Salem Chapel · Chapter 24 (1/2)

XXIV

When Vincent was set down, in the darkness and silence of the Sunday night, in the Dover railway station, it was some minutes before he could collect himself, and understand where he was. He had fallen into a feverish sleep during the journey, little as he could have supposed himself capable of sleeping at such a moment; but he was young, and unused to the ceaseless fatigue and excitement and total want of rest which had obliterated for him the natural distinction between night and day. While his fellow-passengers trooped away with all the bustle and excitement of travellers, who had then only completed the first stage of their journey, to the pier and the night-boat which waited to carry them across the Channel, he, whom various porters and attendants stimulated with adjurations to make haste, and warnings that he would be late, stumbled out into the dark, collecting his faculties, and trying to think what he must do first. He was giddy and feverish with that insufficient snatch of sleep which had lost him the time in which he might have been laying his plans. But when he got outside the station into the unknown place, into the gloom of night, and heard the “moanings of the homeless sea” sounding sullen against the unseen shore, recollection and energy came back to him. That very sound, booming through the darkness, inspired Susan’s brother. He thought of her forlorn, desolate, succourless, a weary wanderer seeking rest and finding none, shrouded up in darkness and danger, lost in the mysterious gloom⁠—such was the sentiment of the night. The minister went on rapidly to the town, with its restless lights, through which everybody seemed to be passing towards the unseen sea. Should he follow with the stream, or should he stop at the hotel of which Mary had told him? He quickened his steps as he reached the open door of the inn, and plunged in to make rapid inquiries. Nobody knew either Colonel Mildmay or Mr. Fordham, but the party which he described had been there, and had left only an hour before⁠—not for the boat, the attendants thought: but the boat was ringing its bells through the night; and if by chance they had gone there, no time was to be lost. He rushed from the inn as fast as his wearied limbs could carry him to the pier, where the lookers-on stood aside out of his way, recognising his excitement. He went through among all the passengers with the rough captain and his lantern, having briefly explained to that functionary what he wanted. But they were not there. When he had satisfied himself, he left the boat, and stood with suspicious reluctance, unwilling to lose sight of it, on the pier, and watched the coloured lamp on the mast of the steamer gradually gliding through the darkness out of the sheltering harbour, till it began to plunge and heave on the unseen sea. Then he took his troubled way back to the inn. It was very late, and all the population seemed to disappear out of the streets, with the little attendant crowd which had been waiting upon the last event of the day, the departure of this night-boat. The inn itself looked half asleep, and was half closed when he returned. No further arrivals, no incidents in the shape of trains or boats, were to be looked for till the morning. It was the first time that Arthur had encountered this compulsory pause of night. He struggled against it for some time, questioning the waiters, and gleaning some particulars which did but increase his anxiety, but the waiters themselves were sleepy, and all the world around had closed itself up in utter quietness and rest.

Vincent went out again, but he could get admittance nowhere, save at the office of the police, where he went in desperation to ask the services of someone skilful in such inquiries. He found this not without difficulty, but nothing was to be done that night. He had to go back to the hotel to consent to the necessary rest for which, notwithstanding the fever of his mind, his worn-out frame craved. Weariness, indeed, had gradually overpowered and absorbed him⁠—stronger than anxiety, more urgent even than his love for his sister, was this present and overpowering exhaustion which began to occupy all his thoughts. Though he struggled with it he could not but feel in his heart, with a certain guilt, how this overwhelming desire to throw himself down somewhere and rest possessed him to the exclusion of more worthy impulses. After he had ordered some refreshment, of which, indeed, he stood as much in need, the young man threw himself upon a sofa, and there fell into a deep sleep of utter weariness. He could do no more. He slept as youth must sleep, were it on the edge of a precipice, were it at the deathbed of its dearest friend. The very waiter who brought in the food he had ordered, took pity upon the worn-out slumberer. The man heaped up the fire, and covered Vincent with his railway wrapper before he withdrew; and it was not till morning that the young minister awoke out of that profound slumber⁠—awoke chilled and aching, and confused, in the dark, with the untouched meal still on the table, the candle flaming in its socket, and he himself totally unaware how long he had been asleep.

In the interval that elapsed before the first sounds of awakening life in the house, he had time to collect himself, and when he went downstairs to the coffee-room, still in the dark of the winter morning, had regained more command of himself and his powers than at any previous moment since this misery came upon him.

