“What is his name?” said Lady Western, with a smile as radiant as a sunbeam.
“His name is Fordham—Herbert Fordham: I do not know where he comes from, nor whether he is of any profession; nor, indeed, anything but his name. I have been in town to-day——”
Here Vincent came to a sudden stop. He had withdrawn his eyes from that smile of hers for the moment. When he raised them again, the beautiful picture was changed as if by magic. Her eyes were fixed upon him dilated and almost wild. Her face was deadly pale. Her hands, which had been lying lightly crossed, grasped each other in a grasp of sudden anguish and self-control. He stopped short with a pang too bitter and strange for utterance. At that touch all his fancies dispersed into the air. He came to himself strangely, with a sense of chill and desolation. In one instant, from the height of momentary bliss down to the miserable flat of conscious unimportance. Such a downfall was too much for man to endure without showing it. He stopped short at the aspect of her face.
“You have been in town to-day?” she repeated, pointedly, with white and trembling lips.
“And could hear nothing of him,” said Vincent, with a little bitterness. “He was not to be heard of at his address.”
“Where was that?” asked Lady Western again, with the same intent and anxious gaze.
Vincent, who was sinking down, down in hopeless circles of jealousy, miserable fierce rage and disappointment, answered, “10 Nameless Street, Piccadilly,” without an unnecessary word.
Lady Western uttered a little cry of excitement and wonder. She knew nothing of the black abyss into which her companion had fallen any more than she knew the splendid heights to which her favour had raised him; but the sound of her own voice recalled her to herself. She turned away from Vincent and pulled the bell which was within her reach—pulled it once and again with a nervous twitch, and entangled her bracelet in the bell-pull, so that she had to bend over to unfasten it. Vincent sat gloomily by and looked on, without offering any assistance. He knew it was to hide her troubled face and gain a moment to compose herself; but he was scarcely prepared for her total avoidance of the subject when she next spoke.
“They are always so late of giving us tea,” she said, rising from her chair, and going up to Miss Wodehouse: “I can see you have finished your pattern; let me see how it looks. That is pretty; but I think it is too elaborate. How many things has Mary done for this bazaar, Mr. Wentworth?—and do tell us when is it to be?”
What did Vincent care for the answer? He sat disenchanted in that same place which had been his bower of bliss all the evening, watching her as she moved about the room; her beautiful figure went andcame with a certain restlessness, surely not usual to her, from one corner to another. She brought Miss Wodehouse something to look at from the work-table, and fetched some music for Lucy from a window. She had the tea placed in a remote corner, and made it there; and insisted on bringing it to the Miss Wodehouses with her own hands. She was disturbed; her sweet composure was gone. Vincent sat and watched her under the shade of his hands, with feelings as miserable as ever moved man. It was not sorrow for having disturbed her;—feelings much more personal, mortification and disappointment, and, above all, jealousy, raged in his heart. Warmer and stronger than ever was his interest in Mr. Fordham now.
After a miserable interval, he rose to take his leave. When he came up to her, Lady Western’s kind heart once more awoke in his behalf. She drew him aside after a momentary struggle with herself.
“I know that gentleman,” she said, quickly, with a momentary flush of colour, and shortening of breath; “at least I knew him once; and the address you mention is my brother’s address. If you will tell me what you want to know, I will ask for you. My brother and he used not to be friends, but I suppose——. What did you want to know?”
“Only,” said Vincent, with involuntary bitterness, “if he was a man of honour, and could be trusted; nothing else.”
The young Dowager paused and sighed; her beautiful eyes softened with tears. “Oh, yes—yes;with life—to death!” she said, with a low accompaniment of sighing, and a wistful melancholy smile upon her lovely face.
Vincent hastened out of the house. He ventured to say nothing to himself as he went up Grange Lane in the starless night, with all the silence and swiftness of passion. He dared not trust himself to think. His very heart, the physical organ itself, seemed throbbing and bursting with conscious pain. Had she loved this mysterious stranger whose undecipherable shadow hung over the minister’s path? To Vincent’s fancy, nothing else could account for her agitation; and was he so true, and to be trusted? Poor gentle Susan, whom such a fate and doom was approaching as might have softened her brother’s heart, had but little place in his thoughts. He was not glad of that favourable verdict. He was overpowered with jealous rage and passion. Alas for his dreams! Once more, what downfall and over-throw had come of it! once more he had come down to his own position, and the second awakening was harder than the first. When he got home, and found his mother, affectionately proud, waiting to hear all about the great lady he had been visiting, it is impossible to express in words the intolerable impatience and disgust with himself and his fate which overpowered the young man. He had a bad headache, Mrs. Vincent said, she was sure, and he did not contradict her. It was an unspeakable relief to him when she went to her own room, and delivered him from the tender scrutiny of her eyes—those eyes full of nothing but love, which, in the irritationof his spirit, drove him desperate. He did not tell her about the unexpected discovery he had made. The very name of Fordham would have choked him that night.
THEnext morning brought no letters except from Susan. Fordham, if so true as Lady Western called him, was not, Vincent thought with bitterness, acting as an honourable man should in this emergency. But perhaps he might come to Carlingford in the course of the day, to see Susan’s brother. The aspect of the young minister was changed when he made his appearance at the breakfast table. Mrs. Vincent made the most alarmed inquiries about his health, but—stopped abruptly in making them by his short and ungracious answer—came to a dead pause; and with a pang of fright and mortification, acknowledged to herself that her son was no longer her boy, whose entire heart she knew, but a man with a life and concerns of his own, possibly not patent to his mother. That breakfast was not a cheerful meal. There had been a long silence, broken only by those anxious attentions to each other’s personal comfort, with which people endeavour to smooth down the embarrassment of an intercourse apparently confidential, into which some sudden unexplainable shadow has fallen. At last Vincent got up from the table, with a little outbreak of impatience.
“I can’t eat this morning; don’t ask me. Mother, get your bonnet on,” said the young man; “we must go to see Mrs. Hilyard to-day.”
“Yes, Arthur,” said Mrs. Vincent, meekly; she had determinednotto see Mrs. Hilyard, of whom her gentle respectability was suspicious; but, startled by her son’s looks, and by the evident arrival of that period, instinctively perceived by most women, at which a man snatches the reins out of his adviser’s hand, and has his way, the alarmed and anxious mother let her arms fall, and gave in without a struggle.
“The fact is, I heard of Mr. Fordham last night,” said Vincent, walking about the room, lifting up and setting down again abstractedly the things on the table. “Lady Western knows him, it appears; perhaps Mrs. Hilyard does too.”
“Lady Western knows him? Oh, Arthur, tell me—what did she say?” cried his mother, clasping her hands.
“She said he could be trusted—with life—to death,” said Vincent, very low, with an inaudible groan in his heart. He was prepared for the joy and the tears, and the thanksgiving with which his words were received; but he could not have believed, how sharply his mother’s exclamation, “God bless my Susan! now I am happy about her, Arthur. I could be content to die,” would go to his heart. Susan, yes;—it was right to be happy about her; and as for himself, who cared? He shut up his heart in that bitterness; but it filled him with an irritation and restlessness which he could not subdue.
“We must go to Mrs. Hilyard; probably she can tell us more,” he said, abruptly; “and there is her child to speak of. I blame myself,” he added, withimpatience, “for not telling her before. Let us go now directly—never mind ringing the bell; all that can be done when we are out. Dinner? oh, for heaven’s sake, letthemmanage that! Where is your bonnet, mother? the air will do me good after a bad night.”
“Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Vincent, moved by this last argument. It must be his headache, no doubt, she tried to persuade herself. Stimulated by the sound of his footstep in the next room, she lost very little time over her toilette. Perhaps the chill January air, sharp with frost, air full of natural exhilaration and refreshment, did bring a certain relief to the young Nonconformist’s aching temples and exasperated temper. It was with difficulty his mother kept time with his long strides, as he hurried her along the street, not leaving her time to look at Salem, which was naturally the most interesting point in Carlingford to the minister’s mother. Before she had half prepared herself for this interview, he had hurried her up the narrow bare staircase which led to Mrs. Hilyard’s lodgings. On the landing, with the door half open, stood Lady Western’s big footman, fully occupying the narrow standing-ground, and shedding a radiance of plush over the whole shabby house. The result upon Mrs. Vincent was an immediate increase of comfort, for surely the woman must be respectable to whom people sent messages by so grand a functionary. The sight of the man struck Vincent like another pang. She had sent to take counsel, no doubt, on the evidently unlooked-for information which had startled her so last night.
“Come in,” said the inhabitant of the room. She was folding a note for which the footman waited. Things were just as usual in that shabby place. The coarse stuff at which she had been working lay on the table beside her. Seeing a woman with Vincent, she got up quickly, and turned her keen eyes upon the new-comer. The timid doubtful mother, the young man, somewhat arbitrary and self-willed, who had brought his companion there against her will, the very look, half fright, half suspicion, which Mrs. Vincent threw round the room, explained matters to this quick observer. She was mistress of the position at once.
“Take this to Lady Western, John,” said Mrs. Hilyard. “She may come when she pleases—I shall be at home all day; but tell her to send a maid next time, for you are much too magnificent for Back Grove Street. This is Mrs. Vincent, I know. Your son has brought you to see me, and I hope you have not come to say that I was too rash in asking a Christian kindness from this young man’s mother. If he had not behaved like a paladin, I should not have ventured upon it; but when a young man conducts himself so, I think his mother is a good woman. You have taken in my child?”
She had taken Mrs. Vincent by both hands, and placed her in a chair, and sat down beside her. The widow had not a word to say. What with the praise of her son, which was music to her ears—what with the confusion of her own position, she was painfully embarrassed and at a loss, and anxiously full of explanations. “Susan has, I have no doubt; but I amsorry I left home on Wednesday morning, and we did not know then they were expected; but we have a spare room, and Susan, I don’t doubt——”
“The fact is, my mother had left home before they could have reached Lonsdale,” interposed Vincent; “but my sister would take care of them equally well. They are all safe. A note came this morning announcing their arrival. My mother,” said the young man, hastily, “returns almost immediately. It will make no difference to the strangers.”
“I am sure Susan will make them comfortable, and the beds would be well aired,” said Mrs. Vincent; “but I had sudden occasion to leave home, and did not even know of it till the night before. My dear,” she said, with hesitation, “did you think Mrs. Hilyard would know? I brought Susan’s note to show you,” she added, laying down that simple performance in which Susan announced the receipt of Arthur’s letter, and the subsequent arrival of “a governess-lady, and the most beautiful girl that ever was seen.” The latter part of Susan’s hurried note, in which she declared this beautiful girl to be “very odd—a sort of grown-up baby,” was carefully abstracted by the prudent mother.
The strange woman before them took up the note in both her hands and drank it in, with an almost trembling eagerness. She seemed to read over the words to herself again and again with moving lips. Then she drew a long breath of relief.
“Miss Smith is the model of a governess-lady,” she said, turning with a composure wonderfully unlike that eagerness of anxiety to Mrs. Vincentagain—“she never writes but on her day, whatever may happen; and yesterday did not happen to be her day. Thank you; it is Christian charity. You must not be any loser meantime, and we must arrange these matters before you go away. This is not a very imposing habitation,” she said, glancing round with a movement of her thin mouth, and comic gleam in her eye—“but that makes no difference, so far as they are concerned. Mr. Vincent knows more about me than he has any right to know,” continued the strange woman, turning her head towards him for the moment with an amused glance—“a man takes one on trust sometimes, but a woman must always explain herself to a woman: perhaps, Mr. Vincent, you will leave us together while I explain my circumstances to your mother?”
“Oh, I am sure it—it is not necessary,” said Mrs. Vincent, half alarmed; “but, Arthur, you were to ask——”
“What were you to ask?” said Mrs. Hilyard, laying her hand with an involuntary movement upon a tiny note lying open on the table, to which Vincent’s eyes had already wandered.
“The fact is,” he said, following her hand with his eyes, “that my mother came up to inquire about some one called Fordham, in whom she is interested. Lady Western knows him,” said Vincent, abruptly, looking in Mrs. Hilyard’s face.
“Lady Western knows him. You perceive that she has written to ask me about him this morning. Yes,” said Mrs. Hilyard, looking at the young man, not without a shade of compassion. “You are quiteright in your conclusions; poor Alice and hewerein love with each other before she married Sir Joseph. He has not been heard of for a long time. What do you want to know, and how is it he has showed himself now?”
“It is for Susan’s sake,” cried Mrs. Vincent, interposing; “oh, Mrs. Hilyard, you will feel for me better than any one—my only daughter! I got an anonymous letter the night before I left. I am so flurried, I almost forget what night it was—Tuesday night—which arrived when my dear child was out. I never kept anything from her in all her life, and to conceal it was dreadful—and how we got through that night——”
“Mother, the details are surely not necessary now,” said her impatient son. “We want to know what are this man’s antecedents and his character—that is all,” he added, with irrestrainable bitterness.
Mrs. Hilyard took up her work, and pinned the long coarse seam to her knee. “Mrs. Vincent will tell me herself,” she said, looking straight at him with her amused look. Of all her strange peculiarities, the faculty of amusement was the strangest. Intense restrained passion, anxiety of the most desperate kind, a wild will which would pause at nothing, all blended with and left room for this unfailing perception of any ludicrous possibility. Vincent got up hastily, and, going to the window, looked out upon the dismal prospect of Salem, throwing its shabby shadow upon those dreary graves. Instinctively he looked for the spot where that conversationmust have been held which he had overheard from the vestry window; it came most strongly to his mind at that moment. As his mother went through her story, how Mr. Fordham had come accidentally to the house—how gradually they had admitted him to their friendship—how, at last, Susan and he had become engaged to each other—her son stood at the window, following in his mind all the events of that evening, which looked so long ago, yet was only two or three evenings back. He recalled to himself his rush to the telegraph office; and again, with a sharp stir of opposition and enmity, recalled, clear as a picture, the railway-carriage just starting, the flash of light inside, the face so clearly evident against the vacant cushions. What had he to do with that face, with its eagle outline and scanty long locks? Somehow, in the meshes of fate he felt himself so involved that it was impossible to forget this man. He came and took his seat again with his mind full of that recollection. The story had come to a pause, and Mrs. Hilyard sat silent, taking in with her keen eyes every particular of the gentle widow’s character, evidently, as Vincent could see, following her conduct back to those springs of gentle but imprudent generosity and confidence in what people said to her, from which her present difficulties sprang.
“And you admitted him first?” said Mrs. Hilyard, interrogatively, “because——?” She paused. Mrs. Vincent became embarrassed and nervous.
“It was very foolish, very foolish,” said the widow, wringing her hands; “but he came to make inquiries, you know. I answered him civilly thefirst time, and he came again and again. It looked so natural. He had come down to see a young relation at school in the neighbourhood.”
Mrs. Hilyard uttered a sudden exclamation—very slight, low, scarcely audible; but it attracted Vincent’s attention. He could see that her thin lips were closed, her figure slightly erected, a sudden keen gleam of interest in her face. “Did he find his relation?” she asked, in a voice so ringing and distinct that the young minister started, and sat upright, bracing himself for something about to happen. It did not flash upon him yet what that meaning might be; but his pulses leapt with a prescient thrill of some tempest or earthquake about to fall.
“No; he never could find her—it did not turn out to be our Lonsdale, I think—what is the matter?” cried Mrs. Vincent; “you both know something I don’t know—what has happened? Arthur, have I said anything dreadful?—oh, what does it mean?”
