Salem Chapel: Volume 1 by Mrs. Oliphant - HTML preview

CHAPTER XX.

THEY were but these two in the railway-carriage; no other passenger broke the silent conflict of their companionship. They sat in opposite corners, as far apart as their space would permit, but on opposite sides of the carriage as well, so that one could not move without betraying his every movement to the other’s keen observation. Each of them kept possession of a window, out of which he gazed into the visible blackness of the winter night. Two or three times in the course of the long darksome chilly journey, a laconic remark was made by one or the other with a deadly steadiness, and gravity, and facing of each other, as they spoke; but no further intercourse took place between them. When they first met, Fordham had made an attempt to draw his fellow-traveller into some repetition of that first passionate speech which had secured his own attention to Vincent; but the young Nonconformist perceived the attempt, and resented it with sullen offence and gloom. He took the stranger’s indifference to his trouble, and undisguised and simple purpose of acquitting himself, as somehow an affront, though he could not have explained how it was so; and this notwithstanding his own consciousness of realising this silent conflict and rivalry with Fordham, even more deeply in his own person than he did the special misery which had befallen his house. Through the sullen silent midnight the train dashed on, the faint light flickering in the unsteady carriage, the two speechless figures, with eyes averted, watching each other through all the ice-cold hours. It was morning when they got out, cramped and frozen, at the little station, round which miles and miles of darkness, a black unfathomable ocean, seemed to lie—and which shone there with its little red sparkle of light among its wild waste of moors like the one touch of human life in a desert. They had a dreary hour to wait in the little wooden room by the stifling fire, divided between the smothering atmosphere within and the thrilling cold without, before a conveyance could be procured for them, in which they set out shivering over the seven darkling miles between them and Fordham. Vincent stood apart in elaborate indifference and carelessness, when the squire was recognised and done homage to; and Fordham’s eye, even while lighted up by the astonished delight of the welcome given him by the driver of the vehicle who first found him out, turned instinctively to the Mordecai in the corner who took no heed. No conversation between them diversified the black road along which they drove. Mr. Fordham took refuge in the driver, whom he asked all those questions about the people of the neighbourhood which are so interesting to the inhabitants of a district and so wearisome to strangers. Vincent, who sat in the dog-cart with his face turned the other way, suffered himself to be carried through the darkness by the powerful horse, which made his own seat a somewhat perilous one, with nothing so decided in his thoughts as a dumb sense of opposition and resistance. The general misery of his mind and body—the sense that all the firmament around him was black as this sky—the restless wretchedness that oppressed his heart—all concentrated into conscious rebellion and enmity. He seemed to himself at war, not only with Mr. Fordham who was helping him, but with God and life.

Morning was breaking when they reached the house. The previous day, as it dawned chilly over the world, had revealed his mother’s ashy face to Vincent as they came up from Lonsdale with sickening thrills of hope that Susan might still be found unharmed. Here was another horror of a new day rising, the third since Susan disappeared into that darkness which was now lifting in shuddering mists from the bleak country round. Was she here in her shame, the lost creature? As he began to ask himself that question, what cruel spirit was it that drew aside a veil of years, and showed to the unhappy brother that prettiest dancing figure, all smiles and sunshine, sweet honour and hope? Poor lost child! what sweet eyes, lost in an unfathomable light of joy and confidence—what truthful looks, which feared no evil! Just as they came in sight of that hidden house, where perhaps the hidden, stolen creature lay in the darkness, the brightest picture flashed back upon Vincent’s eyes with an indescribably subtle anguish of contrast; how he had come up to her once—the frank, fair Saxon girl—in the midst of a group of gypsies—how he found she had done a service to one of them, and the whole tribe did homage—how he had asked, “Were you not afraid, Susan?” and how the girl had looked up at him with undoubting eyes, and answered, “Afraid, Arthur?—yes, of wild beasts if I saw them, not of men and women.” Oh Heaven!—and here he was going to find her in shame and ruin, hidden away in this secret place! He sprang to the ground before the vehicle had stopped, jarring his frozen limbs. He could not bear to be second now, and follow to the dread discovery which should be his alone. He rushed through the shrubbery without asking any question, and began to knock violently at the door. What did it matter to him though its master was there, looking on with folded arms and unsympathetic face? Natural love rushed back upon the young man’s heart. He settled with himself, as he stood waiting, how he would wrap her in his coat, and hurry her away without letting any cold eye fall upon the lost creature. Oh, hard and cruel fate! oh, wonderful heart-breaking indifference of Heaven! The Innocents are murdered, and God looks on like a man, and does not interfere. Such were the broken thoughts of misery—half-thought, half-recollection—that ran through Vincent’s mind as he knocked at the echoing door.

