Salem Chapel · Chapter 19 (1/2)

XIX

Vincent had 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 Phoebe’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 Phoebe 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 smile on 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 tomorrow, 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 Phoebe 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 with unspeakable 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 early for 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 downstairs.

“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 a-going 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, instead of jabbering? Out o’ town. It’s allays safe to say, and this time it’s true.”

“What’s he a-doing 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 a-going 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 downstairs, 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 latchkey 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 newcomer. 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 long to 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 upstairs,” said the fellow. What was the name? Vincent rushed forward when he heard it, and seized the newcomer 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 and ruin, 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 on him⁠—“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 postmarks 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 postmark, 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. “I have been 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 is her brother, devil though he is!”

“Yes!” cried Vincent, with passion, “he is her brother.” 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 was her brother whom he was bound to pursue to the end of the world. He buried his face in his 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.”