“She is gone to her aunt Alice,” said Mrs. Vincent, once more looking full in the eyes of the woman who had been left in charge of the house, and who stood shivering with cold and agitation, winding and unwinding round her a thin shawl in which she had wrapped up her arms. “She has gone to her aunt Alice—she was frightened, and thought something had happened. To-morrow we can go and bring her home.”
“Oh, good Lord! No; she ain’t there,” cried the frightened witness, half inaudible with her chattering teeth.
“Or to Mrs. Hastings at the farm. Susan knows what friends I can trust her to. Arthur, dear, let us go to bed. It’s uncomfortable, but you won’t mind for one night,” said the widow, with a gasp, risingup and sitting down again. She dared not trust herself to hear any explanation, yet all the time fixed with devouring eyes upon the face of the woman whom she would not suffer to speak.
“Mother, for Heaven’s sake let us understand it; let her speak—let us know. Where has Susan gone? Speak out; never mind interruptions. Where is my sister?” cried Vincent, grasping the terrified woman by the arm.
“Oh Lord! If the missis wouldn’t look at me like that! I ain’t to blame!” cried Williams, piteously. “It was the day afore yesterday as the ladies came. I come up to help Mary with the beds. There was the old lady as had on a brown bonnet and the young miss in the blue veil——”
Vincent uttered a sudden exclamation, and looked at his mother; but she would not meet his eyes—would not acknowledge any recognition of that fatal piece of gauze. She gave a little gasp, sitting bolt upright, holding fast by the back of a chair, but kept her eyes steadily and sternly upon the woman’s face.
“We tidied the best room for the lady, and Miss Susan’s little closet; and Mary had out the best sheets, for she says——”
“Mary—where’s Mary?” cried Mrs. Vincent, suddenly.
“I know no more nor a babe,” cried Williams, wringing her hands. “She’s along with Miss Susan—wherever that may be—and the one in the blue veil.”
“Go on, go on!” cried Vincent.
But his mother did not echo his cry. Her strained hand fell upon her lap with a certain relaxation and relief; her gaze grew less rigid; incomprehensible moisture came to her eyes. “Oh, Arthur, there’s comfort in it!” said Mrs. Vincent, looking like herself again. “She’s taken Mary, God bless her! she’s known what she was doing. Now I’m more easy; Williams, you can sit down and tell us the rest.”
“Go on!” cried Vincent, fiercely. “Good heavens! what good can a blundering country girl do here?—go on.”
The women thought otherwise; they exchanged looks of sympathy and thankfulness; they excited the impatient young man beside them, who thought he knew the world, into the wildest exasperation by that pause of theirs. His mother even loosed her bonnet off her aching head, and ventured to lean back under the influence of that visionary consolation; while Vincent, aggravated to the intolerable pitch, sprang up, and, once more seizing Williams by the arm, shook her unawares in the violence of his anxiety. “Answer me!” cried the young man; “you tell us everything but the most important of all. Besides this girl—and Mary—who was with my sister when she went away?”
“Oh Lord! you shake the breath out of me, Mr. Arthur—you do,” cried the woman. “Who? why, who should it be, to be sure, but him as had the best right after yourself to take Miss Susan to her mamma? You’ve crossed her on the road, poor dear,” said the adherent of the house, wringing herhands; “but she was going to her ma—that’s where she was going. Mr. Arthur’s letter gave her a turn; and then, to be sure, when Mr. Fordham came, the very first thing he thought upon was to take her to her mamma.”
Vincent groaned aloud. In his first impulse of fury he seized his hat and rushed to the door to pursue them anyhow, by any means. Then, remembering how vain was the attempt, came back again, dashed down the hat he had put on, and seized upon the railway book in his pocket, to see when he could start upon that desperate mission. Minister as he was, a muttered curse ground through his teeth—villain! coward! destroyer!—curse him! His passion was broken in the strangest way by the composed sounds of his mother’s voice.
“It was very natural,” she said, with dry tones, taking time to form the words as if they choked her; “and of course, as you say, Williams, Mr. Fordham had the best right. He will take her to his mother’s—or—or leave her in my son’s rooms in Carlingford; and as she has Mary with her—Arthur,” continued his mother, fixing a warning emphatic look upon him as he raised his astonished eyes to her face, “you know that is quite right: after you—Mr. Fordham is—the only person—that could have taken care of her in her journey. There, I am satisfied. Perhaps, Williams, you had better go to bed. My son and I have something to talk of, now I feel myself.”
“I’ll go light the fire, and get you a cup of tea—oh Lord! what Miss Susan would say if she knew you were here, and had got such a fright!” criedthe old servant; “but now you’re composed, there’s nothing as’ll do you good like a cup of tea.”
“Thank you—yes; make it strong, and Mr. Arthur will have some too,” said the widow; “and take care the kettle is boiling; and then, Williams, you must not mind us, but go to bed.”
Vincent threw down his book, and stared at her with something of that impatience and half-contempt which had before moved him. “If the world were breaking up, I suppose women could still drink tea!” he said, bitterly.
“Oh, Arthur, my dear boy,” cried his mother, “don’t you see we must put the best face on it now? Everybody must not know that Susan has been carried away by a—— O God, forgive me! don’t letmecurse him, Arthur. Let us get away from Lonsdale, dear, before we say anything. Words will do no good. Oh, my dear boy, till we know better, Mr. Fordham is Susan’s betrothed husband, and he has gone to take care of her to Carlingford. Hush—don’t say any more. I am going to compose myself, Arthur, for my child’s sake,” cried the mother, with a smile of anguish, looking into her son’s face. How did she drive those tears back out of her patient eyes? how did she endure to talk to the old servant about what was to be done to-morrow—and how the sick lady was next door—till the excited and shivering attendant could be despatched up-stairs and got out of the way? Woman’s weaker nature, that could mingle the common with the great; or woman’s strength, that could endure all things—which was it? The young man, sitting by in a sullen, intolerablesuspense, waiting till it was practicable to rush away through the creeping gloom of night after the fugitives, could no more understand these phenomena of love and woe, than he could translate the distant mysteries of the spheres.
EARLYmorning, but black as midnight; bitter cold, if bitterer cold could be, than that to which they entered when they first came to the deserted house; the little parlour, oh, so woefully trim and tidy, with the fire laid ready for lighting, which even the mother, anxious about her son, had not had the heart to light; the candle on the table between them lighting dimly this speechless interval; some shawls laid ready to take with them when they went back again to the earliest train; Mrs. Vincent sitting by with her bonnet on, and its veil drooping half over her pale face, sometimes rousing up to cast hidden looks of anxiety at her son, sometimes painfully saying something with a vain effort at smiling—what o’clock was it? when did he think they could reach town?—little ineffectual attempts at the common intercourse, which seemed somehow to deepen the dreadful silence, the shivering cold, the utter desolation of the scene. Such a night!—its minutes were hours as they stole by noiseless in murderous length and tedium—and the climax of its misery was in the little start with which Mrs. Vincent now and then woke up out of her own thoughts to make that pitiful effort to talk to her son.
They were sitting thus, waiting, not even venturingto look at each other, when a sudden sound startled them. Nothing more than a footstep outside approaching softly. A footstep—surely two steps. They could hear them far off in this wonderful stillness, making steady progress near—nearer. Mrs. Vincent rose up, stretching her little figure into a preternatural hysteric semblance of height. Who was it? Two people—surely women—and what women could be abroad at such an hour? One lighter, one heavier, irregular as female steps are, coming this way—this way! Her heart fluttered in the widow’s ears with a sound that all but obliterated those steps which still kept advancing. Hark, sudden silence! a pause—then, oh merciful heaven, could it be true? a tinkle at the bell—a summons at the closed door.
Mrs. Vincent had flown forth with open arms—with eyes blinded. The poor soul thought nothing less than that it was her child returned. They carried her back speechless, in a disappointment too cruel and bitter to have expression. Two women—one sober, sleepy, nervous, and full of trouble, unknown to either mother or son—the other with a certain dreadful inspiration in her dark face, and eyes that gleamed out of it as if they had concentrated into them all the blackness of the night.