“Describe him if you can,” said Mrs. Hilyard, in a tone which, sharp and calm, tingled through the room with a passionate clearness which nothing but extreme excitement could give. She had taken Mrs. Vincent’s hand, and held it tightly with a certain compassionate compulsion, forcing her to speak. As for Vincent, the horrible suspicion which stole upon him unmanned him utterly. He had sprung to his feet, and stood with his eyes fixed on his mother’s face with an indescribable horror and suspense. It was not her he saw. With hot eyes that blazed in their sockets, he was fixing the gaze of desperationupon a picture in his mind, which he felt but too certain would correspond with the faltering words which fell from her lips. Mrs. Vincent, for her part, would have thrown herself wildly upon him, and lost her head altogether in a frightened attempt to find out what this sudden commotion meant, had she not been fixed and supported by that strong yet gentle grasp upon her hand. “Describe him—take time,” said her strange companion again—not looking at her, but waiting in an indescribable calm of passion for the words which she could frame in her mind before they were said.
“Tall,” said the widow’s faltering alarmed voice, falling with a strange uncertainty through the intense stillness, in single words, with gasps between; “not—a very young man—aquiline—with a sort of eagle-look—light hair—long and thin, and as fine as silk—very light in his beard, so that it scarcely showed. Oh, God help us! what is it? what is it?—You both know whom I mean.”
Neither of them spoke; but the eyes of the two met in a single look, from which both withdrew, as if the communication were a crime. With a shudder Vincent approached his mother; and, speechless though he was, took hold of her, and drew her to him abruptly. Was it murder he read in those eyes, with their desperate concentration of will and power? The sight of them, and recollection of their dreadful splendour, drove even Susan out of his mind. Susan, poor gentle soul!—what if she broke her tender heart, in which no devils lurked? “Mother, come—come,” he said, hoarsely, raising her up in his arm,and releasing the hand which the extraordinary woman beside her still clasped fast. The movement roused Mrs. Hilyard as well as Mrs. Vincent. She rose up promptly from the side of the visitor who had brought her such news.
“I need not suggest to you that this must be acted on at once,” she said to Vincent, who, in his agitation, saw how the hand, with which she leant on the table, clenched hard till it grew white with the pressure. “The man we have to deal with spares nothing.” She stopped, and then, with an effort, went up to the half-fainting mother, who hung upon Vincent’s arm, and took her hands and pressed them close. “We have both thrust our children into the lion’s mouth,” she cried, with a momentary softening. “Go, poor woman, and save your child if you can, and so will I—we are companions in misfortune. And you are a priest, why cannot you curse him?” she exclaimed, with a bitter cry. The next moment she had taken down a travelling-bag from a shelf, and, kneeling down by a trunk, began to transfer some things to it. Vincent left his mother, and went up to her with a sudden impulse, “I am a priest, let me bless you,” said the young man, touching with a compassionate hand the dark head bending before him. Then he took his mother away. He could not speak as he supported her down-stairs; she, clinging to him with double weakness, could scarcely support herself at all in her agitation and wonder when they got into the street. She kept looking in his face with a pitiful appeal that went to his heart.
“Tell me, Arthur, tell me!” She sobbed it out unawares, and over and over before he knew what she was saying. And what could he tell her? “We must go to Susan—poor Susan!” was all the young man could say.
MRS. VINCENTcame to a dead stop as they passed the doors of Salem, which were ajar, taking resolution in the desperateness of her uncertainty—for the feelings in the widow’s mind were not confined to one burning impulse of terror for Susan, but complicated by a wonderful amount of flying anxieties about other matters as well.Sheknew, by many teachings of experience, what would be said by all the connection, when it was known that the minister’s mother had been in Carlingford without going to see anybody—not even Mrs. Tufton, the late minister’s wife, or Mrs. Tozer, who was so close at hand. Though her heart was racked, Mrs. Vincent knew her duty. She stopped short in her fright and distress with the mild obduracy of which she was capable. Before rushing away out of Carlingford to protect her daughter, the mother, notwithstanding her anxiety, could not forget the injury which she might possibly do by this means to the credit of her son.
“Arthur, the chapel is open—I should like to go in and rest,” she said, with a little gasp; “and oh, my dear boy, take a little pity upon me! To see the state you are in, and not to know anything, is dreadful. You must have a vestry, where one could sit down a little—let us go in.”
“A vestry—yes; it will be a fit place,” cried Vincent, scarcely knowing what he was saying, and indeed worn out with the violence of his own emotions. This little persistent pause of the widow, who was not absorbed by any one passionate feeling, but took all the common cares of life with her into her severest trouble, awoke the young man to himself. He, too, recollected that this enemy who had stolen into his house was not to be reached by one wild rush, and that everything could not be suffered to plunge after Susan’s happiness into an indiscriminate gulf of ruin. All his own duties pricked at his heart with bitter reminders in that moment when he stood by the door of Salem, where two poor women were busy inside, with pails and brushes, preparing for Sunday. The minister, too, had to prepare for Sunday. He could not dart forth, breathing fire and flame at a moment’s notice, upon the serpent who had entered his Eden. Even at this dreadful moment, in all the fever of such a discovery, the touch of his mother’s hand upon his arm brought him back to his lot. He pushed open the mean door, and led her into the scene of his weekly labours with a certain sickening disgust in his heart which would have appalled his companion.Shewas a dutiful woman, subdued by long experience of that inevitable necessity against which all resistance fails; and he a passionate young man, naturally a rebel against every such bond. They could not understand each other; but the mother’s troubled face, all conscious of Tufton and Tozer, and what the connection would say, brought all the weight of his own particular burden backupon Vincent’s mind. He pushed in past the pails with a certain impatience which grieved Mrs. Vincent. She followed him with a pained and disapproving look, nodding, with a faint little smile, to the women, who no doubt were members of the flock, and might spread an evil report of the pastor, who took no notice of them. As she followed him to the vestry, she could not help thinking, with a certain strange mixture of pain, vexation, and tender pride, how different his dear father would have been. “But Arthur, dear boy, has my quick temper,” sighed the troubled woman. After all, it was her fault rather than her son’s.
“This is a very nice room,” said Mrs. Vincent, sitting down with an air of relief; “but I think it would be better to close the window, as there is no fire. You were always very susceptible to cold, Arthur, from a child. And now, my dear boy, we are undisturbed, and out of those dreadful glaring streets where everybody knows you. I have not troubled you, Arthur, for I saw you were very much troubled; but, oh! don’t keep me anxious now.”
“Keep you anxious! You ask me to make you anxious beyond anything you can think of,” said the young man, closing the window with a hasty and fierce impatience, which she could not understand. “Good heavens, mother! why did you let that man into your innocent house?”
“Who is he, Arthur?” asked Mrs. Vincent, with a blanched face.
“He is——” Vincent stopped with his hand upon the window where he had overheard that conversation,a certain awe coming over him. Even Susan went out of his mind when he thought of the dreadful calmness with which his strange acquaintance had promised to kill her companion of that night. Had she started already on this mission of vengeance? A cold thrill came over him where he stood. “I can’t tell who he is,” he exclaimed, abruptly, throwing himself down upon the little sofa; “but it was to be in safety from him that Mrs. Hilyard sent her daughter to Lonsdale. It was he whom she vowed to kill if he found the child. Ah!—he is,” cried the young man, springing to his feet again with a sudden pang and smothered exclamation as the truth dawned upon him, “Lady Western’s brother. What other worse thing he is I cannot tell. Ruin, misery, and horror at the least—death to Susan—not much less to me.”
“To you? Oh, Arthur, have pity upon me, my heart is breaking,” said Mrs. Vincent. “Oh, my boy, my boy, whom I would die to save from any trouble! don’t tell me I have destroyed you. That cannot be, Arthur—thatcannot be!”