“Eugh! you may knock, and better knock, and I’se undertake none comes at the ca’,” said the driver, not without a little complacence. “I tell the Squire, as there han’t been man nor woman here for ages; but he don’t believe me. She’s deaf as a post, is the housekeeper; and her daughter, she’s more to do nor hear when folks is wanting in—and this hour in the morning! But canny, canny, man! he’ll have the door staved in if we all stand by and the Squire don’t interfere.”

Vincent paid no attention to the remonstrance—which, indeed, he only remembered afterwards, and did not hear at the moment. The house was closely shut in with trees, which made the gloom of morning darker here than in the open road, and increased the aspect of secrecy which had impressed the young man’s excited imagination. While he went on knocking, Fordham alighted and went round to another entrance, where he too began to knock, calling at the same time to the unseen keepers of the place. After a while some answering sounds became audible—first the feeble yelping of an asthmatic dog, then a commotion up-stairs, and at last a window was thrown up, and a female head enveloped in a shawl looked out. “Eh, whae are ye? vagabond villains,—and this a gentleman’s house,” cried a cracked voice. “I’ll let the Squire know—I’ll rouse the man-servants. Tramps! what are you wanting here?” The driver of the dog-cart took up the response well pleased. He announced the arrival of the Squire, to the profound agitation of the house, which showed itself in a variety of scuffling sounds and the wildest exclamations of wonder. Vincent leaned his throbbing head against the door, and waited in a dull fever of impatience and excitement, as these noises gradually came nearer. When the door itself was reached and hasty hands began to unfasten its bolts, Susan’s brother pressed alone upon the threshold, forgetful and indifferent that the master of the house stood behind, watching him with close and keen observation. He forgot whose house it was, and all about his companion. What were such circumstances to him, as he approached the conclusion of his search, and thought every moment to hear poor Susan’s cry of shame and terror? He made one hasty stride into the hall when the door was open, and looked round him with burning eyes. The wonder with which the women inside looked at him, their outcry of disappointment and anger when they found him a stranger, coming first as he did, and throwing the Squire entirely into the shade, had no effect upon the young man, who was by this time half frantic. He went up to the elder woman and grasped her by the arm. “Where is she? show me the way!” he said, hoarsely, unable to utter an unnecessary word. He held the terrified woman fast, and thrust her before him, he could not tell where, into the unknown house, all dark and miserable in the wretchedness of the dawn. “Show me the way!” he cried, with his broken hoarse voice. A confused and inarticulate scene ensued, which Vincent remembered afterwards only like a dream; the woman’s scream—the interference of Fordham, upon whom his fellow-traveller turned with sudden fury—the explanation to which he listened without understanding it, and which at first roused him to wild rage as a pretence and falsehood. But even Vincent at last, struggling into soberer consciousness as the day broadened ever chiller and more grey over the little group of strange faces round him, came to understand and make out that both Fordham and he had been deceived. Nobody had been there—letters addressed both to Fordham himself, and to Colonel Mildmay, had been for some days received; but these, it appeared, were only a snare laid to withdraw the pursuers from the right scent. Not to be convinced, in the sullen stupor of his excitement, Vincent followed Fordham into all the gloomy corners of the neglected house—seeing everything without knowing what he saw. But one thing was plain beyond the possibility of doubt, that Susan was not there.

