Salem Chapel · Chapter 16 (1/2)

XVI

The journey 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 widow gasped 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, leaning forward 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 tomorrow 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 suddenly occurred 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 today; 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 could see 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 on that 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 anyone 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 safe rest, 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 tonight, 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 dark and 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 downstairs. 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 thrilling with 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 and orderly 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?”