The poor minister did not say anything—his heart was bitter within him. He paced up and down the vestry with dreadful thoughts. What was She to him if she had a hundred brothers? Nothing in the world could raise the young Nonconformist to that sweet height which she made beautiful; and far beyond that difference came the cruel recollection of those smiles and tears—pathetic, involuntary confessions. If there was another man in the world whom she could trust “with life—to death!” what did itmatter though a thousand frightful combinations involved poor Vincent with her kindred? He tried to remind himself of all this, but did not succeed. In the mean time, the fact glared upon him that it was her brother who had aimed this deadly blow at the honour and peace of his own humble house; and his heart grew sad with the thought that, however indifferent she might be to him, however unattainable, here was a distinct obstacle which must cut off all that bewildering tantalising intercourse which at present was still possible, notwithstanding every other hindrance. He thought of this, and not of Susan, as the floor of the little vestry thrilled under his feet. He was bitter, aggrieved, indignant. His troubled mother, who sat by there, half afraid to cry, watching him with frightened, anxious, uncomprehending eyes, had done him a sharp and personal injury.Shecould not fancy how it was, nor what she could have done. She followed him with mild tearful glances, waiting with a woman’s compelled patience till he should come to himself, and revolving thoughts of Salem, and supply for the pulpit there, with an anxious pertinacity. But in her way Mrs. Vincent was a wise woman. She did not speak—she let him wear himself out first in that sudden apprehension of the misfortune personal to himself, which was at the moment so much more poignant and bitter than any other dread. When he had subsided a little—and first of all he threw up the window, leaning out, to his mother’s great vexation, with a total disregard of the draught, and receiving the chill of the January breeze upon his heated brow—sheventured to say, gently, “Arthur, what are we to do?”
“To go to Lonsdale,” said Vincent. “When we came in here, I thought we could rush off directly; but these women outside there, and this place, remind me that I am not a free man, who can go at once and do his duty. I am in fetters to Salem, mother. Heaven knows when I may be able to get away. Sunday must be provided for first. No natural immediate action is possible to me.”
“Hush, Arthur dear—oh, hush! Your duty to your flock is above your duty even to your sister,” said the widow, with a tremulous voice, timid of saying anything to him whose mood she could not comprehend. “You must find out when the first train starts, and I will go. I have been very foolish,” faltered the poor mother, “as you say, Arthur; but if my poor child is to bear such a dreadful blow, I am the only one to take care of her. Susan”—here she made a pause, her lip trembled, and she had all but broken into tears—“will not upbraid me, dear. You must not neglect your duty, whatever happens; and now let us go and inquire about the train, Arthur, and you can come on Monday, after your work is over; and, oh! my dear boy, we must not repine, but accept the arrangements of Providence. It was what your dear father always said to his dying day.”
Her face all trembling and pale, her eyes full of tears which were not shed, her tender humility, which never attempted a defence, and those motherly, tremulous, wistful advices which it now for the firsttime dawned upon Mrs. Vincent her son was not certain to take, moved the young Nonconformist out of his personal vexation and misery.
“This will not do,” he said. “I must go with you; and we must go directly. Susan may be less patient, less believing, less ready to take our word for it, than you imagine, mother. Come; if there is anybody to be got to do this preaching, the thing will be easy. Tozer will help me, perhaps. We will waste no more time here.”
“I am quite rested, Arthur dear,” said Mrs. Vincent; “and it will be right for me to call at Mrs. Tozer’s too. I wish I could have gone to Mrs. Tufton’s, and perhaps some others of your people. But you must tell them, dear, that I was very hurried—and—and not very well; and that it was family business that brought me here.”
“I do not see they have any business with the matter,” said the rebellious minister.
“My dear, it will of course be known that I was in Carlingford; and I know how things are spoken of in a flock,” said Mrs. Vincent, rising; “but you must tell them all I wanted to come, and could not—which, indeed, will be quite true. A minister’s family ought to be very careful, Arthur,” added the much-experienced woman. “I know how little a thing makes mischief in a congregation. Perhaps, on the whole, I ought not to call at Mrs. Tozer’s, as there is no time to go elsewhere. But still I should like to do it. One good friend is often everything to a young pastor. And, my dear, you should just say a word in passing to the women outside.”
“By way of improving the occasion?” said Vincent, with a little scorn. “Mother, don’t torture yourself about me. I shall get on very well; and we have plenty on our hands just now without thinking of Salem. Come, come; with this horrible cloud overhanging Susan, how can you spare a thought for such trifles as these?”
“Oh, Arthur, my dear boy, must not we keep you right?” said his mother; “are not you our only hope? If this dreadful news you tell me is true, my child will break her heart, and I will be the cause of it; and Susan has no protector or guardian, Arthur dear, that can take care of her, but you.”
Wiping her eyes, and walking with a feeble step, Mrs. Vincent followed her son out of Salem; but she looked up with gentle interest to his pulpit as she passed, and said it was a cold day to the cleaners, with anxious carefulness. She was not carried away from her palpable standing-ground by any wild tempest of anxiety. Susan, whose heart would be broken by this blow, was her mother’s special object in life; but the thought of that coming sorrow which was to crush the girl’s heart, made Mrs. Vincent only the more anxiously concerned to conciliate and please everybody whose influence could be of any importance to her son.
So they came out into the street together, and went on to Tozer’s shop. She, tremulous, watchful, noting everything; now lost in thought as to how the dreadful truth was to be broken to Susan; now in anxious plans for impressing upon Arthur the necessity of considering his people—he, stingingwith personal wounds and bitterness, much more deeply alarmed than his mother, and burning with consciousness of all the complications which she was totally ignorant of. Fury against the villain himself, bitter vexation that he was Lady Western’s brother, anger at his mother for admitting, at Susan for giving him her heart, at Mrs. Hilyard for he could not tell what, because she had added a climax to all, burned in Vincent’s mind as he went on to George Street with his mother leaning on his arm, who asked him after every wayfarer who passed them, Who was that? It was not wonderful that the young man gradually grew into a fever of excitement and restless misery. Everything conspired to exasperate him,—even the fact that Sunday came so near, and could not be escaped. The whirl of his brain came to a climax when Lady Western’s carriage drove past, and through the mist of his wretchedness he saw the smile and the beautiful hand waved to him in sweet recognition. Oh heaven! to bring tears to those eyes, or a pang to that heart!—to have her turn from him shuddering, or pass him with cold looks, because her brother was a villain, andhethe avenger of that crime! His mother, almost running to keep up with his unconsciously quickened pace, cast pitiful looks at him, inquiring what it was. The poor young fellow could not have told even if he would. It was a combination of miseries, sharply stimulated to the intolerable point by the mission on which he had now to enter Tozer’s shop.
“We heard you was come, ma’am,” said Tozer,graciously, “and in course was looking for a call. I hope you are going to stay awhile and help us take care of the pastor. He don’t take that care of himself as his friends would wish,” said the butterman. “Mr. Vincent, sir, I’ve a deal to say to you when you’re at leisure. Old Mr. Tufton, he has a deal to say to you. We are as anxious as ever we can be, us as are old stagers, to keep the minister straight, ma’am. He’s but a young man, and he’s come into a deal of popularity, and any one more thought on in our connection, I don’t know as I would wish to see; but it wouldn’t do to let him have his head turned. Them lectures on Church and State couldn’t but be remarked, being delivered, as you may say, in the world, all on us making a sacrifice to do our duty by our fellow-creaturs, seein’ what we had in our power. But man is but mortal; and us Salem folks don’t like to see no signs of that weakness in a pastor; it’s our duty to see as his head’s not turned.”