But it was still so early that the fire was scarcely alight, and he had to wait for the cup of coffee he ordered. Vincent went to the window, as was natural⁠—a large window looking into the dark street, faintly lighted with lamps, which somehow burned less bright in the chill of the morning than they did at night. Looking out vaguely, yet with the vigilance of anxiety, without being able to discriminate anything except here and there a dark figure passing in the darkness, the young man waited with his face close to the uncurtained panes. There was nothing in that blank undecipherable street to interest him, and yet he gazed out mechanically in the anxious preoccupation of his mind. When the attendant came into the room with his coffee, his attention was temporarily distracted. He got up to go to the table where breakfast was being arranged for him; but, as he rose, his eye was caught by the gleam of a passing face, ghastly white in the darkness, looking in. Before he could draw breath, the apparition was gone. Without saying a word to the astonished waiter, who began to think him mad, Vincent dashed out after this vanished vision. Two female figures were visible a little further on in the gloomy street. He pursued them with breathless, noiseless speed, and grasped at the arm of a terrified woman who, gasping with sudden fright, turned upon him a face he had never seen before. Nobody else was to be seen in any direction. The minister made an inarticulate apology, and turned back to search for some opening or passage through which that face could have disappeared. It was no fancy of his that painted that pale countenance upon the darkness⁠—the same face that he had seen in the railway carriage following Colonel Mildmay⁠—the same, but with a new look of horror and desperation in its eyes. The young man investigated, as he thought, every doorway, every corner which could have given shelter to such a fugitive. He returned, excited and agitated, to the inn, to ask if there was any passage through the line of houses which he might have overlooked, but could hear of none. It was on his lips to ask if they had heard of any crime or accident during the night⁠—any⁠—murder; but prudence restrained the incautious utterance. He went out with the wildest agitation in his mind; something had happened. Mrs. Hilyard’s face, gleaming in unconscious at the window, betrayed to him much more clearly than any confession, that some new and awful event had been added to that woman’s strange experiences of life; and in the darkness he had been aware of some shadowy figure beside her, accompanying her ghostly way. Perhaps her child⁠—perhaps⁠—could it be Susan? The young man went out, not knowing where he went, into the darkness of the winter morning; he hastened to the pier, to the railway, startling the half-awakened people about, but nowhere could either see or hear of her. Could it be a delusion? but the wildest imagination in the world could not have inspired with such a new horror of expression the eyes that gleamed out of that ghastly pale face.

The grey daylight had just got final mastery of the dark, when Vincent met the man whom he had employed the night before to help him in his inquiries. This agent, more skilful than the minister, had found out the cabdriver who conveyed the party from the hotel on the previous evening. Colonel Mildmay seemed to have made the precipitate retreat of a man suddenly startled and frightened out of his plans. The cabman gave a detailed account of the strange conduct of his fare. “We was a-going to the pier to the Ostend steamer, sir,” said the driver, “when I was pulled up sharp, and got my directions to turn about sudden and go to the railway. There was a lady as I see keeping her eye on us, a-standing by the pier gates with her bag in her hand; but it was dark, and she couldn’t have seen who was in the cab. The same occurred, sir, as we came up to the railway. I don’t say as I see the lady there⁠—but sure enough I was pulled up second time, and ordered out along the Folkestone road, a matter o’ three mile or so. Then I was turned back again; and the end of all was that I took them to the Swan in Walmer Street, as is a place where there’s well-aired beds and chops, and that style o’ thing. That ain’t the style of thing as is done in the Lord Warden. To take a fare, and partic’lar along with ladies, from the one of them places to the other, looks queer⁠—that’s what it does; it looks very queer, sir. It made me take a deal of notice. Gen’leman tall, light-haired, hook nose, awful swell to look at. Ladies, one on ’em pretty tall, one little; pretty creatures, but dreadful skeared as far as I could see. The little one had a blue veil. That’s them, sir; thought as I was right.”

“And you can take me to the place?” said Vincent.

“Jump into my cab, and I’ll have you there, sir, in five minutes,” said the man.