“I am to blame for this fruitless journey,” said Fordham, with a touch of sympathy more than he had yet exhibited; “perhaps personal feeling had too much share in it; now I trust you will have some breakfast before you set out again. So far as my assistance can be of any use to you——”

“I thank you,” said Vincent, coldly; “it is a business in which a stranger can have no interest. You have done all you cared to do,” continued the young man, hastily gathering up the overcoat which he had thrown down on entering; “you have vindicated yourself—I will trouble you no further. If I encounter any one interested in Mr. Fordham,” he concluded, with difficulty and bitterness, but with a natural generosity which, even in his despair, he could not belie, “I will do him justice.” He made an abrupt end, and turned away, not another word being possible to him. Fordham, not without a sentiment of sympathy, followed him to the door, urging refreshment, rest, even his own society, upon his companion of the night. Vincent’s face, more and more haggard—his exhausted excited air—the poignant wretchedness of his youth, on which the older man looked, not without reminiscences, awoke the sympathy and compassion of the looker-on, even in the midst of less kindly emotions. But Fordham’s sympathy was intolerable to poor Vincent. He took his seat with a sullen weariness once more by the talkative driver, who gave him an unheeded history of all the Fordhams. As they drove along the bleak moorland road, an early church-bell tingled into the silence, and struck, with horrible iron echoes, upon the heart of the minister of Salem. Sunday morning! Life all disordered, incoherent, desperate—all its usages set at nought and duties left behind. Nothing could have added the final touch of conscious derangement and desperation like the sound of that bell; all his existence and its surroundings floated about him in feverish clouds, as it came to his mind that this wild morning, hysterical with fatigue and excitement, was the Sunday—the day of his special labours—the central point of all his former life. Chaos gloomed around the poor minister, who, in his misery, was human enough to remember Beecher’s smile and Phœbe Tozer’s invitation, and to realise how all the “Chapel folks” would compare notes, and contrast their own pastor, to whom they had become accustomed, with the new voice from Homerton, which, half in pride and half in disgust, Vincent acknowledged to be more in their way. He fancied he could see them all collecting into their mean pews, prepared to inaugurate the “coorse” for which Tozer had struggled, and the offence upon their faces when the minister’s absence was known, and the sharp stimulus which that offence would give to their appreciation of the new preacher—all this, while he was driving over the bleak Northumberland wilds, with the cutting wind from the hills in his face, and the church-bell in his distracted ear, breaking the Sunday! Not a bright spot, so far as he could perceive, was anywhere around him, in earth, or sky, or sea.

Sunday night!—once more the church-bells, the church-going groups, the floating world, which he had many a time upbraided from the pulpit seeking its pleasure. But it was in London now, where he stood in utter exhaustion, but incapable of rest, not knowing where to turn. Then the thought occurred to him that something might be learned at the railway stations of a party which few people could see without remarking it. He waited till the bustle of arrival was over, and then began to question the porters. One after another shook his head, and had nothing to say. But the men were interested, and gathered in a little knot round him, trying what they could recollect, with the ready humanity of their class. “I’d speak to the detective police, sir, if I was you,” suggested one; “it’s them as finds out all that happens nowadays.” Then a little gleam of light penetrated the darkness. One man began to recall a light-haired gentleman with a mustache, and two ladies, who “went off sudden in a cab, with no luggage.” “An uncommon swell he did look,” said the porter, instinctively touching his cap to Vincent, on the strength of the connection; “and, my eyes! she was a beauty, that one in the blue veil. It was—let me see—Wednesday night; no—not Wednesday—that day as the up-train was an hour late—Friday afternoon, to be sure. It was me as called the cab, and I won’t deny as the gen’leman was a gen’leman. Went to the London Bridge station, sir; Dover line; no luggage; I took particular notice at the time, though it went out o’ my head first minute as you asked me.—Cab, sir? Yes. Here you are—here’s the last on the stand.—London Bridge Station, Dover line.”