“You are going back, and so am I,” Mrs. Hilyard said. “I came to say a word to you before I go away. If I have been anyhow the cause, forgive me. God knows, of all things in the world the last I dreamt of was to injure this good woman or invade her innocent house. Do you know where they havegone?—did she leave any letters?—Tell me. She shall be precious to me as my own, if I find them out.”
Mrs. Vincent freed herself from her son’s arms, and got up with her blanched face. “My daughter—followed me—to Carlingford,” she said, in broken words, with a determination which sat almost awful on her weakness. “We have had the great misfortune—to cross each other—on the way. I am going—after her—directly. I am not afraid—of my Susan. She is all safe in my son’s house.”
The others exchanged alarmed looks, as they might have done had a child suddenly assumed the aspect of a leader. She, who could scarcely steady her trembling limbs to stand upright, faced their looks with a dumb denial of her own anguish. “It is—very unfortunate—but I am not anxious,” she said, slowly, with a ghastly smile. Human nature could do no more. She sank down again on her seat, but still faced them—absolute in her self-restraint, rejecting pity. Not even tears should fall upon Susan’s sweet name—not while her mother lived to defend it in life and death.
The Carlingford needlewoman stood opposite her, gazing with eyes that went beyond that figure, and yet dwelt upon it, at so wonderful a spectacle. Many a terrible secret of life unknown to the minister’s gentle mother throbbed in her heart; but she stood in a pause of wonder before that weaker woman. The sight of her stayed the passionate current for a moment, and brought the desperate woman to a pause.Then she turned to the young man, who stood speechless by his mother’s side—
“You are a priest, and yet you do not curse,” she said. “Is God as careless of a curse as of a blessing?Shethinks He will save the Innocents yet. She does not know that He stands by like a man, and sees them murdered, and shines and rains all the same. God! No—He never interferes. Good-bye,” she added, suddenly, holding out to him the thin hand upon which, even in that dreadful moment, his eye still caught the traces of her work, the scars of the needle, and stains of the coarse colour. “If you ever see me again, I shall be a famous woman, Mr. Vincent. You will have a little of the trail of my glory, and be able to furnish details of my latter days. This good Miss Smith here will tell you of the life it was before; but if I should make a distinguished end after all, come to see me then—never mind where. I speak madly, to be sure, but you don’t understand me. There—not a word. You preach very well, but I am beyond preaching now—Good-bye.”
“No,” said Vincent, clutching her hand—“never, if you go with that horrible intention in your eyes; I will say no farewell to such an errand as this.”
The eyes in their blank brightness paused at him for a moment before they passed to the vacant air on which they were always fixed—paused with a certain glance of troubled amusement, the lightning of former days. “You flatter me,” she said, steadily, with the old habitual movement of her mouth. “It is years since anybody has taken the trouble to read anyintention in my eyes. But don’t you understand yet that a woman’s intention is the last thing she is likely to perform in this world? We do have meanings now and then, we poor creatures, but they seldom come to much. Good-bye, good-bye!”
“You cannot look at me,” said Vincent, with a conscious incoherence, reason or argument being out of the question. “What is it you see behind there? Where are you looking with those dreadful eyes?”
She brought her eyes back as he spoke, with an evident effort, to fix them upon his face. “I once remarked upon your high-breeding,” said the strange woman. “A prince could not have shown finer manners than you did in Carlingford, Mr. Vincent. Don’t disappoint me now. If I see ghosts behind you, what then? Most people that have lived long enough, come to see ghosts before they die. But this is not exactly the time for conversation, however interesting it may be. If you and I ever see each other again, things will have happened before then; you too, perhaps, may have found the ghosts out. I appoint you to come to see me after you have come to life again, in the next world. Good-night. I don’t forget that you gave me your blessing when we parted last.”
She was turning away when Mrs. Vincent rose, steadying herself by the chair, and put a timid hand upon the stranger’s arm. “I don’t know who you are,” said the widow; “it is all a strange jumble; but I am an older woman than you, and a—a minister’s wife. You have something on your mind. My son is frightened you will do something—I cannottell what. You are much cleverer than I am; but I am, as I say, an older woman, and a—a minister’s wife. I am not—afraid of anything. Yes! I know God does not always save the Innocents, as you say—but He knows why, though we don’t. Will you go with me? If you have gone astray when you were young,” said the mild woman, raising up her little figure with an ineffable simplicity, “I will never ask any questions, and it will not matter—for everybody I care for knows me. The dreadful things you think of will not happen if we go together. I was a minister’s wife thirty years. I know human nature and God’s goodness. Come with me.”
“Mother, mother! what are you saying?” cried Vincent, who had all the time been making vain attempts to interrupt this extraordinary speech. Mrs. Hilyard put him away with a quick gesture. She took hold of the widow’s hand with that firm, supporting, compelling pressure under which, the day before, Mrs. Vincent had yielded up all her secrets. She turned her eyes out of vacancy to the little pale woman who offered her this protection. A sudden mist surprised those gleaming eyes—a sudden thrill ran through the thin, slight, iron figure, upon which fatigue and excitement seemed to make no impression. The rock was stricken at last.
“No—no,” she sighed, with a voice that trembled. “No—no! the lamb and the lion do not go together yet in this poor world. No—no—no. I wonder what tears have to do in my eyes; ah, God in the skies! if you ever do miracles, do one for this woman, and save her child! Praying and cryingare strange fancies for me—I must go away, but first,” she said, still holding Mrs. Vincent fast—“a woman is but a woman after all—if it is more honourable to be a wicked man’s wife than to have gone astray, as you call it, then there is no one in the world who can breathe suspicion upon me. Ask this other good woman here, who knows all about me, but fears me, like you. Fears me! What do you suppose there can be to fear, Mr. Vincent, you who are a scholar, and know better than these soft women,” said Mrs. Hilyard, suddenly dropping the widow’s hand, and turning round upon the young minister, with an instant throwing off of all emotion, which had the strangest horrifying effect upon the little agitated company, “in a woman who was born to the name of Rachel Russell, the model English wife? Will the world ever believe harm, do you imagine, of such a name? I will take refuge in my ancestress. But we go different ways, and have different ends to accomplish,” she continued, with a sudden returning gleam of the subdued horror—“Good-night—good-night!”
“Oh, stop her, Arthur—stop her!—Susan will be at Carlingford when we get there; Susan will go nowhere else but to her mother,” cried Mrs. Vincent, as the door closed on the nocturnal visitors—“I am as sure—as sure——! Oh, my dear, do you think I can have any doubt of my own child? As for Susan going astray—or being carried off—or falling into wickedness—Arthur!” said his mother, putting back her veil from her pale face, “now I have got over this dreadful night, I know better—nobody mustbreathe such a thing to me. Tell her so, dear—tell her so!—call her back—they will be at Carlingford when we get there!”
Vincent drew his mother’s arm through his own, and led her out into the darkness, which was morning and no longer night. “A few hours longer and we shall see,” he said, with a hard-drawn breath. Into that darkness Mrs. Hilyard and her companion had disappeared. There was another line of railway within a little distance of Lonsdale, but Vincent was at pains not to see his fellow-travellers as he placed his mother once more in a carriage, and once more caught the eye of the man whose curious look had startled him. When the grey morning began to dawn, it revealed two ashen faces, equally speechless and absorbed with thoughts which neither dared communicate to the other. They did not even look at each other, as the merciful noise and motion wrapped them in that little separate sphere of being. One possibility and no more kept a certain coherence in both their thoughts, otherwise lost in wild chaos—horrible suspense—an uncertainty worse than death.
