t no more information to be got here.”
Such was the conclusion of Vincent’s attempted investigation. He went away at once, scarcely pausing to hear this speech out, to take the only meansthat presented themselves now; and going into the first stationer’s shop in his way, wrote a note entreating Mr. Fordham to meet him, and giving a friend’s address in London, as well as his own in Carlingford, that he might be communicated with instantly. When he had written and posted this note, Vincent proceeded to investigate the Directory and all the red and blue books he could lay his hands upon, for the name of Fordham. It was not a plentiful name, but still it occurred sufficiently often to perplex and confuse him utterly. When he had looked over the list of Fordhams in London, sufficiently long to give himself an intense headache, and to feel his under-taking entirely hopeless, he came to a standstill. What was to be done? He had no clue, nor the hope of any, to guide him through this labyrinth; but he had no longer any trust in the honour of the man whom his mother had so rashly received, and to whom Susan had given her heart. By way of the only precaution which occurred to him, he wrote a short note to Susan, begging her not to send any more letters to Mr. Fordham until her mother’s return; and desiring her not to be alarmed by this prohibition, but to be very careful of herself, and wait for an explanation when Mrs. Vincent should return. He thought he himself would accompany his mother home. The note was written, as Vincent thought, in the most guarded terms; but in reality was such an abrupt, alarming performance, as was sure to drive a sensitive girl into the wildest fright and uncertainty. Having eased his conscience by this, he went back to the railway, and returned toCarlingford. Night had fallen before he reached home. Under any other circumstances, he would have encountered his mother after such an ineffectual enterprise, conscious as he was of carrying back nothing but heightened suspicion, with very uncomfortable feelings, and would have been in his own person too profoundly concerned about this dreadful danger which menaced his only sister, to be able to rest or occupy himself about other things. But the fact was, that whenever he relapsed into the solitary carriage in which he travelled to Carlingford, and when utterly quiet and alone, wrapped in the haze of din and smoke and speed which abstracts railway travellers from all the world,—gave himself up to thought, the rosy hue of his own hopes came stealing over him unawares. Now and then he woke up, as men wake up from a doze, and made a passing snatch at his fears. But again and again they eluded his grasp, and the indefinite brightness which had no foundation in reason, swallowed up everything which interfered with its power. The effect of this was to make the young man preternaturally solemn when he entered the room where his mother awaited him. He felt the reality of the fear so much less than he ought to do, that it was necessary to put on twice the appearance. Had he really been as deeply anxious and alarmed as he should have been, he would naturally have tried to ease and lighten the burden of the discovery to his mother; feeling it so hazily as he did, no such precautions occurred to him. She rose up when he came in, with a face which gradually paled out of all its colour as he approached.When he was near enough to hold out his hand to her, Mrs. Vincent was nearly fainting. “Arthur,” she cried, in a scarcely audible voice, “God have pity upon us; it is true: I can see it in your face.”
“Mother, compose yourself. I have no evidence that it is true. I have discovered nothing,” cried Vincent, in alarm.
The widow dropped heavily into her chair, and sobbed aloud. “I can read it in your face,” she said. “Oh! my dear boy, have you seen that—that villain? Does he confess it? Oh, my Susan, my Susan! I will never forgive myself; I have killed my child.”
From this passion it was difficult to recover her, and Vincent had to represent so strongly the fact that he had ascertained nothing certain, and that, for anything he could tell, Fordham might still prove himself innocent, that he almost persuaded his own mind in persuading hers.
“His letters might be taken in at a place where he did not live, for convenience sake,” said Vincent. “The man might think me a dun, or something disagreeable. Fordham himself, for anything we can tell, may be very angry about it. Cheer up, mother; things are no worse than they were last night. I give you my word I have made no discovery, and perhaps to-morrow may bring us a letter clearing it all up.”
“Ah! Arthur, you are so young and hopeful. It is different with me, who have seen so many terrors come true,” said the mother, who notwithstanding was comforted. As for Vincent, he felt neither thedanger nor the suspense. His whole soul was engrossed with the fact that it was time to dress; and it was with a little conscious sophistry that he himself made the best of it, and excused himself for his indifference.
“I can’t bear to leave you, mother, in such suspense and distress,” he said, looking at his watch; “but—I have to be at Lady Western’s at half-past six.”