“Indeed, I trust there is very little fear of that,” said Mrs. Vincent, roused, and set on the defensive. “My dear boy has been used to be appreciated, and to have people round him who could understand him. As for having his head turned, that might happen to a man who did not know what intelligent approbation was; but after doing so well as he did at college, and having his dear father’s approval, I must say I don’t see any cause to apprehendthat, Mr. Tozer. I am not surprised at all, for my part,—I always knew what my Arthur could do.”“No more of this,” said Vincent, impatiently. “Look here, I have come on a special business. Can any one be got, do you think, to preach on Sunday? I must go home with my mother to-day.”
“To-day!” Tozer opened his eyes, with a blank stare, as he slowly took off his apron. “You was intimated to begin that course on the Miracles, Mr. Vincent, if you’ll excuseme, on Sunday. Salem folks is a little sharp, I don’t deny. It would be a great disappointment, and I can’t say I think as it would be took well if you was to go away.”
“I can’t help that,” said the unfortunate minister, to whom opposition at this moment was doubly intolerable. “The Salem people, I presume, will hear reason. My mother has come upon——”
“Family business,” interrupted Mrs. Vincent, with the deepest trembling anxiety. “Arthur dear, let me explain it, for you are too susceptible. My son is all the comfort we have in the world, Mr. Tozer,” said the anxious widow. “I ought not to have told him how much his sister wanted him, but I was rash, and did so; and now I ought to bear the penalty. I have made him anxious about Susan; but, Arthur dear, never mind; you must let me go by myself, and on Monday you can come. Your dear father always said his flock was his first duty, and if Sunday is a special day, as Mr. Tozer says——”
“Oh, Pa, is it Mrs. Vincent? and you keep her in the shop, when we are all as anxious as ever we can be to see her,” said Phœbe, who suddenly came upon the scene. “Oh, please to come up-stairs to the drawing-room. Oh, Iamso glad to see you! and it was so unkind of Mr. Vincent not to let usknow you were coming. Mamma wanted to ask you to come here, for she thought it would be more comfortable than a bachelor’s rooms; and we did think the minister would have toldus,” said Phœbe, with reproachful looks; “but now that you have come back again, after such a long time, please, Mr. Vincent, let your mother come up-stairs. They say you don’t think us good enough to be trusted now; but oh, I don’t think you could ever be like that!” continued Phœbe, pausing by the door as she ushered Mrs. Vincent into the drawing-room, and giving the minister an appealing remonstrative glance before she dropped her eyelids in virginal humility. Poor Vincent paused too, disgusted and angry, but with a certain confusion. To fling out of the house, dash off to his rooms, make his hasty preparations for the journey, was the impulse which possessed him; but his mother was looking back with wistful curiosity, wondering what the two could mean by pausing behind her at the door.
“I am exactly as I was the last time I saw you, which was on Tuesday,” he said, with some indignation. “I will follow you, please. My mother has no time to spare, as she leaves to-day—can Mrs. Tozer see her? She has been agitated and worn out, and we have not really a moment to spare.”
“Appearingly not—not for your own friends, Mr. Vincent,” said Mrs. Tozer, who now presented herself. “I hope I see you well, ma’am, and proud to see you in my house, though I will say the minister don’t show himself not so kind as was to be wished. Phœbe, don’t put on none o’ your pleading looks—for shame of yourself, Miss! If Mr. Vincent has them in Carlingford as he likes better than any in his own flock, it ain’t no concern of ours. It’s a thing well known as the Salem folks are all in trade, and don’t drive their carriages, nor give themselves up to this world and vanity. I never saw no good come, for my part, of folks sacrificing theirselves and their good money as Tozer and the rest set their hearts on, with that Music Hall and them advertisings and things—not as I was meaning to upbraid you, Mr. Vincent, particular not before your mother, as is a stranger—but we was a deal comfortabler before them lectures and things, and taking off your attention from your own flock.”
Before this speech was finished, the whole party had assembled in the drawing-room, where a newly-lighted fire, hastily set light to on the spur of the moment by Phœbe, was sputtering drearily. Mrs. Vincent had been placed in an arm-chair at one side, and Mrs. Tozer, spreading out her black silk apron and arranging her cap, set herself doggedly on the other, with a little toss of her head and careful averting of her eyes from the accused pastor. Tozer, without his apron, had drawn a chair to the table, and was drumming on it with the blunt round ends of his fingers; while Phœbe, in a slightly pathetic attitude, ready for general conciliation, hovered near the minister, who grew red all over, and clenched his hand with an emphasis most intelligible to his frightened mother. The dreadful pause was broken by Phœbe, who rushed to the rescue.
“Oh, Ma, how can you!” cried that young lady—“you were all worrying and teasing Mr. Vincent, you know you were; and if he does know that beautiful lady,” said Phœbe, with her head pathetically on one side, and another glance at him, still more appealing and tenderly reproachful—“and—and likes to go to see her—it’s—it’s the naturalest thing that ever was. Oh, I knew he never could think anything of anybody else in Carlingford after Lady Western! and I am sure, whatever other people may say, I—I—never can think Mr. Vincent was to blame.”
Phœbe’s words were interrupted by her feelings—she sank back into a seat when she had concluded, and put a handkerchief to her eyes. As for Tozer, he still drummed on the table. A certain human sympathy was in the mind of the butterman, but he deferred to the readier utterance of his indignant wife.
“I never said it was any concern of ours,” said Mrs. Tozer. “It ain’t our way to court nobody as doesn’t seek our company; but a minister as we’ve all done a deal to make comfortable, and took an interest in equal to a son, and has been made such a fuss about as I never see in our connection—it’s disappointing, I will say, to see him a-going off after worldly folks that don’t care no more about religion than I do about playing the piano. Not as Phœbe doesn’t play the piano better than most—but such things ain’t in my thoughts. I do say it’s disappointing, and gives folks a turn. If she’s pretty-lookin’—as she may be, for what I can tell—it ain’t none of the pastor’s business. Them designing ladies is theruin of a young man; and when he deserts his flock, as are making sacrifices, and goes off after strangers, I don’t say if it’s right or wrong, but I say it’s disappointin’, and what wasn’t looked for at Mr. Vincent’s hands.”
Vincent had listened up to this point with moderate self-restraint—partially, perhaps, subdued by the alarmed expression of his mother’s face, who had fixed her anxious eyes upon him, and vainly tried to convey telegraphic warnings; but the name of Lady Western stung him. “What is all this about?” he asked, with assumed coldness. “Nobody supposes, surely, that I am to render an account of my private friends to the managers of the chapel. It is a mistake, if it has entered any imagination. I shall do nothing of the kind. There is enough of this. When I neglect my duties, I presume I shall hear of it more seriously. In the mean time, I have real business in hand.”
“But, Arthur dear, I daresay some one has misunderstood you,” said his mother; “it always turns out so. I came the day before yesterday, Mrs. Tozer. I left home very suddenly in great anxiety, and I was very much fatigued by the journey, and I must go back to-day. I have been very selfish, taking my son away from his usual occupations. Never mind me, Arthur dear; if you have any business, leave me to rest a little with Mrs. Tozer. I can take such a liberty here, because I know she is such a friend of yours. Don’t keep Mr. Tozer away from his business on my account. I know what it is when time is valuable. I will just stay a little withMrs. Tozer, and you can let me know when it is time for the train. Yes, I came up very hurriedly,” said the gentle diplomatist, veiling her anxiety as she watched the gloomy countenances round her. “We had heard some bad news; I had to ask my son to go to town yesterday for me, and—and I must go home to-day without much comfort. I feel a good deal shaken, but I dare not stay away any longer from my dear child at home.”
“Dear, dear; I hope it’s nothing serious as has happened?” said Mrs. Tozer, slightly mollified.
“It is some bad news about the gentleman Susan was going to marry,” said Mrs. Vincent, with a rapid calculation of the necessities of the position; “and she does not know yet. Arthur, my dear boy, it would be a comfort to my mind to know about the train.”
