Salem Chapel · Chapter 37 (2/3)

“Arthur dear, hush! no one saw me at the meeting. I had my veil down, and spoke to nobody,” said the widow: “and oh! don’t you think it was only natural that your mother should be there? No one in the world is so much interested in what concerns you. I spoke to no one⁠—except,” said Mrs. Vincent, with a little effort, “that strange woman, Arthur, whom you have had so much to do with. Who is she? Oh, my dear boy, I hope you have not formed any connections that you will repent? She said something about a promise, and having given her word. I don’t know why you should have her word, or what she has to do with you. She came here to the door with me tonight.”

“Mrs. Hilyard!” cried the minister, suddenly roused. “Mrs.⁠—; no matter what her name is. Where is she? Do you mean that she came here? They keep no watch over her. Tonight of all nights in the world! If you had but stayed at home, I should not have known of her wanderings at least,” he said, with vexation. “Now I shall have to go and look after her⁠—she must be sent back again⁠—she must not be allowed to escape.”

“Is she mad?” said Mrs. Vincent, alarmed, yet relieved. “Don’t go away, Arthur; she is not here. She said I was to tell you that she had gone back⁠—to Alice. Who is Alice?⁠—who is this woman? What have you to do with her? Oh! my dear boy, you are a minister, and the world is so ready to make remarks. She said you had her word. Oh, Arthur, I hope it does not mean anything you will live to repent?” cried the anxious mother, fixing her jealous eyes on her son’s face. “She is not like you. I cannot tell what you can have to do with such a woman⁠—you who might⁠—” Mrs. Vincent’s fright and anxiety exhausted both her language and her breath.

“It does not matter much after all,” said the Nonconformist, who had been busy with his own thoughts, and had only half heard his mother’s adjurations. “Like me?⁠—what has that to do with the matter? But I daresay she will go back, as she said; and now that he is out of danger, and has not accused her, things must take their chance. Mad? It would not be wonderful if she were mad. I can sympathise with people when they are driven out of their wits. Who is this next? Another messenger from the meeting, or perhaps your deputation? I think I shall go mad after a while if I get no rest.”

But as the minister stood in ill-concealed excitement by the fire, not without expectation that it might be somebody with an official report from Salem, Mr. Vincent’s landlady, still in her bonnet and shawl, just returned from the meeting, came in to tell the widow of the approach of the doctor. “He’s a-coming directly, ma’am; he’s gone in for a minute to Smith’s, next door, where they’ve got the hooping-cough. And oh, Mr. Vincent, sir,” cried the woman, who had made this a pretence to express her sentiments on the more important subject, “if there hasn’t a-been a sweet meeting! I’d have giv’ a half-year’s rent, ma’am, the pastor had been there. All as unanimous and as friendly!⁠—all but them Pigeons, as are the poison of the place; and sweet Miss Phoebe Tozer a-crying of her pretty eyes out; but there ain’t no occasion for crying now,” said the triumphant landlady, who had a real stake in the matter. At this touch the minister regained his composure. He went back to his seat at the table, and took up the pen he had thrown down. A bishop could not have looked more grandly indifferent than did the Nonconformist as he turned his back upon his anxious partisan. “Tell the doctor to let me know how Susan is, mother, for I am busy tonight,” said the young man. “I cannot leave my work just now even for Dr. Rider.” He began again to write in the excitement of his mind, and produced a sentence which was not one of the least successful of his sentences, while the two women with a certain awe stood silent behind his chair.