Mrs. Vincent looked up with an expression of stupified surprise and pain for a moment, then brightened all at once. “My dear, I have laid out all your things,” she said, with animation. “Do you think I would let you miss it, Arthur? Never mind talking to me. I shall hear all about it when you come home to-night. Now go, dear, or you will be late. I will come and talk to you when you are dressing, if you don’t mind your mother? Well, perhaps not. I will stay here, and you can call me when you are ready, and I will bring you a cup of tea. I am sure you are tired, what with the fatigue and what with the anxiety. But you must try to put it off your mind, and enjoy yourself to-night.”
“Yes, mother,” said Vincent, hastening away; the tears were in her gentle eyes when she gave him that unnecessary advice. She pressed his hands fast in hers when he left her at last, repeating it, afraid in her own heart that this trouble had spoilt all the brightness of the opening hopes which she perceived with so much pride and joy. When he was gone, she sat down by the solitary fire, and cried over her Susan in an utter forlornness and helplessness, whichonly a woman, so gentle, timid, and unable to struggle for herself, could feel. Her son, in the mean time, walked down Grange Lane, first with a momentary shame at his own want of feeling, but soon, with an entire forgetfulness both of the shame and the subject of it, absorbed in thoughts of his reception there. With a palpitating heart he entered the dark garden, now noiseless and chill in winterly decay, and gazed at the lighted windows which had looked like distant planets to him the last time he saw them. He lingered looking at them, now that the moment approached so near. A remembrance of his former disappointment went to his heart with a momentary pang as he hesitated on the edge of his present happiness. Another moment and he had thrown himself again, with a degree of suppressed excitement wonderful to think of, upon the chances of his fate.
Not alarming chances, so far as could be predicated from the scene. A small room, the smaller half of that room which he had seen full of the pretty crowd of the summer-party, the folding-doors closed, and a curtain drawn across them; a fire burning brightly; groups of candles softly lighting the room in clusters upon the wall, and throwing a colourless soft illumination upon the pictures of which Lady Western was so proud. She herself, dropped amid billows of dark blue silk and clouds of black lace in a low easy-chair by the side of the fire, smiled at Vincent, and held out her hand to him without rising, with a sweet cordiality and friendliness which rapt the young man into paradise. Though Lucy Wodehouse was scarcely less pretty than the young Dowager, Mr. Vincent sawher as if he saw her not, and still less did he realise the presence of Miss Wodehouse, who was the shadow to all this brightness. He took the chair which Lady Western pointed to him by her side. He did not want anybody to speak; or anything to happen. The welcome was not given as to a stranger, but made him at once an intimate and familiar friend of the house. At once all his dreams were realised. The sweet atmosphere was tinged with the perfumy breath which always surrounded Her; the room, which was so fanciful and yet so home-like, seemed a reflection of her to his bewildered eyes; and the murmur of soft sound, as these two lovely creatures spoke to each other, made the most delicious climax to the scene; although the moment before he had been afraid lest the sound of a voice should break the spell. But the spell was not to be broken that night. Mr. Wentworth came in a few minutes after him, and was received with equal sweetness; but still the young Nonconformist was not jealous. It was he whose arm Lady Western appropriated, almost without looking at him as she did so, when they went to dinner. She had put aside the forms which were intended to keep the outer world at arm’s length. It was as her own closest personal friends that the little party gathered around the little table, just large enough for them, which was placed before the fire in the great dining-room. Lady Western was not a brilliant talker, but Mr. Vincent thought her smallest observation more precious than any utterance of genius. He listened to her with a fervour which few people showed when listening tohim, notwithstandinghis natural eloquence; but as to what he himself said in reply, he was entirely oblivious, and spoke like a man in a dream. When she clapped her pretty hands, and adjured the Churchman and the Nonconformist to fight out their quarrel, it was well for Vincent that Mr. Wentworth declined the controversy. The lecturer on Church and State washors de combat; he was in charity with all men. The curate of St. Roque’s, who—blind and infatuated man!—thought Lucy Wodehouse the flower of Grange Lane, did not come in his way. He might pity him, but it was a sympathetic pity. Mr. Vincent took no notice when Miss Wodehouse launched tiny arrows of argument at him. She was the only member of the party who seemed to recollect his heresies in respect to Church and State—which, indeed, he had forgotten himself, and the state of mind which led to them. No such world existed now as that cold and lofty world which the young man of genius had seen glooming down upon his life, and shutting jealous barriers against his progress. The barriers were opened, the coldness gone—and he himself raised high on the sunshiny heights, where love and beauty had their perennial abode. He had gained nothing—changed in nothing—from his former condition: not even the golden gates of society had opened to the dissenting minister; but glorious enfranchisement had come to the young man’s heart. It was not Lady Western who had asked him to dinner—a distinction of which his mother was proud. It was the woman of all women who had brought him to her side, whose sweet eyes were sunning himover, whose voice thrilled to his heart. By her side he forgot all social distinctions, and all the stings contained in them. No prince could have reached more completely the ideal elevation and summit of youthful existence. Ambition and its successes were vulgar in comparison. It was a poetic triumph amid the prose tumults and downfalls of life.