“Oh, and you will be so fatigued!” said Phœbe. “I do so hope it’s nothing bad. Iamso interested about Miss Vincent. Oh, Pa, do go down-stairs and look at the railway bill. Won’t you lie down on the sofa a little and rest? Fancy, mamma, taking two journeys in three days!—it would kill you; and, oh, I do so hope it is nothing very bad. I have so longed to see you and Mr. Vincent’s sister. He told me all about her one evening. Is the gentleman ill? But do lie down and rest after all your fatigue. Mamma, don’t you think it would do Mrs. Vincent good?”
“We’ll have a bit of dinner presently,” said Mrs. Tozer. “Phœbe, go and fetch the wine. There is one thing in trouble, that it makes folks find outtheir real friends. It wouldn’t be to Lady Western the minister would think of taking his mother. I ain’t saying anything, Tozer—nor Mr. Vincent needn’t think I am saying anything. If I speak my mind a bit, I don’t bear malice. Phœbe’s a deal too feelin’, Mrs. Vincent—she’s overcome, that’s what she is; and if I must speak the truth, it’s disappointing to see our pastor, as we’ve all made sacrifices for, following after the ungodly. I am a mother myself,” continued Mrs. Tozer, changing her seat, as her husband, followed by the indignant Vincent, went down-stairs, “and I know a mother’s feelin’s: but after what I heard from Mrs. Pigeon, and how it’s going through all the connection in Carlingford——”
Mrs. Vincent roused herself to listen. Her son’s cause was safe in her hands.
Meantime Vincent went angry and impetuous down-stairs. “I will not submit to any inquisition,” cried the young man. “I have done nothing I am ashamed of. If I dine with a friend, I will suffer no questioning on the subject. What do you mean? What right has any man in any connection to interfere with my actions? Why, you would not venture to attack your servant so! Am I the servant of this congregation? Am I their slave? Must I account to them for every accident of my life? Nobody in the world has a right to make such a demand upon me.”
“If a minister ain’t a servant, we pays him his salary at the least, and expects him to please us,” said Tozer, sulkily. “If it weren’t for that, I don’t give a sixpence for the Dissenting connection. Themas likes to please themselves would be far better in a State Church, where it wouldn’t disappoint nobody; not meaning to be hard on you as has given great satisfaction, them’s my views; but if the Chapel folks is a little particular, it’s no more nor a pastor’s duty to bear with them, and return a soft answer. I don’t say as I’m dead again’ you, like the women,” added the butterman, softening; “they’re jealous, that’s what they are; but I couldn’t find it in my heart, not for my own part, to be hard on a man as was led away after a beautiful creature like that. But there can’t no good come of it, Mr. Vincent; take my advice, sir, as have seen a deal of the world—there can’t no good come of it. A man as goes dining with Lady Western, and thinking as she means to make a friend of him, ain’t the man for Salem. We’re different sort of folks, and we can’t go on together. Old Mr. Tufton will tell you just the same, as has gone through it all—and that’s why I said both him and me had a deal to say to you, as are a young man, and should take good advice.”
It was well for Vincent that the worthy butterman was lengthy in his address. The sharp impression of resentment and indignation which possessed him calmed down under this outpouring of words. He bethought himself of his dignity, his character. A squabble of self-defence, in which the sweet name of the lady of his dreams must be involved—an angry encounter of words about her, down here in this mean world to which the very thought of her was alien, wound up her young worshipper intosupernatural self-restraint. He edged past the table in the back-parlour to the window, and stood there looking out with a suppressed fever in his veins, biting his lip, and bearing his lecture. On the whole, the best way, perhaps, would have been to leave Carlingford at once, as another man would have done, and leave the Sunday to take care of itself. But though he groaned under his bonds, the young Nonconformist was instinctively confined by them, and had the habits of a man trained in necessary subjection to circumstances. He turned round abruptly when the butterman at last came to a pause.
“I will write to one of my friends in Homerton,” he said, “if you will make an apology for me in the chapel. I daresay I could get Beecher to come down, who is a very clever fellow; and as for the beginning of that course of sermons——”
He stopped short with a certain suppressed disgust. Good heavens! what mockery it seemed. Amid these agonies of life, a man overwhelmed with deadly fear, hatred, and grief might indeed pause to snatch a burning lesson, or appropriate with trembling hands a consolatory promise; but with the whole solemn future of his sister’s life hanging on a touch, with all the happiness and peace of his own involved in a feverish uncertainty, with dark unsuspected depths of injury and wretchedness opening at his feet—to think of courses of sermons and elaborate preachments, ineffectual words, and pretences of teaching! For the first time in the commotion of his soul, in the resentments and forebodings to which he gave no utterance, in the bitter conviction of uncertaintyin everything which consumed his heart, a doubt of his own ability to teach came to Vincent’s mind. He stopped short with an intolerable pang of impatience and self-disgust.
“And what of that, Mr. Vincent?” said Tozer. “I can’t say as I think it’ll be well took to see a stranger in the pulpit after them intimations. I made it my business to send the notices out last night; and after saying everywhere as you were to begin a coorse, as I always advised, if you had took my advice, it ain’t a way to stop talk to put them off now. Old Mr. Tufton, you know, he was a different man; it was experience as was his line; and I don’t mean to say nothing against experience,” said the worthy deacon. “There ain’t much true godliness, take my word, where there’s a shrinking from disclosin’ the state of your soul; but for keeping up a congregation there’s nothing I know on like a coorse—and a clever young man as has studied his subjects, and knows the manners of them old times, and can give a bit of a description as takes the interest, that’s what I’d set my heart on for Salem. There’s but three whole pews in the chapel as isn’t engaged,” said the butterman, with a softening glance at the pastor; “and the Miss Hemmings sent over this morning to say as they meant to come regular the time you was on the Miracles; and but for this cackle of the women, as you’ll soon get over, there ain’t a thing as I can see to stop us filling up to the most influential chapel in the connection; I mean in our parts.”
The subdued swell of expectation with which theambitious butterman concluded, somehow made Vincent more tolerant even in his undiminished excitement. He gave a subdued groan over all this that was expected of him, but not without a little answering thrill in his own troubled and impatient heart.
“A week can’t make much difference, if I am ever to do any good,” said the young man. “I must go now; but if you explain the matter for me, you will smooth the way. I will bring my mother and sister here,” he went on, giving himself over for a moment to a little gleam of comfort, “and everything will go on better. I am worried and anxious now, and don’t know what I am about. Give me some paper, and I will write to Beecher. You will like him. He is a good fellow, and preaches much better than I do,” added poor Vincent with a sigh, sitting wearily down by the big table. He was subdued to his condition at that moment, and Tozer appreciated the momentary humbleness.
“I am not the man to desert my minister when he’s in trouble,” said the brave butterman. “Look you here, Mr. Vincent; don’t fret yourself about it. I’ll take it in hand; and I’d like to see the man in Salem as would say to the contrary again’ me and the pastor both. Make your mind easy; I’ll manage ’em. As for the women,” said Tozer, scratching his head, “I don’t pretend not to be equal to that; but my missis is as reasonable as most; and Phœbe, she’ll stand up for you, whatever you do. If you’ll take my advice, and be a bit prudent, and don’t go after no more vanities, things ain’t so far wrong but a week or two will make them right.”