ITwas the very height of day when the travellers arrived in Carlingford. It would be vain to attempt to describe their transit through London in the bustling sunshine of the winter morning after the vigil of that night, and in the frightful suspense and excitement of their minds. Vincent remembered, for years after, certain cheerful street-corners, round which they turned on their way from one station to another, with shudders of recollection, and an intense consciousness of all the life circulating about them, even to the attitudes of the boys that swept the crossings, and their contrast with each other. His mother made dismal attempts now and then to say something; that he was looking pale; that after all he could yet preach, and begin his course on the Miracles; that it would be such a comfort to rest when they got home; but at last became inaudible, though he knew by her bending across to him, and the motion of those parched lips with which she still tried to smile, that the widow still continued to make those pathetic little speeches without knowing that she had become speechless in the rising tide of her agony. But at last they reached Carlingford, where everything was at its brightest, all the occupations of life afloat in the streets, and sunshine, lavish thoughineffectual, brightening the whole aspect of the town. When they emerged from the railway, Mrs. Vincent took her son’s arm, and for the last time made some remark with a ghastly smile—but no sound came from her lips. They walked up the sunshiny street together with such silent speed as would have been frightful to look at had anybody known what was in their hearts. Mrs. Pigeon, who was coming along the other side, crossed over on purpose to accost the minister and be introduced to his mother, but was driven frantic by the total blank unconsciousness with which the two swept past her; “taking no more notice than if he had never set eyes on me in his born days!” as she described it afterwards. The door of the house where Vincent lived was opened to them briskly by the little maid in holiday attire; everything wore the most sickening, oppressive brightness within in fresh Saturday cleanliness. Vincent half carried his mother up the steps, and held fast in his own to support her the hand which he had drawn tightly through his arm. “Is there any one here? Has anybody come for me since I left?” he asked, with the sound of his own words ringing shrilly into his ears. “Please, sir, Mr. Tozer’s been,” said the girl, alertly, with smiling confidence. She could not comprehend the groan with which the young man startled all the clear and sunshiny atmosphere, nor the sudden rustle of the little figure beside him, which moved somehow, swaying with the words as if they were a wind. “Mother, you are going to faint!” cried Vincent—and the little maid flew in terror to call her mistress, and bring a glassof water. But when she came back, the mother and son were no longer in the bright hall with its newly cleaned wainscot and whitened floor. When she followed them up-stairs with the water, it was the minister who had dropped into the easy-chair with his face hidden on the table, and his mother was standing beside him. Mrs. Vincent looked up when the girl came in and said, “Thank you—that will do,” looking in her face, and not at what she carried. She was of a dreadful paleness, and looked with eyes that were terrible to that wondering observer upon the little attendant. “Perhaps there have been some letters or messages,” said Mrs. Vincent. “We—we expected somebody to come; think! a young lady came here?—and when she found we were gone——”
“Only Miss Phœbe!” said the girl, in amazement—“to say as her Ma——”
“Only Miss Phœbe!” repeated the widow, as if she did not comprehend the words. Then she turned to her son, and smoothed down the ruffled locks on his head; then held out her hand again to arrest the girl as she was going away. “Has your mistress got anything in the house,” she asked—“any soup or cold meat, or anything? Would you bring it up, please, directly?—soup would perhaps be best—or a nice chop. Ask what she has got, and bring it up on a tray. You need not lay the cloth—only a tray with a napkin. Yes, I see you know what I mean.”
“Mother!” cried Vincent, raising his head in utter fright as the maid left the room. He thought in the shock his mother’s gentle wits had gone.
“You have eaten nothing, dear, since we left,” she said, with a heartbreaking smile. “I am not going crazy, Arthur. O no, no, my dear boy! I will not go crazy; but you must eat something, and not be killed too. Susan is not here,” said Mrs. Vincent, with a ghastly, wistful look round the room; “but we are not going to distrust her at the very first moment, far less her Maker, Arthur. Oh, my dear, I must not speak, or something will happen to me; and nothing must happen to you or me till we have found your sister. You must eat when it comes, and then you must go away. Perhaps,” said Mrs. Vincent, sitting down and looking her son direct in the eyes, as if to read any suggestion that could arise there, “she has lost her way:—perhaps she missed one of these dreadful trains—perhaps she got on the wrong railway, Arthur. Oh, my dear boy, you must take something to eat, and then you must go and bring Susan home. She has nobody to take care of her but you.”
Vincent returned his mother’s look with a wild inquiring gaze, but with his lips he said “Yes,” not daring to put in words the terrible thoughts in his heart. The two said nothing to each other of the horror that possessed them both, or of the dreadful haze of uncertainty in which that Susan whom her brother was to go and bring home as if from an innocent visit, was now enveloped. Their eyes spoke differently as they looked into each other, and silently withdrew again, each from each, not daring to communicate further. Just then a slight noise came below, to the door. Mrs. Vincent stood updirectly in an agony of listening, trembling all over. To be sure it was nothing. When nothing came of it, the poor mother sank back again with a piteous patience, which it was heartbreaking to look at; and Vincent returned from the window which he had thrown open in time to see Phœbe Tozer disappear from the door. They avoided each other’s eyes now; one or two heavy sobs broke forth from Mrs. Vincent’s breast, and her son walked with a dreadful funereal step from one end of the room to the other. Not even the consolation of consulting together what was to be done, or what might have happened, was left them. They dared not put their position into words—dared not so much as inquire in their thoughts where Susan was, or what had befallen her. She was to be brought home; but whence or from what abyss neither ventured to say.
Upon their misery the little maid entered again with her tray, and the hastily prepared refreshment which Mrs. Vincent had ordered for her son. The girl’s eyes were round and staring with wonder and curiosity; but she was aware, with female instinct, that the minister’s mother, awful little figure, with lynx eyes, which nothing escaped, was watching her, and her observations were nervous accordingly. “Please, sir, it’s a chop,” said the girl—“please, sir, missus sent to know was the other gentleman a-coming?—and please, if he is, there ain’t nowhere as missus knows of, as he can sleep—with the lady, and you, and all; and the other lodgers as well”—said the handmaiden with a sigh, as she set down her tray and made a desperate endeavour to turn her backupon Mrs. Vincent, and to read some interpretation of all this in the unguarded countenance of the minister; “and please, am I to bring up the Wooster sauce, and would the lady like some tea or anythink? And missus would be particklar obliged if you would say. Miss Phœbe’s been to ask the gentleman to tea, but where he’s to sleep, missus says——”
“Yes, yes, to be sure,” said Vincent, impatiently; “he can have my room, tell your mistress—that will do—we don’t want anything more.”
“Mr. Vincent is going to leave town again this afternoon,” said his mother. “Tell your mistress that I shall be glad to have a little conversation with her after my son goes away—and you had better bring the sauce—but it would have saved you trouble and been more sensible, if you had put it on the tray in the first place. Oh, Arthur,” cried his mother again, when she had seen the little maid fairly out—“do be a little prudent, my dear! When a minister lodges with one of his flock, he must think of appearances—and if it were only for my dear child’s sake, Arthur! Susan must not be spoken of through our anxiety; oh, my child!—Where can she be?—Where can she be?”
“Mother dear, you must keep up, or everything is lost!” cried Vincent, for the first time moved to the depths of his heart by that outcry of despair. He came to her and held her trembling hands, and laid his face upon them without any kiss or caress, that close clinging touch of itself expressing best the fellowship of their wretchedness. But Mrs. Vincentput her son away from her, when the door again bounced open. “My dear boy, here is the sauce, and you must eat your chop,” she said, getting up and drawing forward a chair for him; her hands, which trembled so, grew steady as she put everything in order, cut the bread, and set his plate before him. “Oh, eat something, Arthur dear—you must, or you cannot go through it,” said the widow, with her piteous smile. Then she sat down at the table by him in her defensive armour. The watchful eyes of “the flock” were all around spying upon the dreadful calamity which had overwhelmed them; at any moment the college companion whom Vincent had sent for might come in upon them in all the gaiety of his holiday. What they said had to be said with this consciousness—and the mother, in the depth of her suspense and terror, sat like a queen inspected on all sides, and with possible traitors round her, but resolute and self-commanding in her extremity, determined at least to be true to herself.
