Salem Chapel · Chapter 19 (2/2)

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 mean to 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 needlewoman 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 who shut 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 reentered 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 have done you; 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 tonight⁠—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. Choose for 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.