With this consolatory assurance Vincent began to write his letter. Before he had concluded it, the maid came to lay the cloth for dinner, thrusting him into a corner, where he accomplished his writing painfully on his knee with his ink on the window-sill, a position in which Phœbe found him when she ventured down-stairs. It was she who took his letter from him, and ran with it to the shop to despatch it at once; and Phœbe came back to tell him that Mrs. Vincent was resting, and that it wassopleasant to see him back again after such a time. “I never expected you would have any patience for us when I saw you knew Lady Westernsowell. Oh, she is so sweetly pretty! and if I were a gentleman, I know I should falldeepin love with her,” said Phœbe, with a sidelong glance, and not without hopes of calling forth a disclaimer from the minister; but the poor minister, jammed up in the corner, whence it was now necessary to extricate his chair preparatory to sitting down to a family dinner with the Tozers, was, as usual, unequal to the occasion, and had nothing to say. Phœbe’s chair was by the minister’s side during that substantial meal; and the large fire which burned behind Mrs. Tozer at the head of the table, and the steaming viands on the hospitable board, and the prevailing atmosphere of cheese and bacon which entered when the door was opened, made even Mrs. Vincent pale and flush a little in the heroic patience and friendliness with which she bent all her powers to secure the support of these adherents to her son. “I could have wished, Arthur, they were a little more refined,” she said, faintly,when the dinner was over, and they were at last on their way to the train; “but I am sure they are verygenuine, my dear; and one good friend is often everything to a pastor; and I am so glad we went at such a time.” So glad! The young Nonconformist heaved a tempestuous sigh, and turned away not without a reflection upon the superficial emotions of women who at such a time could be glad. But Mrs. Vincent, for her part, with a fatigue and sickness of heart which she concealed from herself as much as she could, let down her veil, and cried quietly behind it. Perhaps her share of the day’s exhaustion had not been the mildest or least hard.
THEjourney was troublesome and tedious, involving a change from one railway to another, and a troubled glimpse into the most noisy streets of London by the way. Vincent had left his mother, as he thought, safe in the cab which carried them to the second railway station, and was disposing of the little luggage they had with them, that he might not require to leave her again, when he heard an anxious voice calling him, and found her close behind him, afloat in the bustle and confusion of the crowd, dreadfully agitated and helpless, calling upon her Arthur with impatient accents of distress. His annoyance to find her there increased her confusion and trembling. “Arthur,” she gasped out, “I saw him—I saw him—not a minute ago—in a cab—with some ladies; oh, my dear, run after him. That was the way he went. Arthur, Arthur, why don’t you go? Never mind me—I can take care of myself.”
“Who was it—how did he go?—why didn’t you stop him, mother?” cried the young man, rushing back to the spot she had left. Nothing was to be seen there but the usual attendant group of railway porters, and the alarmed cabman who had been keeping his eye on Mrs. Vincent. The poor widowgasped as she gazed and saw no traces of the enemy who had eluded them.
“Oh, Arthur, my dear boy, I thought, in such a case, it ought to be a man to speak to him,” faltered Mrs. Vincent. “He went that way—that way, look!—in a cab, with somebody in a blue veil.”
Vincent rushed away in the direction she indicated, at a pace which he was totally unused to, and of course quite unable to keep up beyond the first heat; but few things could be more hopeless than to dash into the whirl of vehicles in the crowded current of the New Road, with any vain hope of identifying one which had ten minutes’ start, and no more distinctive mark of identity than the spectrum of a blue veil. He rushed back again, angry with himself for losing breath in so vain an attempt, just in time to place his mother in a carriage and jump in beside her before the train started. Mrs. Vincent’s anxiety, her questions which he could not hear, her doubts whether it might not have been best to have missed the train and followed Mr. Fordham, aggravated the much-tried patience of her son beyond endurance. They set off upon their sad journey with a degree of injured feeling on both sides, such as often gives a miserable complication to a mutual anxiety. But the mother, wounded and timid, feeling more than ever the difference between the boy who was all her own and the man who had thoughts and impulses of which she knew nothing, was naturally the first to recover and to make wistful overtures of peace.
“Well, Arthur,” she said, after a while, leaningforward to him, her mild voice making a gentle murmur through the din of the journey, “though it was very foolish of me not to speak to him when I saw him, still, dear, he is gone and out of the way; that is a great comfort—we will never, never let him come near Susan again. That is just what I was afraid of; I have been saying to myself all day, ‘What if he should go to Lonsdale too, and deny it all?’ but Providence, you see, dear, has ordered it for us, and now he shall never come near my poor child again.”
“Do you think he has been to Lonsdale?” asked Vincent.
“My poor Susan!” said his simple mother, “she will be happier than ever when we come to her with this dreadful news. Yes; I suppose he must have been seeing her, Arthur—and I am glad it has happened while I was away, and before we knew; and now he is gone,” said the widow, looking out of the carriage with a sigh of relief, as if she could still see the road by which he had disappeared—“now he is gone, there will be no need for any dreadful strife or arguments. God always arranges things for us so much better than we can arrange them for ourselves. Fancy if he had come to-morrow to tear her dear heart to pieces!—Oh, Arthur, I am very thankful! There will be nothing to do now but to think best how to break it to her. He had ladies with him; it is dreadful to think of such villany. Oh, Arthur, do you imagine it could be his wife?—and somebody in a blue veil.”
“A blue veil!”—Mrs. Hilyard’s message suddenlyoccurred to Vincent’s mind, with its special mention of that article of disguise. “If this man is the man we suppose, he has accomplished one of his wishes,” said the minister, slowly; “and she will kill him as sure as he lives.”
“Who will kill him?—I hope nothing has occurred about your friend’s child to agitate my Susan,” said his mother. “It was all the kindness of your heart, my dear boy; but it was very imprudent of you to let Susan’s name be connected with anybody of doubtful character. Oh, Arthur, dear, we have both been very imprudent!—you have so much of my quick temper. It was a punishment to me to see how impatient you were to-day; but Susan takes after your dear father. Oh, my own boy, pray; pray for her, that her heart may not be broken by this dreadful news.”
And Mrs. Vincent leant back in her corner, and once more put down her veil. Pray!—who was he to pray for? Susan, forlorn and innocent, disappointed in her first love, but unharmed by any worldly soil or evil passion?—or the other sufferers involved in more deadly sort, himself palpitating with feverish impulses, broken loose from all his peaceful youthful moorings, burning with discontents and aspirations, not spiritual, but of the world? Vincent prayed none as he asked himself that bitter question. He drew back in his seat opposite his mother, and pondered in his heart the wonderful difference between the objects of compassion to whom the world gives ready tears, and those of whom the world knows and suspects nothing. Susan! he couldsee her mother weeping over her in her white and tender innocence. What if, perhaps, she broke her young heart? the shock would only send the girl with more clinging devotion to the feet of the great Father; but as for himself, all astray from duty and sober life, devoured with a consuming fancy, loathing the way and the work to which he had been trained to believe that Father had called him—who thought of weeping?—or for Her, whom his alarmed imagination could not but follow, going forth remorseless and silent to fulfil her promise, and kill the man who had wronged her? Oh, the cheat of tears!—falling sweet over the young sufferers whom sorrow blessed—drying up from the horrible complex pathways where other souls, in undisclosed anguish, went farther and farther from God!
With such thoughts the mother and son hurried on upon their darkling journey. It was the middle of the night when they arrived in Lonsdale—a night starless, but piercing with cold. They were the only passengers who got out at the little station, where two or three lamps glared wildly on the night, and two pale porters made a faint bustle to forward the long convoy of carriages upon its way. One of these men looked anxiously at the widow, as if with the sudden impulse of asking a question, or communicating some news, but was called off by his superior before he could speak. Vincent unconsciously observed the look, and was surprised and even alarmed by it, without knowing why. It returned to his mind, as he gave his mother his arm to walk the remaining distance home. Why did the man put onthat face of curiosity and wonder? But, to be sure, to see the mild widow arrive in this unexpected way in the middle of the icy January night, must have been surprising enough to any one who knew her, and her gentle decorous life. He tried to think no more of it, as they set out upon the windy road, where a few sparely-scattered lamps blinked wildly, and made the surrounding darkness all the darker. The station was half a mile from the town, and Mrs. Vincent’s cottage was on the other side of Lonsdale, across the river, which stole sighing and gleaming through the heart of the little place. Somehow the sudden black shine of that water as they caught it, crossing the bridge, brought a shiver and flash of wild imagination to the mind of the Nonconformist. He thought of suicides, murders, ghastly concealment, and misery; and again the face of the porter returned upon him. What if something had happened while the watchful mother had been out of the way? The wind came sighing round the corners with an ineffectual gasp, as if it too had some warning, some message to deliver. Instinctively he drew his mother’s arm closer, and hurried her on. Suggestions of horrible unthought-of evil seemed lurking everywhere in the noiseless blackness of the night.