“Arthur, can you think where to go?” she said, after a little interval, almost under her breath.
“To London first,” said Vincent—“to inquire after—him, curse him! don’t say anything, mother—I am only a man after all. Then, according to the information I get.—God help us!—if I don’t get back before another Sunday——”
Mrs. Vincent gave a convulsive start, which shook the table against which she was leaning, and fell to shivering as if in a fit of ague. “Oh, Arthur, Arthur, what are you saying? Another Sunday!” she exclaimed, with a cry of despair. To live another day seemed impossible in that horror. But self-restraint was natural to the woman who had been, as she said, a minister’s wife for thirty years. She clasped her hands tight, and took up her burden again. “I will see Mr. Beecher when he comes, dear, and—and speak to him,” she said, with a sigh, “and I will see the Tozers and—and your people, Arthur; and if it should be God’s will to keep us so long in suspense, if—if—I can keep alive, dear, I may be of some use. Oh, Arthur, Arthur, the Lord have pity upon us! if my darling comes back, will she come here or will she go home? Don’t you think she will come here? If I go back to Lonsdale, I will not be able to rest for thinking she is at Carlingford; and if I stay—oh, Arthur, where do you think Susan will go to? She might be afraid to see you, and think you would be angry, but she never could distrust her poor mother, who was the first to put her in danger; and to think of my dear child going either there or here, and not finding me, Arthur! My dear, you are not eating anything. You can never go through it all without some support. For my sake, try to eat a little, my own boy; and oh, Arthur, what must I do?”
“These Tozers and people will worry you to death if you stay here,” said the minister, with an impatient sigh, as he thought of his own difficulties; “but I must not lose time by going back with you to Lonsdale, and you must not travel by yourself, and this is more in the way, whatever happens. Send word to Lonsdale that you are to have a messageby telegraph immediately—without a moment’s loss of time—if she comes back.”
“You might saywhen, Arthur, notif,” said his mother, with a little flash of tender resentment—then she gave way for the moment, and leaned her head against his arm and held him fast with that pressure and close clasp which spoke more than any words. When she raised her pale face again, it was to entreat him once more to eat. “Try to take something, if it were only a mouthful, for Susan’s sake,” pleaded the widow. Her son made a dismal attempt as she told him. Happy are the houses that have not seen such dreadful pretences of meals where tears were the only possible food! When she saw him fairly engaged in this desperate effort to take “some support,” the poor mother went away and wrote a crafty female letter, which she brought to him to read. He would have smiled at it had the occasion been less tragic. It was addressed to the minister of “the connection” at Lonsdale, and set forth how she was detained at Carlingford by some family affairs—how Susan was visiting friends and travelling, and her mother was not sure where to address her—and how it would be the greatest favour if he would see Williams at the cottage, and have a message despatched to Mrs. Vincent the moment her daughter returned. “Do you not think it would be better to confide in him a little, and tell him what anxiety we are in?” said Vincent, when he read this letter. His mother took it out of his hands with a little cry.“Oh, Arthur, though you are her brother, you are only a man, and don’t understand,” cried Mrs. Vincent. “Nobody must have anything to say about my child. If she comes to-night, she will come here,” continued the poor mother, pausing instinctively once more to listen; “she might have been detained somewhere; she may come at any moment—at any moment, Arthur dear! Though these telegraphs frighten me, and look as if they must bring bad news, I will send you word directly when my darling girl comes; but oh, my dear, though it is dreadful to send you away, and to think of your travelling to-morrow and breaking the Sunday, and very likely your people hearing it—oh, Arthur, God knows better, and will not blame you: and if you will not take anything more to eat, you should not lose time, my dearest boy! Don’t look at me, Arthur—don’t say good-bye. Perhaps you may meet her before you leave—perhaps you may not need to go away. Oh, Arthur dear, don’t lose any more time!”
“It is scarcely time for the train yet,” said the minister, getting up slowly; “the world does not care, though our hearts are breaking; it keeps its own time. Mother, good-bye. God knows what may have happened before I see you again.”
“Oh, Arthur, say nothing—say nothing! What can happen but my child to come home?” cried his mother, as he clasped her hands and drew her closer to him. She leaned against her son’s breast, which heaved convulsively, for one moment, and no more. She did not look at him as he went slowly out of the room, leaving her to the unspeakable silence and solitude in which every kind of terror started up andcrept about. But before Vincent had left the house his mother’s anxiety and hope were once more excited to passion. Some one knocked and entered; there was a sound of voices and steps on the stair audibly approaching this room in which she sat with her fears. But it was not Susan; it was a young man of Arthur’s own age, with his travelling-bag in his hand, and his sermons in his pocket. He had no suspicion that the sight of him brought the chill of despair to her heart as he went up to shake hands with his friend’s mother. “Vincent would not come back to introduce me,” said Mr. Beecher, “but he said I should find you here. I have known him many years, and it is a great pleasure to make your acquaintance. Sometimes he used to show me your letters years ago. Is Miss Vincent with you? It is pleasant to get out of town for a little, even though one has to preach; and they will all be interested in ’Omerton to hear how Vincent is getting on. Made quite a commotion in the world, they say, with these lectures of his. I always knew he would make an ’it if he had fair-play.”
“I am very glad to see you,” said Mrs. Vincent. “I have just come up from Lonsdale, and everything is in a confusion. When people grow old,” said the poor widow, busying herself in collecting the broken pieces of bread which Arthur had crumbled down by way of pretending to eat, “they feel fatigue and being put out of their way more than they ought. What can I get for you? will you have a glass of wine, and dinner as soon as it can be ready? My son had to go away.”
“Preaching somewhere?” asked the lively Mr. Beecher.
“N-no; he has some—private business to attend to,” said Mrs. Vincent, with a silent groan in her heart.
“Ah!—going to be married, I suppose?” said the man from ’Omerton; “that’s the natural consequence after a man gets a charge. Miss Vincent is not with you, I think you said? I’ll take a glass of wine, thank you; and I hear one of the flock has sent over to ask me to tea—Mr. Tozer, a leading man, I believe, among our people here,” added Mr. Beecher, with a little complacence. “It’s very pleasant when a congregation is hospitable and friendly. When a pastor’s popular, you see, it always reacts upon his brethren. May I ask if you are going to Mr. Tozer’s to tea to-night?”
“Oh, no,” faltered poor Mrs. Vincent, whom prudence kept from adding, “heaven forbid!” “They—did not know I was here,” she continued, faintly, turning away to ring the bell. Mr. Beecher, who flattered himself on his penetration, nodded slightly when her back was turned. “Jealous that they’ve asked me,” said the preacher, with a lively thrill of human satisfaction. How was he to know the blank of misery, the wretched feverish activity of thought, that possessed that mild little woman, as she gave her orders about the removal of the tray, and the dinner which already was being prepared for the stranger? But the lively young man from ’Omerton perceived that there was something wrong. Vincent’s black looks when he met him at the door, andthe exceeding promptitude of that invitation to tea, were two and two which he could put together. He concluded directly that the pastor, though he had made “an ’it,” was not found to suit the connection in Carlingford; and that possibly another candidate for Salem might be required ere long. “I would not injure Vincent for the world,” he said to himself, “but if he does not ’it it, I might.” The thought was not unpleasant. Accordingly, while Vincent’s mother kept her place there in the anguish of her heart, thinking that perhaps, even in this dreadful extremity, she might be able to do something for Arthur with his people, and conciliate the authorities, her guest was thinking, if Vincent were to leave Carlingford, what a pleasant distance from town it was, and how very encouraging of the Tozers to ask him to tea. It might come to something more than preaching for a friend; and if Vincent did not “’it it,” and a change were desirable, nobody could tell what might happen. All this smiling fabric the stranger built upon the discomposed looks of the Vincents and Phœbe’s invitation to tea.
