IT was a January night on which Vincent emerged abruptly from Tozer’s door, the evening of that lecture—a winter night, not very cold, but very dark, the skies looking not blue, but black overhead, and the light of the lamps gleaming dismally on the pavement, which had received a certain squalid power of reflection from the recent rain; for a sharp, sudden shower had fallen while Vincent had been seated at the hospitable table of the butterman, which had chased everybody from the darkling streets. All the shops were closed, a policeman marched along with heavy tread, and the wet pavement glimmered round his solitary figure. Nothing more uncomfortable could be supposed after the warmth and light of a snug interior, however humble; and the minister turned his face hastily in the direction of his lodging. But the next moment he turned back again, and looked wistfully in the other direction. It was not to gaze along the dark length of street to where the garden-walls of Grange Lane, undiscernible in the darkness, added a far-withdrawing perspective of gentility and aristocratic seclusion to the vulgar pretensions of George Street; it was to look at a female figure which came slowly up, dimming out the reflection on the wet stones as it crossed one streak of lamplight after another. Vincent was excited and curious, and had enough in his own mind to make him wistful for sympathy, if it were to be had from any understanding heart. He recognised Mrs. Hilyard instinctively as she came forward, not conscious of him, walking, strange woman as she was, with the air of a person walking by choice at that melancholy hour in that dismal night. She was evidently not going anywhere: her step was firm and distinct, like the step of a person thoroughly self-possessed and afraid of nothing—but it lingered with a certain meditative sound in the steady firm footfall. Vincent felt a kind of conviction that she had come out here to think over some problem of that mysterious life into which he could not penetrate, and he connected this strange walk involuntarily with the appearance of Lady Western and her careless companion. To his roused fancy, some incomprehensible link existed between himself and the equally incomprehensible woman before him. He turned back almost in spite of himself, and went to meet her. Mrs. Hilyard looked up when she heard his step. She recognised him also on the spot. They approached each other much as if they had arranged a meeting at eleven o’clock of that wet January night in the gleaming, deserted streets.
“It is you, Mr. Vincent!” she said. “I wonder why I happen to meet you, of all persons in the world, to-night. It is very odd. What, I wonder, can have brought us both together at such an hour and in such a place? You never came to see me that Monday—nor any Monday. You went to see my beauty instead, and you were so lucky as to be affronted with the syren at the first glance. Had you been less fortunate, I think I might have partly taken you into my confidence to-night.”
“Perhaps I am less fortunate, if that is all that hinders,” said Vincent; “but it is strange to see you out here so late in such a dismal night. Let me go with you, and see you safe home.”
“Thank you. I am perfectly safe—nobody can possibly be safer than such a woman as I am, in poverty and middle age,” said his strange acquaintance. “It is an immunity that women don’t often prize, Mr. Vincent, but it is very valuable in its way. If anybody saw you talking to an equivocal female figure at eleven o’clock in George Street, think what the butterman would say; but a single glimpse of my face would explain matters better than a volume. I am going down towards Grange Lane, principally because I am restless to-night, and don’t know what to do with myself. I shall tell you what I thought of your lecture if you will walk with me to the end of the street.”
“Ah, my lecture?—never mind,” said the hapless young minister; “I forget all about that. What is it that brings you here, and me to your side?—what is there in that dark-veiled house yonder that draws your steps and mine to it? It is not accidental, our meeting here.”
“You are talking romance and nonsense, quite inconceivable in a man who has just come from the society of deacons,” said Mrs. Hilyard, glancing up at him with that habitual gleam of her eyes. “We have met, my dear Mr. Vincent, because, after refreshing my mind with your lecture, I thought of refreshing my body by a walk this fresh night. One saves candles, you know, when one does one’s exercise at night: whereas walking by day one wastes everything—time, tissue, daylight, invaluable treasures: the only light that hurts nobody’s eyes, and costs nobody money, is the light of day. That illustration of yours about the clouds and the sun was very pretty. I assure you I thought the whole exceedingly effective. I should not wonder if it made a revolution in Carlingford.”