“I will not disturb you any longer, my dear boy. Good night,” said Mrs. Vincent. She went away, followed by the discomfited landlady, who was overwhelmed, and did not know what to make of it. The widow could not but improve such an opportunity. “The minister must not be disturbed in his studies,” she said, with importance and in a whisper as she closed the door. “When he is engaged with a subject, it does not answer to go in upon him and disturb his attention. Neither meetings nor anything else, however important, should interrupt a pastor when he is engaged in composition,” said the little woman, grandly. But while the mistress of the house departed to her own quarter much overawed, the minister’s mother went to the sickroom with no such composure as she assumed. Something she did not understand was in Arthur’s mind. The Salem meeting did not appear to her so conclusive as it had done an hour ago. He was young and high-spirited and proud, and had not that dutiful subjection to the opinions of the flock which became a minister of Salem. What if that visionary horror with which she had frightened Tozer might turn out a real danger? Though she had made such skilful use of it, the possibility she had herself invented had not really alarmed her; but the thought thrilled through her now with a fear which had some remorse in it. She had invoked the ghost, not much believing in any such supernatural climax; but if the apparition really made itself visible, the widow recognised at once her entire want of any power to lay it. She took off her shawl and bonnet with little comfort in her mind on that subject to support her under the returning pangs of anxiety about Susan, which overwhelmed her again as she opened the door of the sickroom. The two troubles united in her heart and aggravated each other, as with a sick throb of expectation she went in to Susan’s bedside. Perhaps there might be “a change”⁠—for better or for worse, something might have happened. The doctor might find something more conclusive tonight in that languid pallid face. The noiseless room struck her with a chill of misery as she went to her usual place, carrying the active life of pain and a troubled heart into that melancholy atmosphere from which life seemed to have fled. With a faltering voice she spoke to Susan, who showed no signs of hearing her except by a feeble half-lifting of her heavy eyelids and restless motion of her frame. No change! Never any change! or, at least, as the nurse imagined, until⁠—The widow’s heart heaved with a silent sob of anguish⁠—anguish sharp and acute as it is when our misery breaks suddenly upon us out of a veil of other thoughts, and we feel it intolerable. This sudden pang convulsed Mrs. Vincent’s much-tried heart as she wiped the bitter tears out of her eyes and looked at her child, thus gliding, in a hopeless apathy and unconsciousness, out of the arms that strained themselves in vain to hold her. After so much as she had borne in her troubled life, God knows it was hard. She did not rebel, but her heart lifted up a bitter cry to the Father in heaven.

It was just then, while her anxious ear caught the step of the doctor on the stair, that Mrs. Vincent was aware also of a carriage driving rapidly up to the door. Preoccupied as she was, the sound startled her. A passing wonder who it could be, and the vague expectation which influences the mind at the great crises of life, when one feels that anything may happen, moved her dimly as she rose to receive the doctor. Dr. Rider came in with his noiseless step and anxious face; they shook hands with each other mechanically, she gazing at him to see what his opinion was before it could be formed⁠—he looking with solicitous serious eyes on the sickbed. The light was dim, and Dr. Rider held it up to see his patient. There she lay, moving now and then with the restlessness of weakness, the pale large eyelids half closed, the pale lips dropping apart⁠—a solemn speechless creature, abstracted already out of this world and all its influences. The light that streamed over her for the moment made no difference to Susan. There was nothing here powerful enough to rouse the soul which horror and passion had driven into one terrible corner of memory, obliterating all the rest of her life. Dr. Rider looked at her with eyes in which the impatience of powerless strength overcame even his professional reserve. He wrung the widow’s hand, which she laid on his arm in a trembling appeal to him to tell her the worst. “The worst is that she is dying before our eyes, and that she might be saved,” he said, leading the poor mother to the other end of the room. “All her heart and soul are concentrated upon that time when she was away from you; unless we can rouse her by something that will recall that time, she will never know you more. Think! is there nothing that would wake her up even to remember the misery she endured? Where is your servant who was with her?⁠—but she has seen her lately, and nothing has come of that. If you have the courage and strength,” said the doctor, once more grasping Mrs. Vincent’s hand tight, “to talk of that man under the name she knew him by⁠—to talk of him so as perhaps she might hear; to discuss the matter; anything that will recall her mind. Hush! what is that noise downstairs?”