To sit by him and keep up a little attempt at conversation—to superintend his dinner, and tell him what she knew of Salem and her son’s lectures, and his success generally, as became the minister’s mother—was scarcely so hard as to be left afterwards, when he went out to Tozer’s, all alone once more with the silence, with the sounds outside, with the steps that seem to come to the door, and the carriages that paused in the street, all sending dreadful thrills of hope through poor Mrs. Vincent’s worn-out heart.Happily, her faculties were engaged by those frequent and oft-repeated tremors. In the fever of her anxiety, always startled with an expectation that at last this was Susan, she did not enter into the darker question where Susan might really be, and what had befallen the unhappy girl. Half an hour after Mr. Beecher left her, Phœbe Tozer came in, affectionate and anxious, driving the wretched mother almost wild by the sound of her step and the apparition of her young womanhood, to beg and pray that Mrs. Vincent would join them at their “friendly tea.” “And so this is Mr. Vincent’s room,” said Phœbe, with a bashful air; “it feels so strange to be here! and you must besodull when he is gone. Oh, do come, and let us try to amuse you a little; though I am sure none of us could ever be such good company as the minister—oh, not half, nor quarter!” cried Phœbe. Even in the midst of her misery, the mother was woman enough to think that Phœbe showed too much interest in the minister. She declined the invitation with gentle distinctness. She did not return the enthusiastic kiss which was bestowed upon her. “I am very tired, thank you,” said Mrs. Vincent. “On Monday, if all is well, I will call to see your mamma. I hope you will not catch cold coming out in this thin dress. I am sure it was very kind of you; but I am very tired to-night. On—Monday.” Alas, Monday! could this horror last so long, and she not die? or would all be well by that time, and Susan in her longing arms? The light went out of her eyes, and the breath from her heart, as that dreadful question stared her in the face. She scarcely sawPhœbe’s withdrawal; she lay back in her chair in a kind of dreadful trance, till those stumbling steps and passing carriages began again, and roused her back into agonised life and bootless hope.
VINCENThad shaken hands with his friend at the door, and hurried past, saying something about losing the train, in order to escape conversation; but, with the vivid perceptions of excitement, he heard the delivery of Phœbe’s message, and saw the complacence with which the Homerton man regarded the invitation which had anticipated his arrival. The young Nonconformist had enough to think of as he took his way once more to the railway, and tea at Mrs. Tozer’s was anything but attractive to his own fancy; yet in the midst of his wretchedness he could not overcome the personal sense of annoyance which this trifling incident produced. It came like a prick of irritating pain, to aggravate the dull horror which throbbed through him. He despised himself for being able to think of it at all, but at the same time it came back to him, darting unawares again and again into his thoughts. Little as he cared for the entertainments and attention of his flock, he was conscious of a certain exasperation in discovering their eagerness to entertain another. He was disgusted with Phœbe for bringing the message, and disgusted with Beecher for looking pleased to receive it. “Probably he thinks he will supersede me,” Vincent thought, in sudden gusts of disdain now and then, with a sardonic smileon his lip, waking up afterwards with a thrill of deeper self-disgust, to think that anything so insignificant had power to move him. When he plunged off from Carlingford at last, in the early falling darkness of the winter afternoon, and looked back upon the few lights struggling red through the evening mists, it was with a sense of belonging to the place where he had left an interloper who might take his post over his head, which, perhaps, no other possible stimulant could have given him. He thought with a certain pang of Salem, and that pulpit which was his own, but in which another man should stand to-morrow, with a quickened thrill of something that was almost jealousy; he wondered what might be the sentiments of the connection about his deputy—perhaps Brown and Pigeon would prefer that florid voice to his own—perhaps Phœbe might find the substitute more practicable than the incumbent. Nothing before had ever made Salem so interesting to the young pastor as Beecher’s complacence over that invitation to tea.
But he had much more serious matters to consider in his rapid journey. Vincent was but a man, though he was Susan’s brother. He did not share those desperate hopes which afforded a kind of forlorn comfort and agony of expectation to his mother’s heart. No thought that Susan would come home either to Carlingford or Lonsdale was in his mind. In what way soever the accursed villain, whom his face blanched with deadly rage to think of, had managed to get her in his power, Susan’s sweet life was lost, her brother knew. He gave her up withunspeakable anguish and pity; but he did give her up, and hoped for no deliverance. Shame had taken possession of that image which fancy kept presenting in double tenderness and brightness to him as his heart burned in the darkness. He might find her indeed; he might snatch her out of these polluting arms, and bring home the sullied lily to her mother, but never henceforward could hope or honour blossom about his sister’s name. He made up his mind to this in grim misery, with his teeth clenched, and a desperation of rage and horror in his heart. But in proportion to his conviction that Susan would not return, was his eagerness to find her, and snatch her away. To think of her in horror and despair was easier than to think of her deluded and happy, as might be—as most probably was the case. This latter possibility made Vincent frantic. He could scarcely endure the slowness of the motion which was the highest pitch of speed that skill and steam had yet made possible. No express train could travel so fast as the thoughts which went before him, dismal pioneers penetrating the most dread abysses. To think of Susan happy in her horrible downfall and ruin was more than flesh or blood could bear.
When Vincent reached town, he took his way without a moment’s hesitation to the street in Piccadilly where he had once sought Mr. Fordham. He approached the place now with no precautions; he had his cab driven up to the door, and boldly entered as soon as it was opened. The house was dark and silent but for the light in the narrow hall; nobody there at that dead hour, while it was still too earlyfor dinner. And it was not the vigilant owner of the place, but a drowsy helper in a striped jacket who presented himself at the door, and replied to Vincent’s inquiry for Colonel Mildmay, that the Colonel was not at home—never was at home at that hour—but was not unwilling to inquire, if the gentleman would wait. Vincent put up the collar of his coat about his ears, and stood back with eager attention, intently alive to everything. Evidently the ruler of the house was absent as well as the Colonel. The man lounged to the staircase and shouted down, leaning upon the bannisters. No aside or concealment was possible in this perfectly easy method of communication. With an anxiety strongly at variance with the colloquy thus going on, and an intensification of all his faculties which only the height of excitement could give, Vincent stood back and listened. He heard every step that passed outside; the pawing of the horse in the cab that waited for him, the chance voices of the passengers, all chimed in, without interrupting the conversation between the man who admitted him and his fellow-servant down-stairs.
“Jim, is the Colonel at home?—he ain’t, to be sure, but we wants to know particklar. Here,” in a slightly lowered voice, “his mother’s been took bad, and the parson’s sent for him. When is he agoing to be in to dinner? Ask Cookie; she’ll be sure to know.”
“The Colonel ain’t coming in to dinner, stoopid,” answered the unseen interlocutor; “he ain’t been here all day. Out o’ town. Couldn’t you say so, insteadof jabbering? Out o’ town. It’s allays safe to say, and this time it’s true.”
“What’s he adoing of, in case the gen’leman should want to know?” said the fellow at the head of the stair.
“After mischief,” was the brief and emphatic answer. “You come along down to your work, and let the Colonel alone.”
“Any mischief in particklar?” continued the man, tossing a dirty napkin in his hand, and standing in careless contempt, with his back to the minister. “It’s a pleasant way the Colonel’s got, that is: any more particklars, Jim?—the gen’leman ’ll stand something if you’ll let him know.”