The minister sprang into the cab alone. He no longer wanted the aid of a stranger; the darkling streets seemed to glide past him, and not he past them, as he dashed on at last to find his sister, this time there could be no mistake. After they had threaded several obscure streets, the driver came to a sudden pause, got off his box, and touched his hat with an alarmed look. “I can’t drive up to the very ’ouse, sir⁠—there’s a crowd around the door; they do say as something has happened. I hope it ain’t to any of your friends?” said the cabman. Vincent flung the door open as he was speaking, and rushed out. A horrified and excited crowd was besieging the door of the shabby public-house to which he had been brought. Seeing his hasty arrival, and the passionate anxiety in his eyes, the crowd gave way before him, recognising his right of entry; the very policeman at the door yielded to him in the force of his passion. “What is it?” he cried, aware of putting away some women and babies from the door with mechanical kindness, but unconscious that he had stumbled up the steps like a man in a dream, and was demanding an answer to his question with an almost wild vehemence. The question was answered by a dozen eager voices. It was murder⁠—murder! He could make out nothing but the word in the confusion of many speakers and of his own mind. Nobody opposed his entrance or asked what business he had there. He sprang up the stairs in two or three steps, pressed forward to a half-open door, within which he saw some people assembled, and, unawares thrusting aside a man who stopped him, went into that chamber of death. Several people were around the bed⁠—one, a surgeon, occupied with the prostrate figure there. Vincent, over the heads of the spectators, gazed with burning eyes at this horrible spectacle. Susan herself, whom he did not expect to find there, nor could associate in any way with such a scene, faded out of his mind as he gazed with haggard face and horror-stricken soul at the shattered head, bound up in bloody-bandages, scarce recognisable except by sharp eyes of love or hate, which rested on that mean pillow. He asked no questions for the moment. To him alone the business needed no explanation. He was not even surprised⁠—he stood gazing in a momentary trance of horror at the lamentable sight. It was a wretched room, shabby and meagre, such a place as only terror could have driven Mildmay to. Villain as he was, his punishment had begun before that pistol-shot brought it to a climax⁠—even in his success he had been conscious that she would keep her word.

The policeman at the door touched Vincent on the sleeve, just as he turned from the dreadful spectacle before him. “Nobody is allowed in here but for a good reason,” said this man, gazing suspiciously at the stranger; “unless you knows something about it, or have come to identify the poor gentleman, or are of some use somehow, I can’t let you stay here.”

“I do not wish to stay here,” said Vincent, turning away with a shudder. “I want to see the ladies who were with him. Yes, I know who he is⁠—but I am not a friend of his; I have nothing to do with the matter. Where are the ladies who were with him? Miss Vincent,” said the minister with a pang, “and⁠—and Miss Mildmay. I have come to take them away.”

“The ladies as were with him? Oh, it’s them as you’re awanting; perhaps you’ll stop a minute and talk to the inspector,” said the policeman. “The ladies as were with him? Maybe you can tell the inspector something as will help justice? You didn’t know the reason as brought out two young women a-travelling with a gen’leman, did you? They’ll want all the friends they can collect afore all’s done. You come this way with me.”

It was a relief to get out of sight of that which horrified yet fascinated his eyes. Vincent followed the man into another room without observing the evident suspicion with which he was regarded. “Where are they?” he asked again. “I have a cab below. This is not a place for women. I have come to take them away. Where are the people of the house? What do you mean by keeping your hand on me? I want Miss Vincent. Do you hear me? I have nothing to do with Colonel Mildmay. He has plenty of friends to avenge him. I want my sister. Where is she? Call the people of the house.”

Vincent threw off the policeman’s hand from his arm, and, looking for a bell, rang violently. He was too much horror-stricken, and too secure of finding Susan, weeping and helpless in some corner, to show any of the passionate eagerness with which he had started on his search. Little doubt she was there, poor lost soul. He shrank from meeting with her, now that the meeting was so near; and his thoughts went after that other desperate wretched woman, flying⁠—who could tell where?⁠—in despair and darkness. The house was in utter disorder, as was natural; none of its humble occupants being capable, at the present exciting moment, of attending to their usual duties. Vincent rang the bell again, till it pealed and echoed through the place. Then he bethought himself, with a natural shudder, of the death-chamber close by. He turned to the man by his side, with an instinctive involuntary curiosity. “Is anyone suspected?” said the minister, feeling his face grow pale with a dreadful consciousness of the secret which he shared. But before he could hear the answer, his second summons had brought up the terrified mistress of the house, attended halfway up the stair by a throng of curious women. He went hurriedly to meet her at the door.