When the two young men were left over their wine, a somewhat grim shadow fell upon the evening. The curate of St. Roque’s and the minister of Salem found it wonderfully hard to get up a conversation. They discussed the advantages of retiring with the ladies as they sat glum and reserved opposite each other—not by any means unlike, and, by consequence, natural enemies. Mr. Wentworth thought it an admirable plan, much more sensible than the absurd custom which kept men listening to a parcel of old fogies, who retained the habits of the last generation; and he proposed that they should join the ladies—a proposal to which Vincent gladly acceded. When they returned to the drawing-room, Lucy Wodehouse was at the piano; her sister sat at table with a pattern-book before her, doing some impossible pattern in knitting; and Lady Western again sat languid and lovely by the fire, with her beautiful hands in her lap, relieved from the dark background of the billowy blue dress by the delicate cambric and lace of her handkerchief. She was not doing anything, or looking as if she could do anything. She was leaning back in the low chair, with the rich folds of her dress sweeping the carpet, and her beautiful ungloved hands lying lightly across each other. She did notmove when the gentlemen entered. She turned her eyes to them, and smiled those sweet welcoming smiles, which Vincent knew well enough were for both alike, yet which made his heart thrill and beat. Wentworth (insensible prig!) went to Lucy’s side, and began to talk to her over her music, now and then appealing to Miss Wodehouse. Vincent, whom no man hindered, and for whose happiness all the fates had conspired, invited by those smiling eyes, approached Lady Western with the surprised delight of a man miraculously blessed. He could not understand why he was permitted to be so happy. He drew a chair between her and the table, and, shutting out the other group by turning his back upon them, had her all to himself. She never changed her position, nor disturbed her sweet indolence, by the least movement. The fire blazed no longer. The candles, softly burning against the wall, threw no very brilliant light upon this scene. To Vincent’s consciousness, bewildered as he was by the supreme delight of his position, they were but two in a new world, and neither thing nor person disturbed the unimaginable bliss. But Miss Wodehouse, when she raised her eyes from her knitting, only saw the young Dowager leaning back in her chair, smiling the natural smiles of her sweet temper and kind heart upon the young stranger whom she had chosen to make aprotégéof. Miss Wodehouse silently concluded that perhaps it might be dangerous for the young man, who knew no better, and that Lady Western always looked well in a blue dress. Such was the outsideworld’s interpretation of that triumphant hour of Vincent’s life.
How it went on he never could tell. Soft questions, spoken in that voice which made everything eloquent, gently drew from him the particulars of his life; and sweet laughter, more musical than that song of Lucy’s to which the curate (dull clod!) gave all his attention, rang silvery peals over the name of Tozer and the economics of Salem. Perhaps Lady Western enjoyed the conversation almost half as much as her worshipper did. She was amused, most delicate and difficult of all successes. She was pleased with the reverential devotion which had a freshness and tender humility conjoined with sensitive pride which was novel to her, and more flattering than ordinary adoration. When he saw it amused her, the young man exerted himself to set forth his miseries with their ludicrous element fully developed. They were no longer miseries, they were happinesses which brought him those smiles. He said twice enough to turn him out of Salem, and make him shunned by all the connection. He forgot everything in life but the lovely creature beside him, and the means by which he could arouse her interest, and keep her ear a little longer. Such was the position of affairs, when Miss Wodehouse came to the plain part of her pattern, where she could go on without counting; and seeing Lady Western so much amused, became interested and set herself to listen too. By this time Vincent had come to more private concerns.
“I have been inquiring to-day after some onewhom my mother knows, and whom I am anxious to hear about,” said Vincent. “I cannot discover anything about him. It is a wild question to ask if you know him, but it is just possible; there are such curious encounters in life.”