Mrs. Vincent shivered too, but it was with cold and natural agitation. In her heart she was putting tender words together, framing tender phrases—consulting with herself how she was to look, and how to speak. Already she could see the half-awakened girl, starting up all glowing and sweet from her saferest, unforeboding of evil; and the widow composed her face under the shadow of her veil, and sent back with an effort the unshed tears from her eyes, that Susan might not see any traces in her face, till she had “prepared her” a little, for that dreadful, inevitable blow.
The cottage was all dark, as was natural—doubly dark to-night, for there was no light in the skies, and the wind had extinguished the lamp which stood nearest, and on ordinary occasions threw a doubtful flicker on the little house. “Susan will soon hear us, she is such a light sleeper,” said Mrs. Vincent. “Ring the bell, Arthur. I don’t like using the knocker, to disturb the neighbours. Everybody would think it so surprising to hear a noise in the middle of the night from our house. There—wait a moment. That was a very loud ring; Susan must be sleeping very soundly if that does not wake her up.”
There was a little pause; not a sound, except the tinkling of the bell, which they could hear inside as the peal gradually subsided, was in the air; breathless silence, darkness, cold, an inhuman preternatural chill and watchfulness, no welcome sound of awakening sleepers, only their own dark shadows in the darkness, listening like all the hushed surrounding world at that closed door.
“Poor dear! Oh, Arthur, it is dreadful to come and break her sleep,” sighed Mrs. Vincent, whose strain of suspense and expectation heightened the effect of the cold: “when will she sleep as sound again? Give another ring, dear. How terribly darkand quiet it is! Ring again, again, Arthur!—dear, dear me, to think of Susan in such a sound sleep!—and generally she starts at any noise. It is to give her strength to bear what is coming, poor child, poor child!”
The bell seemed to echo out into the silent road, it pealed so clearly and loudly through the shut-up house, but not another sound disturbed the air without or within. Mrs. Vincent began to grow restless and alarmed. She went out into the road, and gazed up at the closed windows; her very teeth chattered with anxiety and cold.
“It is very odd she does not wake,” said the widow; “she must be rousing now, surely. Arthur, don’t look as if we had bad news. Try to command your countenance, dear. Hush! don’t you hear them stirring? Now, Arthur, Arthur, oh remember not to look so dreadful as you did in Carlingford! I am sure I hear her coming down-stairs. Hark! what is it? Ring again, Arthur—again!”
The words broke confused and half-articulate from her lips; a vague dread took possession of her, as of her son. For his part, he rang the bell wildly without pausing, and applied the knocker to the echoing door with a sound which seemed to reverberate back and back through the darkness. It was not the sleep of youth Vincent thought of, as, without a word to say, he thundered his summons on the cottage door. He was not himself aware what he was afraid of; but in his mind he saw the porter’s alarmed and curious look, and felt the ominous silence thrillingwith loud clangour of his own vain appeals through the deserted house.
At length a sound—the mother and son both rushed speechless towards the side-window, from which it came. The window creaked slowly open, and a head, which was not Susan’s, looked cautiously out. “Who is there?” cried a strange voice; it’s some mistake. This is Mrs. Vincent’s, this is, and nobody’s at home. If you don’t go away I’ll spring the rattle, and call Thieves, thieves—Fire! What do you mean coming rousing folks like this in the dead of night?”
“Oh, Williams, are you there? Thank God!—then all is well,” said Mrs. Vincent, clasping her hands. “It is I—you need not be afraid—I and my son: don’t disturb Miss Susan, since she has not heard us—but come down, and let us in;—don’t disturb my daughter. It is I—don’t you know my voice?”
“Good Lord!” cried the speaker at the window; then in a different tone, “I’m coming, ma’am—I’m coming.” Instinctively, without knowing why, Vincent drew his mother’s arm within his own, and held her fast. Instinctively the widow clung to him, and kept herself erect by his aid. They did not say a word—no advices now about composing his countenance. Mrs. Vincent’s face was ghastly, had there been any light to see it. She went sheer forward when the door was open, as though neither her eyes nor person were susceptible of any other motion. An inexpressible air of desolation upon the cottage parlour, where everything looked far too trim andorderly for recent domestic occupation, brought to a climax all the fanciful suggestions which had been tormenting Vincent. He called out his sister’s name in an involuntary outburst of dread and excitement, “Susan! Susan!” The words pealed into the midnight echoes—but there was no Susan to answer to the call.
“It is God that keeps her asleep to keep her happy,” said his mother, with her white lips. She dropt from his arm upon the sofa in a dreadful pause of determination, facing them with wide-open eyes—daring them to undeceive her—resolute not to hear the terrible truth, which already in her heart she knew. “Susan is asleep, asleep!” she cried, in a terrible idiocy of despair, always facing the frightened woman before her with those eyes which knew better, but would not be undeceived. The shivering midnight, the mother’s dreadful looks, the sudden waking to all this fright and wonder, were too much for the terrified guardian of the house. She fell on her knees at the widow’s feet.
“Oh, Lord! Miss Susan’s gone! I’d have kep her if I had been here. I’d have said her mamma would never send no gentleman but Mr. Arthur to fetch her away. But she’s gone. Good Lord! it’s killed my missis—I knew it would kill my missis. Oh, good Lord! good Lord! Run for a doctor, Mr. Arthur; if the missis is gone, what shall we do?”
Vincent threw the frightened creature off with a savage carelessness of which he was quite unconscious, and raised his mother in his arms. She hadfallen back in a dreary momentary fit which was not fainting—her eyes fluttering under their half-closed lids, her lips moving with sounds that did not come. The shock had struck her as such shocks strike the mortal frame when it grows old. When sound burst at last from the moving lips, it was in a babble that mocked all her efforts to speak. But she was not unconscious of the sudden misery. Her eyes wandered about, taking in everything around her, and at last fixed upon a letter lying half-open on Susan’s work-table, almost the only token of disorder or agitation in the trim little room. The first sign of revival she showed was pointing at it with a doubtful but impatient gesture. Before she could make them understand what she meant, that “quick temper” of which Mrs. Vincent accused herself blazed up in the widow’s eyes. She raised herself erect out of her son’s arms, and seized the paper. It was Vincent’s letter to his sister, written from London after he had failed in his inquiries about Mr. Fordham. In the light of this dreadful midnight the young man himself perceived how alarming and peremptory were its brief injunctions. “Don’t write to Mr. Fordham again till my mother’s return; probably I shall bring her home: we have something to say to you on this subject, and in the mean time be sure you do as I tell you.” Mrs. Vincent gradually recovered herself as she read this; she said it over under her breath, getting back the use of her speech. There was not much explanation in it, yet it seemed to take the place, in the mother’s confused faculties, of an apology for Susan. “She wasfrightened,” said Mrs. Vincent, slowly, with strange twitches about her lips—“she was frightened.” That was all her mind could take in at once. Afterwards, minute by minute, she raised herself up, and came to self-command and composure. Only as she recovered did the truth reveal itself clearly even to Vincent, who, after the first shock, had been occupied entirely by his mother. The young man’s head throbbed and tingled as if with blows. As she sat up and gazed at him with her own recovered looks, through the dim ice-cold atmosphere, lighted faintly with one candle, they both woke up to the reality of their position. The shock of the discovery was over—Susan was gone; but where, and with whom? There was still something to hope, if everything to fear.