“Hold your noise, stoopid—it ain’t no concern o’ yours—my master’s my master, and I ain’t agoing to tell his secrets,” said the voice below. Vincent had made a step forward, divided between his impulse to kick the impertinent fellow who had admitted him down-stairs, and the equally strong impulse which prompted him to offer any bribe to the witness who knew his master’s secrets; but he was suddenly arrested in both by a step on the street outside, and the grating of a latch-key in the door. A long light step, firm and steady, with a certain sentiment of rapid silent progress in it. Vincent could not tell what strange fascination it was that made him turn round to watch this new-comer. The stranger’s approach thrilled him vaguely, he could not tell how. Then the door opened, and a man appeared like the footstep—a very tall slight figure, stooping forward a little; a pale oval face, too longto be handsome, adorned with a long brown beard; thoughtful eyes, with a distant gleam in them, now and then flashing into sudden penetrating glances—a loose dress too light for the season, which somehow carried out all the peculiarities of the long light step, the thin sinewy form, the thoughtful softness and keenness of the eye. Even in the height of his own suspense and excitement, Vincent paused to ask himself who this could be. He came in with one sudden glance at the stranger in the hall, passed him, and calling to the man, who became on the moment respectful and attentive, asked if there were any letters. “What name, sir?—beg your pardon—my place ain’t up-stairs,” said the fellow. What was the name? Vincent rushed forward when he heard it, and seized the new-comer by the shoulder with the fierceness of a tiger. “Fordham!” cried the young man, with boiling rage and hatred. Next moment he had let go his grasp, and was gazing bewildered upon the calm stranger, who looked at him with merely a thoughtful inquiry in his eyes. “Fordham—at your service—do you want anything with me?” he asked, meeting with undiminished calm the young man’s excited looks. This composure put a sudden curb on Vincent’s passion.
“My name is Vincent,” he said, restraining himself with an effort; “do you know now what I want with you? No? Am I to believe your looks or your name? If you are the man,” cried the young Nonconformist, with a groan out of his distracted heart, “whom Lady Western could trust with life, to death—or if you are a fiend incarnate, making misery andruin, you shall not escape me till I know the truth. Where is Susan? Here is where her innocent letters came—they were addressed to your name. Where is she now? Answer me! For you, as well as the rest of us, it is life or death.”
“You are raving,” said the stranger, keeping his awakened eyes fixed upon Vincent; “but this is easily settled. I returned from the East only yesterday. I don’t know you. What was that you said about Lady—Lady—what lady? Come in: and my name?—my name has been unheard in this country, so far as I know, for ten years. Lady——?—come in and explain what you mean.”
The two stood together confronting each other in the little parlour of the house, where the striped jacket quickly and humbly lighted the gas. Vincent’s face, haggard with misery and want of rest, looked wild in that sudden light. The stranger stood opposite him, leaning forward with a strange eagerness and inquiry. He did not care for Vincent’s anxiety, who was a stranger to him; he cared only to hear again that name—Lady——? He had heard it already, or he would have been less curious; he wanted to understand this wonderful message wafted to him out of his old life. What did it matter to Herbert Fordham, used to the danger of the deserts and mountains, whether it was a maniac who brought this chance seed of a new existence to his wondering heart?
“A man called Fordham has gone into my mother’s house,” said Vincent, fixing his eyes upon those keen but visionary orbs which were fixed onhim—“and won the love of my sister. She wrote to him here—to this house; yesterday he carried her away, to her shame and destruction. Answer me,” cried the young man, making another fierce step forward, growing hoarse with passion, and clenching his hands in involuntary rage—“was it you?”
“There are other men called Fordham in existence besides me,” cried the stranger, with a little irritation; then seizing his loose coat by its pockets, he shook out, with a sudden impatient motion, a cloud of letters from these receptacles. “Because you seem in great excitement and distress, and yet are not, as far as I can judge,” said Mr. Fordham, with another glance at Vincent, “mad, I will take pains to satisfy you. Look at my letters; their dates and post-marks will convince you that what you say is simply impossible, for that I was not here.”
Vincent clutched and took them up with a certain blind eagerness, not knowing what he did. He did not look at them to satisfy himself that what Fordham said was true. A wild, half-conscious idea that there must be something in them about Susan possessed him; he saw neither dates nor post-mark, though he held them up to the light, as if they were proofs of something. “No,” he said at last, “it was not you—it was that fiend Mildmay, Rachel Russell’s husband. Where is he? he has taken your name, and made you responsible for his devilish deeds. Help me, if you are a Christian! My sister is in his hands, curse him! Help me, for the sake of your name, to find them out. I am a stranger, and they will give me no information; but they will tell you.For God’s sake, ask and let me go after them. If ever you were beholden to the help of Christian men, help me! for it is life and death!”
“Mildmay! Rachel Russell’s husband? under my name?” said Mr. Fordham, slowly. “Ihavebeen beholden to Christian men, and that for very life. You make a strong appeal: who are you that are so desperate? and what was that you said?”
“I am Susan Vincent’s brother,” said the young Nonconformist; “that is enough. This devil has taken your name; help me, for heaven’s sake, to find him out!”
“Mildmay?—devil? yes, he is a devil! you are right enough: I owe him no love,” said Fordham; then he paused and turned away, as if in momentary perplexity. “To help that villain to his reward would be a man’s duty; but,” said the stranger, with a heavy sigh, upon which his words came involuntarily, spoken to himself, breathing out of his heart—“he isherbrother, devil though he is!”
“Yes!” cried Vincent, with passion, “he isherbrother.” When he had said the words, the young man groaned aloud. Partly he forgot that this man, who looked upon him with so much curiosity, was the man who had brought tears and trembling to Her; partly he remembered it, and forgot his jealousy for the moment in a bitter sense of fellow-feeling. In his heart he could see her, waving her hand to him out of her passing carriage, with that smile for which he would have risked his life. Oh, hideous fate! it washerbrother whom he was bound to pursue to the end of the world. He buried his face inhis hands, in a momentary madness of anguish and passion. Susan floated away like a mist from that burning personal horizon. The love and the despair were too much for Vincent. The hope that had always been impossible was frantic now. When he recovered himself, the stranger whom he had thus unawares taken into his confidence was regarding him haughtily from the other side of the table, with a fiery light in his thoughtful eyes. Suspicion, jealousy, resentment, had begun to sparkle in those orbs, which in repose looked so far away and lay so calm. Mr. Fordham measured the haggard and worn-out young man with a look of rising dislike and animosity. He was at least ten years older than the young Nonconformist, who stood there in his wretchedness and exhaustion entirely at disadvantage, looking, in his half-clerical dress, which he had not changed for four-and-twenty hours, as different as can be conceived from the scrupulously dressed gentleman in his easy morning habiliments, which would not have been out of place in the rudest scene, yet spoke of personal nicety and high-breeding in every easy fold. Vincent himself felt the contrast with an instant flush of answering jealousy and passion. For a moment the two glanced at each other, conscious rivals, though not a word of explanation had been spoken. It was Mr. Fordham who spoke first, and in a somewhat hasty and imperious tone.
“You spoke of a lady—Lady Western, I think. As it was you yourself who sought this interview, I may be pardoned if I stumble on a painful subject,” he said, with some bitterness. “I presume you know that lady by your tone—was it she who sent you to me? No? Then I confess your appeal to a total stranger seems to me singular, to say the least of it. Where is your proof that Colonel Mildmay has used my name?”
“Proof is unnecessary,” said Vincent, firing with kindred resentment; “I have told you the fact, but I do not press my appeal, though it was made to your honour. Pardon me for intruding on you so long. I have now no time to lose.”
He turned away, stung in his hasty youthfulness by the appearance of contempt. He would condescend to ask no farther. When he was once more outside the parlour, he held up the half-sovereign, which he had kept ready in his hand, to the slovenly fellow in the striped jacket. “Twice as much if you will tell where Colonel Mildmay is gone,” he said, hurriedly. The man winked and nodded and pointed outside, but before Vincent could leave the room a hasty summons came from the parlour which he had just left. Then Mr. Fordham appeared at the door.
“If you will wait I will make what inquiries I can,” said the stranger, with distant courtesy and seriousness. “Excuse me—I was taken by surprise: but if you have suffered injury under my name, it is my business to vindicate myself. Come in. If you will take my advice, you will rest and refresh yourself before you pursue a man with all his wits about him. Wait for me here and I will bring you what information I can. You don’t suppose I meanto play you false?” he added, with prompt irritation, seeing that Vincent hesitated and did not at once return to the room. It was no relenting of heart that moved him to make this offer. It was with no softening of feeling that the young Nonconformist went back again and accepted it. They met like enemies, each on his honour. Mr. Fordham hastened out to acquit himself of that obligation. Vincent threw himself into a chair, and waited for the result.