Vincent took no time to inquire further. In the impatience of his utter weariness and wretchedness, he seized on this slight clue, and went off at once to follow it out. London Bridge station!—what a world swarmed in those streets through which the anxious minister took his way, far too deeply absorbed in himself to think of the flood of souls that poured past him. The station was in wild bustle and commotion; a train just on the eve of starting, and late passengers dashing towards it with nervous speed. Vincent followed the tide instinctively, and stood aside to watch the long line of carriages set in motion. He was not thinking of what he saw; his whole mind was set upon the inquiry, which, as soon as that object of universal interest was gone, he could set on foot among the officials who were clanging the doors, and uttering all the final shrieks of departure. Now the tedious line glides into gradual motion. Good Heaven! what was that? the flash of a match, a sudden gleam upon vacant cushions, the profile of a face, high-featured, with the thin light locks and shadowy mustache he knew so well, standing out for a moment in aquiline distinctness against the moving space. Vincent rushed forward with a hoarse shout, which scared the crowd around him. He threw himself upon the moving train with a desperate attempt to seize and stop it; but only to be himself seized by the frantic attendants, who caught him with a dozen hands. The travellers in the later carriages were startled by the commotion. Some of them rose and looked out with surprised looks; he saw them all as they glided past, though the passage was instantaneous. Saw them all! Yes; who was that, last of all, at the narrow window of a second-class carriage, who looked out with no surprise, but with a horrible composure in her white face, and recognised him with a look which chilled him to stone. He stood passive in the hands of the men, who had been struggling to hold him, after he encountered those eyes; he shuddered with a sudden horror, which made the crowd gather closer, believing him a maniac. Now it was gone into the black night, into the chill space, carrying a hundred innocent souls and light hearts, and among them deadly crime and vengeance—the doomed man and his executioner. His very heart shuddered in his breast as he made a faltering effort to explain himself, and get free from the crowd which thought him mad. That sight quenched the curses on his own lips, paled the fire in his heart. To see her dogging his steps, with her dreadful relentless promise in her eyes, overwhelmed Vincent, who a moment before had thrilled with all the rage of a man upon whom this villain had brought the direst shame and calamity. He could have dashed him under those wheels, plunged him into any mad destruction, in the first passionate whirl of his thoughts on seeing him again; but to see Her behind following after—pale with her horrible composure, a conscious Death tracking his very steps—drove Vincent back with a sudden paralysing touch. He stood chilled and horror-stricken in the crowd, which watched and wondered at him: he drew himself feebly out of their detaining circle, and went and sat down on the nearest seat he could find, like a man who had been stunned by some unexpected blow. He was not impatient when he heard how long he must wait before he could follow them. It was a relief to wait, to recover his breath, to realise his own position once more. That dreadful sight, diabolical and out of nature, had driven the very life-blood out of his heart.

As he sat, flung upon his bench in utter exhaustion and feebleness, stunned and stupified, leaning his aching head in his hands, and with many curious glances thrown at him by the bystanders, some of whom were not sure that he ought to be suffered to go at large, Vincent became sensible that some one was plucking at his sleeve, and sobbing his name. It was some time before he became aware that those weeping accents were addressed to him; some time longer before he began to think he had heard the voice before, and was so far moved as to look up. When he did raise his head it was with a violent start that he saw a little rustic figure, energetically, but with tears, appealing to him, whom his bewildered faculties slowly made out to be Mary, his mother’s maid, whom Susan had taken with her when she left Lonsdale. As soon as he recognised her he sprang up, restored to himself with the first gleam of real hope which had yet visited him. “My sister is here!” he cried, almost with joy. Mary made no answer but by a despairing outbreak of tears.

“Oh no, Mr. Arthur; no—oh no, no! never no more!” cried poor Mary, when she found her voice. “It’s all been deceitfulness and lyin’ and falsehood, and it ain’t none o’ her doing—oh no, no, Mr. Arthur, no!—but now she’s got nobody to stand by her, for he took and brought me up this very day; oh, don’t lose no time!—he took and brought me up, pretending it was to show me the way, and he sent me right off, Mr. Arthur, and she don’t know no more nor a baby, and he’ll take her off over the seas this very night—he will; for I had it of his own man. She’s written letters to her Ma, Mr. Arthur, but I don’t think as they were ever took to the post; and he makes believe they’re a-going to be married, and he’ll have her off to France to-night. Oh, Mr. Arthur, Mr. Arthur, don’t lose no time. They’re at a ’otel. Look you here—here’s the name as I wrote down on a bit o’ paper to make sure; and oh, Mr. Arthur, mind what I say, and don’t lose no time!”

“But Susan—Susan—what of her?” cried her brother, unconsciously clutching at the girl’s arm.

Mary burst into another flood of tears. She hid her face, and cried with storms of suppressed sobs. The young man rose up pale and stern from his seat, without asking another question. He took the crumpled paper out of her hand, put some money into it, and in few words directed her to go to his mother at Carlingford. What though the sight of her would break his mother’s heart—what did it matter? Hearts were made to be broken, trodden on, killed—so be it! Pale and fierce, with eyes burning red in his throbbing head, he too went on, a second Murder, after the first which had preceded him in the shape of the Carlingford needlewoman. The criminal who escaped two such avengers must bear a charmed life.

END OF VOL. I.