“Why do you speak to me so? I know you did not go to listen to my lecture,” said the young minister, to whom sundry gleams of enlightenment had come since his last interview with the poor needle-woman of Back Grove Street.
“Ah! how can you tell that?” she said, sharply, looking at him in the streak of lamplight. “But to tell the truth,” she continued, “I did actually go to hear you, and to look at other people’s faces, just to see whether the world at large—so far as that exists in Carlingford—was like what it used to be; and if I confess I saw something there more interesting than the lecture, I say no more than the lecturer could agree in, Mr. Vincent. You, too, saw something that made you forget the vexed question of Church and State.”
“Tell me,” said Vincent, with an earnestness he was himself surprised at, “who was that man?”
His companion started as if she had received a blow, turned round upon him with a glance in her dark eyes such as he had never seen there before, and in a sudden momentary passion drew her breath hard, and stopped short on the way. But the spark of intense and passionate emotion was as shortlived as it was vivid. “I do not suppose he is anything to interest you,” she answered the next moment, with a movement of her thin mouth, letting the hands that she had clasped together drop to her side. “Nay, make yourself quite easy; he is not a lover of my lady’s. He is only a near relation:—and,” she continued, lingering on the words with a force of subdued scorn and rage, which Vincent dimly apprehended, but could not understand, “a very fascinating fine gentleman—a man who can twist a woman round his fingers when he likes, and break all her heartstrings—if she has any—so daintily afterwards, that it would be a pleasure to see him do it. Ah, a wonderful man!”
“You know him then? I saw you knew him,” said the young man, surprised and disturbed, thrusting the first commonplace words he could think of into the silence, which seemed to tingle with the restrained meaning of this brief speech.
“I don’t think we are lucky in choosing our subjects to-night,” said the strange woman. “How about the ladies in Lonsdale, Mr. Vincent? They don’t keep a school? I am glad they don’t keep a school. Teaching, you know, unless when one has a vocation for it, as you had a few weeks ago, is uphill work. I am sorry to see you are not so sure about your work as you were then. Your sister is pretty, I suppose? and does your mother take great care of her and keep her out of harm’s way? Lambs have a silly faculty of running directly in the wolf’s road. Why don’t you take a holiday and go to see them, or have them here to live with you?”
“You know something about them,” said Vincent, alarmed. “What has happened?—tell me. It will be the greatest kindness to say it out at once.”
“Hush,” said Mrs. Hilyard; “now you are absurd. I speak out of my own thoughts, as most persons do, and you, like all young people, make personal applications. How can I possibly know about them? I am not a fanciful woman, but there are some things that wake one’s imagination. In such a dark night as this, with such wet gleams about the streets, when I think of people at a distance, I always think of something uncomfortable happening. Misfortune seems to lie in wait about those black corners. I think of women wandering along dismal solitary roads with babies in their shameful arms—and of dreadful messengers of evil approaching unconscious houses, and looking in at peaceful windows upon the comfort they are about to destroy; and I think,” she continued, crossing the road so rapidly (they were now opposite Lady Western’s house) that Vincent, who had not anticipated the movement, had to quicken his pace suddenly to keep up with her, “of evil creatures pondering in the dark vile schemes against the innocent——” Here she broke off all at once, and, looking up in Vincent’s face with that gleam of secret mockery in her eyes and movement of her mouth to which he was accustomed, added, suddenly changing her tone, “Or of fine gentlemen, Mr. Vincent, profoundly bored with their own society, promenading in a dreary garden and smoking a disconsolate cigar. Look there!”