It was the first moment of rest and quiet he had known since the morning of the previous day, when he and his mother, alarmed but comparatively calm, had gone to see Mrs. Hilyard, who was now, like himself, wandering, with superior knowledge and more desperate passion, on the same track. To sit in this house in the suspicious silence, hearing the distant thrill of voices which might guide or foil him in his search; to think who it was whom he had engaged to help him in his terrible mission; to go over again in distracted gleams and snatches the brief little circle of time which had brought all this about, the group of figures into which his life had been absorbed,—rapt the young man into a maze of excited musing, which his exhausted frame at once dulled and intensified. They seemed to stand round him, with their faces so new, yet so familiar—that needle-woman with her emphatic mouth—Mildmay—Lady Western—last of all, this man, who was not Susan’s lover—not Susan’s destroyer—but a man to be trusted “with life—to death!” Vincent put up his hands to put away from him that wonderful circle of strangers whoshut out everything else in the world—even his own life—from his eyes. What were they to him? he asked, with an unspeakable bitterness in his heart. Heaven help him! they were the real creatures for whom life and the world were made—he and his poor Susan the shadows to be absorbed into, and under them; and then, with a wild, bitter, hopeless rivalry, the mind of the poor Dissenting minister came round once more to the immediate contact in which he stood—to Fordham, in whose name his sister’s life had been shipwrecked, and by whom, as he divined with cruel foresight, his own hopeless love and dreams were to be made an end of. Well! what better could they come to? but it was hard to think of him, with his patrician looks, his negligent grace, his conscious superiority, and to submit to accept assistance from him even in his sorest need. These thoughts were in his mind when Mr. Fordham hastily re-entered the room. A thrill of excitement now was in the long, lightly-falling step, which already Vincent, with the keen ear of rivalry almost as quick as that of love, could recognise as it approached. The stranger was disturbed out of his composure. He shut the door and came up to the young man, who rose to meet him, with a certain excited repugnance and attraction much like Vincent’s own feelings.
“You are quite right,” he said, hastily; “I find letters have been coming here for some months, addressed as if to me, which Mildmay has had. The man of the house is absent, or I should never have heard of it. I don’t know what injury he may havedoneyou; but this is an insult I don’t forgive. Stop! I have every reason to believe that he has gone,” said Fordham, growing darkly red, “to a house of mine, to confirm this slander upon me. To prove that I am innocent of all share of it—I don’t mean to you—you believe me, I presume?” he said, with a haughty sudden pause, looking straight in Vincent’s face—“I will go——” Here Mr. Fordham stopped again, and once more looked at Vincent with that indescribable mixture of curiosity, dislike, resentment, and interest, which the eyes of the young Nonconformist repaid him fully,—“with you—if you choose. At all events, I will go to-night—to Fordham, where the scoundrel is. I cannot permit it to be believed for an hour that it is I who have done this villany. The lady you mentioned, I presume, knows?”—he added, sharply—“knows what has happened, and whom you suspect? This must be set right at once. If you choose, we can go together.”
“Where is the place?” asked Vincent, without any answer to this proposition.
Fordham looked at him with a certain haughty offence: he had made the offer as though it were a very disagreeable expedient, but resented instantly the tacit neglect of it shown by his companion.
“In Northumberland—seven miles from the railway,” he said, with a kind of gratification. “Once more, I say, you can go with me if you will, which may serve us both. I don’t pretend to be disinterested. My object is to have my reputation clear of this, at all events. Your object, I presume, is to get to your journey’s end as early as may be. Choosefor yourself. Fordham is between Durham and Morpeth—seven miles from Lamington station. You will find difficulty in getting there by yourself, and still greater difficulty in getting admission; and I repeat, if you choose it, you can go with me—or I will accompany you, if that pleases you better. Either way, there is little time to consider. The train goes at eight or nine o’clock—I forget which. I have not dined. What shall you do?”
“Thank you,” said Vincent. It was perhaps a greater effort to him to overcome his involuntary repugnance than it was to the stranger beside him, who had all the superior ease of superior rank and age. The Nonconformist turned away his eyes from his new companion, and made a pretence of consulting his watch. “I will take advantage of your offer,” he said, coldly, withdrawing a step with instinctive reserve. On these diplomatic terms their engagement was made. Vincent declined to share the dinner which the other offered him, as one duellist might offer hospitality to another. He drove away in his hansom, with a restrained gravity of excitement, intent upon the hour’s rest and the meal which were essential to make him anything like a match for this unexpected travelling companion. Every morsel he attempted to swallow when in Carlingford under his mother’s anxious eyes, choked the excited young man, but now he ate with a certain stern appetite, and even snatched an hour’s sleep and changed his dress, under this novel stimulant. Poor Susan, for whom her mother sat hopelessly watching with many a thrill of agony at home! Poor lost one,far away in the depths of the strange country in the night and darkness! Whether despair and horror enveloped her, or delirious false happiness and delusion, again she stood secondary even in her brother’s thoughts. He tried to imagine it was she who occupied his mind, and wrote a hurried note to his mother to that purport; but with guilt and self-disgust, knew in his own mind how often another shadow stood between him and his lost sister—a shadow bitterly veiled from him, turning its sweetness and its smiles upon the man who was about to help him, against whom he gnashed his teeth in the anguish of his heart.
THEYwere but these two in the railway-carriage; no other passenger broke the silent conflict of their companionship. They sat in opposite corners, as far apart as their space would permit, but on opposite sides of the carriage as well, so that one could not move without betraying his every movement to the other’s keen observation. Each of them kept possession of a window, out of which he gazed into the visible blackness of the winter night. Two or three times in the course of the long darksome chilly journey, a laconic remark was made by one or the other with a deadly steadiness, and gravity, and facing of each other, as they spoke; but no further intercourse took place between them. When they first met, Fordham had made an attempt to draw his fellow-traveller into some repetition of that first passionate speech which had secured his own attention to Vincent; but the young Nonconformist perceived the attempt, and resented it with sullen offence and gloom. He took the stranger’s indifference tohistrouble, and undisguised and simple purpose of acquitting himself, as somehow an affront, though he could not have explained how it was so; and this notwithstanding his own consciousness of realising this silent conflict and rivalry with Fordham, evenmore deeply in his own person than he did the special misery which had befallen his house. Through the sullen silent midnight the train dashed on, the faint light flickering in the unsteady carriage, the two speechless figures, with eyes averted, watching each other through all the ice-cold hours. It was morning when they got out, cramped and frozen, at the little station, round which miles and miles of darkness, a black unfathomable ocean, seemed to lie—and which shone there with its little red sparkle of light among its wild waste of moors like the one touch of human life in a desert. They had a dreary hour to wait in the little wooden room by the stifling fire, divided between the smothering atmosphere within and the thrilling cold without, before a conveyance could be procured for them, in which they set out shivering over the seven darkling miles between them and Fordham. Vincent stood apart in elaborate indifference and carelessness, when the squire was recognised and done homage to; and Fordham’s eye, even while lighted up by the astonished delight of the welcome given him by the driver of the vehicle who first found him out, turned instinctively to the Mordecai in the corner who took no heed. No conversation between them diversified the black road along which they drove. Mr. Fordham took refuge in the driver, whom he asked all those questions about the people of the neighbourhood which are so interesting to the inhabitants of a district and so wearisome to strangers. Vincent, who sat in the dog-cart with his face turned the other way, suffered himself to be carried through thedarkness by the powerful horse, which made his own seat a somewhat perilous one, with nothing so decided in his thoughts as a dumb sense of opposition and resistance. The general misery of his mind and body—the sense that all the firmament around him was black as this sky—the restless wretchedness that oppressed his heart—all concentrated into conscious rebellion and enmity. He seemed to himself at war, not only with Mr. Fordham who was helping him, but with God and life.