The young minister, much startled and rather nervous, mechanically looked, as she bade him, through the little grated loophole in Lady Western’s garden-door. He saw the lights shining in the windows, and a red spark moving about before the house, as, with a little shame for his undignified position, he withdrew his eyes from that point of vantage. But Mrs. Hilyard was moved by no such sentiment. She planted herself opposite the door, and, bending her head to the little grating, gazed long and steadfastly. In the deep silence of the night, standing with some uneasiness at her side, and not insensible to the fact that his position, if he were seen by anybody who knew him, would be rather absurd and slightly equivocal, Vincent heard the footsteps of the man inside, the fragrance of whose cigar faintly penetrated the damp air. The stranger was evidently walking up and down before the house in enjoyment of that luxury which the feminine arrangements of the young Dowager’s household would not permit indoors; but the steady eagerness with which this strange woman gazed—the way in which she had managed to interweave Mrs. Vincent and pretty Susan at Lonsdale into the conversation—the suggestions of coming danger and evil with which her words had invested the very night, all heightened by the instinctive repugnance and alarm of which the young man had himself been conscious whenever he met the eye of Lady Western’s companion—filled him with discomfort and dread. His mind, which had been lately too much occupied in his own concerns to think much of Susan, reverted now with sudden uneasiness to his mother’s cottage, from which Susan’s betrothed had lately departed to arrange matters for their speedy marriage. But how Lady Western’s “near relation”—this man whom Mrs. Hilyard watched with an intense regard which looked like hatred, but might be dead love—could be connected with Lonsdale, or Susan, or himself, or the poor needlewoman in Back Grove Street, Vincent could not form the remotest idea. He stood growing more and more impatient by that dark closed door, which had once looked a gate of paradise—which, he felt in his heart, half-a-dozen words or a single smile could any day make again a gate of the paradise of fools to his bewildered feet—the steps of the unseen stranger within, and the quick breath of agitation from the watcher by his side, being the only sounds audible in the silence of the night. At last some restless movement he made disturbed Mrs. Hilyard in her watch. She left the door noiselessly and rapidly, and turned to recross the wet road. Vincent accompanied her without saying a word. The two walked along together half the length of Grange Lane without breaking silence, without even looking at each other, till they came to the large placid white lamp at Dr. Marjoribanks’s gate, which cleared a little oasis of light out of the heart of the gloom. There she looked up at him with a face full of agitated life and motion—kindled eyes, elevated head, nostril and lips swelling with feelings which were totally undecipherable to Vincent; her whole aspect changed by an indescribable inspiration which awoke remnants of what might have been beauty in that thin, dark, middle-aged face.
“You are surprised at me and my curiosity,” she said, “and indeed you have good reason; but it is astonishing, when one is shut up in one’s self and knows nobody, how excited one gets over the sudden apparition of a person one has known in the other world. Some people die two or three times in a lifetime, Mr. Vincent. There is a real transmigration of souls, or bodies, or both if you please. This is my third life I am going through at present. I knew that man, as I was saying, in the other world.”
“The world does change strangely,” said Vincent, who could not tell what to say; “but you put it very strongly—more strongly than I——”
“More strongly than you can understand; I know that very well,” said Mrs. Hilyard; “but you perceive you are speaking to a woman who has died twice. Coming to life is a bitter process, but one gets over it. If you ever should have such a thing to go through with—and survive it,” she added, giving him a wistful glance, “I should like to tell you my experiences. However, I hope better things. You are very well looked after at Salem Chapel, Mr. Vincent. I think of you sometimes when I look out of my window and see your tabernacle. It is not so pretty as Mr. Wentworth’s at St. Roque’s, but you have the advantage of the curate otherwise. So far as I can see, he never occupies himself with anything higher than his prayer-book and his poor people. I doubt much whether he would ever dream of replying to what you told us to-night.”
“Probably he holds a Dissenting minister in too much contempt,” said Vincent, with an uncomfortable smile on his lips.
“Don’t sneer—never sneer—no gentleman does,” said his companion. “I like you, though you are only a Dissenting minister. You know me to be very poor, and you have seen me in very odd circumstances to-night; yet you walk home with me—I perceive you are steering towards Back Grove Street, Mr. Vincent—without an illusion which could make me feel myself an equivocal person, and just as if this was the most reasonable thing in the world which I have been doing to-night. Thank you. You are a paladin in some things, though in others only a Dissenting minister. If I were a fairy, the gift I would endow you with would be just that same unconsciousness of your own disadvantages, which courtesy makes you show of mine.”