Morning was breaking when they reached the house. The previous day, as it dawned chilly over the world, had revealed his mother’s ashy face to Vincent as they came up from Lonsdale with sickening thrills of hope that Susan might still be found unharmed. Here was another horror of a new day rising, the third since Susan disappeared into that darkness which was now lifting in shuddering mists from the bleak country round. Was she here in her shame, the lost creature? As he began to ask himself that question, what cruel spirit was it that drew aside a veil of years, and showed to the unhappy brother that prettiest dancing figure, all smiles and sunshine, sweet honour and hope? Poor lost child! what sweet eyes, lost in an unfathomable light of joy and confidence—what truthful looks, which feared no evil! Just as they came in sight of that hidden house, where perhaps the hidden, stolen creature lay in the darkness, the brightest picture flashed back upon Vincent’s eyes with an indescribably subtle anguish of contrast; how he had come up to her once—the frank, fair Saxon girl—in the midst of agroup of gypsies—how he found she had done a service to one of them, and the whole tribe did homage—how he had asked, “Were you not afraid, Susan?” and how the girl had looked up at him with undoubting eyes, and answered, “Afraid, Arthur?—yes, of wild beasts if I saw them, not of men and women.” Oh Heaven!—and here he was going to find her in shame and ruin, hidden away in this secret place! He sprang to the ground before the vehicle had stopped, jarring his frozen limbs. He could not bear to be second now, and follow to the dread discovery which should be his alone. He rushed through the shrubbery without asking any question, and began to knock violently at the door. What did it matter to him though its master was there, looking on with folded arms and unsympathetic face? Natural love rushed back upon the young man’s heart. He settled with himself, as he stood waiting, how he would wrap her in his coat, and hurry her away without letting any cold eye fall upon the lost creature. Oh, hard and cruel fate! oh, wonderful heart-breaking indifference of Heaven! The Innocents are murdered, and God looks on like a man, and does not interfere. Such were the broken thoughts of misery—half-thought, half-recollection—that ran through Vincent’s mind as he knocked at the echoing door.
“Eugh! you may knock, and better knock, and I’se undertake none comes at the ca’,” said the driver, not without a little complacence. “I tell the Squire, as there han’t been man nor woman here for ages; but he don’t believe me. She’s deaf as a post,is the housekeeper; and her daughter, she’s more to do nor hear when folks is wanting in—and this hour in the morning! But canny, canny, man! he’ll have the door staved in if we all stand by and the Squire don’t interfere.”
Vincent paid no attention to the remonstrance—which, indeed, he only remembered afterwards, and did not hear at the moment. The house was closely shut in with trees, which made the gloom of morning darker here than in the open road, and increased the aspect of secrecy which had impressed the young man’s excited imagination. While he went on knocking, Fordham alighted and went round to another entrance, where he too began to knock, calling at the same time to the unseen keepers of the place. After a while some answering sounds became audible—first the feeble yelping of an asthmatic dog, then a commotion up-stairs, and at last a window was thrown up, and a female head enveloped in a shawl looked out. “Eh, whae are ye? vagabond villains,—and this a gentleman’s house,” cried a cracked voice. “I’ll let the Squire know—I’ll rouse the man-servants. Tramps! what are you wanting here?” The driver of the dog-cart took up the response well pleased. He announced the arrival of the Squire, to the profound agitation of the house, which showed itself in a variety of scuffling sounds and the wildest exclamations of wonder. Vincent leaned his throbbing head against the door, and waited in a dull fever of impatience and excitement, as these noises gradually came nearer. When the door itself was reached and hasty hands began to unfasten its bolts,Susan’s brother pressed alone upon the threshold, forgetful and indifferent that the master of the house stood behind, watching him with close and keen observation. He forgot whose house it was, and all about his companion. What were such circumstances to him, as he approached the conclusion of his search, and thought every moment to hear poor Susan’s cry of shame and terror? He made one hasty stride into the hall when the door was open, and looked round him with burning eyes. The wonder with which the women inside looked at him, their outcry of disappointment and anger when they found him a stranger, coming first as he did, and throwing the Squire entirely into the shade, had no effect upon the young man, who was by this time half frantic. He went up to the elder woman and grasped her by the arm. “Where is she? show me the way!” he said, hoarsely, unable to utter an unnecessary word. He held the terrified woman fast, and thrust her before him, he could not tell where, into the unknown house, all dark and miserable in the wretchedness of the dawn. “Show me the way!” he cried, with his broken hoarse voice. A confused and inarticulate scene ensued, which Vincent remembered afterwards only like a dream; the woman’s scream—the interference of Fordham, upon whom his fellow-traveller turned with sudden fury—the explanation to which he listened without understanding it, and which at first roused him to wild rage as a pretence and falsehood. But even Vincent at last, struggling into soberer consciousness as the day broadened ever chiller and more grey over the little group ofstrange faces round him, came to understand and make out that both Fordham and he had been deceived. Nobody had been there—letters addressed both to Fordham himself, and to Colonel Mildmay, had been for some days received; but these, it appeared, were only a snare laid to withdraw the pursuers from the right scent. Not to be convinced, in the sullen stupor of his excitement, Vincent followed Fordham into all the gloomy corners of the neglected house—seeing everything without knowing what he saw. But one thing was plain beyond the possibility of doubt, that Susan was not there.
“I am to blame for this fruitless journey,” said Fordham, with a touch of sympathy more than he had yet exhibited; “perhaps personal feeling had too much share in it; now I trust you will have some breakfast before you set out again. So far as my assistance can be of any use to you——”
“I thank you,” said Vincent, coldly; “it is a business in which a stranger can have no interest. You have done all you cared to do,” continued the young man, hastily gathering up the overcoat which he had thrown down on entering; “you have vindicated yourself—I will trouble you no further. If I encounter any one interested in Mr. Fordham,” he concluded, with difficulty and bitterness, but with a natural generosity which, even in his despair, he could not belie, “I will do him justice.” He made an abrupt end, and turned away, not another word being possible to him. Fordham, not without a sentiment of sympathy, followed him to the door, urging refreshment, rest, even his own society, uponhis companion of the night. Vincent’s face, more and more haggard—his exhausted excited air—the poignant wretchedness of his youth, on which the older man looked, not without reminiscences, awoke the sympathy and compassion of the looker-on, even in the midst of less kindly emotions. But Fordham’s sympathy was intolerable to poor Vincent. He took his seat with a sullen weariness once more by the talkative driver, who gave him an unheeded history of all the Fordhams. As they drove along the bleak moorland road, an early church-bell tingled into the silence, and struck, with horrible iron echoes, upon the heart of the minister of Salem. Sunday morning! Life all disordered, incoherent, desperate—all its usages set at nought and duties left behind. Nothing could have added the final touch of conscious derangement and desperation like the sound of that bell; all his existence and its surroundings floated about him in feverish clouds, as it came to his mind that this wild morning, hysterical with fatigue and excitement, was the Sunday—the day of his special labours—the central point of all his former life. Chaos gloomed around the poor minister, who, in his misery, was human enough to remember Beecher’s smile and Phœbe Tozer’s invitation, and to realise how all the “Chapel folks” would compare notes, and contrast their own pastor, to whom they had become accustomed, with the new voice from Homerton, which, half in pride and half in disgust, Vincent acknowledged to be more in their way. He fancied he could see them all collecting into their mean pews, prepared to inaugurate the “coorse” forwhich Tozer had struggled, and the offence upon their faces when the minister’s absence was known, and the sharp stimulus which that offence would give to their appreciation of the new preacher—all this, while he was driving over the bleak Northumberland wilds, with the cutting wind from the hills in his face, and the church-bell in his distracted ear, breaking the Sunday! Not a bright spot, so far as he could perceive, was anywhere around him, in earth, or sky, or sea.