“Indeed,” said Vincent, with natural gratification, “it required no discrimination on my part to recognise at once that I was addressing——”
“Hush! you have never even insinuated that an explanation was necessary, which is the very height and climax of fine manners,” said Mrs. Hilyard; “and I speak who am, or used to be, an authority in such matters. I don’t mean to give you any explanation either. Now, you must turn back and go home. Good-night. One thing I may tell you, however,” she continued, with a little warmth; “don’t mistake me. There is no reason in this world why you might not introduce me to the ladies in Lonsdale, if any accident brought it about that we should meet. I say this to make your mind easy about your penitent; and now, my good young father in the faith, good-night.”
“Let me see you to your door first,” said the wondering young man.
“No—no farther. Good-night,” she said, hastily, shaking hands, and leaving him. The parting was so sudden that it took Vincent a minute to stop short, under way and walking quickly as he was. When she had made one or two rapid steps in advance, Mrs. Hilyard turned back, as if with a sudden impulse.
“Do you know I have an uneasiness about these ladies in Lonsdale?” she said; “I know nothing whatever about them—not so much as their names; but you are their natural protector; and it does not do for women to be as magnanimous and generous in the reception of strangers as you are. There! don’t be alarmed. I told you I knew nothing. They may be as safe, and as middle-aged, and as ugly as I am; instead of a guileless widow and a pretty little girl, they may be hardened old campaigners like myself; but they come into my mind, I cannot tell why. Have them here to live beside you, and they will do you good.”
“My sister is about to be married,” said Vincent, more and more surprised, and looking very sharply into her face in the lamplight, to see whether she really did not know anything more than she said.
A certain expression of relief came over her face.
“Then all is well,” she said, with strange cordiality, and again held out her hand to him. Then they parted, and pursued their several ways through the perfectly silent and dimly-lighted streets. Vincent walked home with the most singular agitation in his mind. Whether to give any weight to such vague but alarming suggestions—whether to act immediately upon the indefinite terror thus insinuated into his thoughts—or to write, and wait till he heard whether any real danger existed—or to cast it from him altogether as a fantastic trick of imagination, he could not tell. Eventful and exciting as the evening had been, he postponed the other matters to this. If any danger threatened Susan, his simple mother could suffer with her, but was ill qualified to protect her: but what danger could threaten Susan? He consoled himself with the thought that these were not the days of abductions or violent love-making. To think of an innocent English girl in her mother’s house as threatened with mysterious danger, such as might have surrounded a heroine of the last century, was impossible. If there are Squire Thornhills nowadays, their operations are of a different character. Walking rapidly home, with now and then a blast of chill rain in his face, and the lamplight gleaming in the wet streets, Vincent found less and less reason for attaching any importance to Mrs. Hilyard’s hints and alarms. It was the sentiment of the night, and her own thoughts, which had suggested such fears to her mind—a mind evidently experienced in paths more crooked than any which Vincent himself, much less simple Susan, had ever known. When he reached home, he found his little fire burning brightly, his room arranged with careful nicety, which was his landlady’s appropriate and sensible manner of showing her appreciation of the night’s lecture, and her devotion to the minister; and, lastly, on the table a letter from that little house in Lonsdale, round which such fanciful fears had gathered. Never was there a letter which breathed more of the peaceful security and tranquillity of home. Mrs. Vincent wrote to her Arthur in mingled rejoicing and admonition, curious and delighted to hear of his lectures, but not more anxious about his fame and success than about his flannels and precautions against wet feet; while Susan’s postscript—a half longer than the letter to which it was appended—furnished her affectionate brother with sundry details, totally incomprehensible to him, of her wedding preparations, and, more shyly, of her perfect girlish happiness. Vincent laughed aloud as he folded up that woman’s letter. No mysterious horror, no whispering doubtful gloom, surrounded that house from which the pure, full daylight atmosphere, untouched by any darkness, breathed fresh upon him out of these simple pages. Here, in this humble virtuous world, were no mysteries. It was a deliverance to a heart which had begun to falter. Wherever fate might be lingering in the wild darkness of that January night, it was not on the threshold of his mother’s house.