NEXT morning the minister rose to the changed life and world which now surrounded his way, if not with much less excitement, at least with a more familiar knowledge of all the troubles which encompassed him. As he sat over the pretended breakfast, for which he had no appetite, and not even heart enough to make a show of eating, hearing close by the voice of his sister’s delirium, sometimes in faint murmurs, sometimes rising into wild outcries of passion, and pondered all the circumstances of this frightful calamity, it is not wonderful that his heart fainted within him. He had found out quickly enough that it was an officer of justice whom Tozer had succeeded, by what means he could not tell, in removing from his house. His landlady knew all the facts sufficiently well to be by times reproachful and by times sympathetic. The other lodgers in the house, some of whom had already left for fear of pollution, were equally aware of all the circumstances of the case; and it was impossible to hope that a tale so exciting, known to so many, could be long of spreading. The minister seemed to himself to look ruin in the face, as he sat in profound dejection, leaning his head in his hands. He had committed his sister’s interests into the hands of the best attorney he could hear of in Dover, that watch and search might be made on the spot for any further information; and now the only thing possible to be done was to secure some still more skilful agent in London to superintend the case, and set all the machinery of detection in motion to discover Mrs. Hilyard. Vincent had nothing in the world but the income which he drew from the liberality of Salem; an income which could ill stand the drain of these oft-repeated journeys, not to speak of the expenses of Susan’s defence. All that the minister had would not be enough to retain a fit defender for her, if she had to undergo the frightful ordeal of a trial. The very thought of it drove her unhappy brother desperate. Would it not be better if she died and escaped that crowning misery, which must kill her anyhow, if she survived to bear it? But these ponderings were as unprofitable as they were painful. When he had seen his mother, who whispered to him accounts of Susan’s illness, which his mind was too much preoccupied to understand, he went away immediately to the railway, and hastened to town. While he stood waiting in the lawyer’s office, he took up listlessly, without knowing what he was doing, the newspaper of the day. There he found the whole terrible tale made into a romance of real life, in which his sister’s name, indeed, was withheld, but no other particular spared. As he stood wiping the heavy dew from his forehead, half frantic with rage and despair, the quick eye of his misery caught a couple of clerks in another corner of the office, talking over another newspaper, full of lively interest and excitement. It was Susan’s story that interested them; the compiler had heightened with romantic details those hideous bare facts which had changed all his life, and made the entire world a chaos to Vincent; and all over the country by this time, newspaper readers were waking up into excitement about this new tale of love, revenge, and crime. The poor minister put down the paper as if it had stung him, and drew back, tingling in every nerve, from the table, where he could almost hear the discussion which was going on about Miss ——; where she could have escaped to, and whether she would be found. It restored him to his senses and self-command when he found himself face to face with the cool lawyer, who waited for his tragic story as a matter of business, and who had nothing to do with the heartbreaks or the disgrace which it involved. He was detained there for some time, giving as full an account as he could of all the circumstances, and describing as well as he could his reasons for suspecting Mrs. Hilyard, and her mysterious appearance at the scene of the murder. Vincent perceived, with a sensation of comfort at his heart, that his story interested the acute attorney, accustomed to the tricks and expedients of crime, who perceived at once the circumstances of suspicion, and understood at once how to go about it, and ferret the secret out. The minister himself grew steadier as he entered into his narrative. No shivers of wonder or pain convulsed the calm lawyer as he listened. Under his touch, Susan’s dreadful position became one not unprecedented, to be dealt with like any other condition of actual life; and when Vincent, after furnishing all the information he could, and satisfying himself that no time was to be lost in the prosecution of the search for the real criminal, left the office to return to Carlingford, it was with a mind somewhat calmed out of its first horror. He went back again by the train, deeply depressed and anxious, but not so susceptible to every glance and word as he had been an hour or two before. He tried, indeed, to take a certain gloomy satisfaction from the idea that now everything was known. Fear of discovery could no longer appal the stricken household; and to meet the horror in the face was less dreadful than to feel themselves skulking under a secret shadow which might at any moment be found out. He set his face sternly, and looked everybody full in the eyes who looked at him, as he once more alighted at the familiar station. He accepted the fact that people were talking of him, pitying him, contemplating him with wonder and fright, as somehow involved in an atmosphere of tragedy and crime. With this feeling he went slowly along George Street on his homeward way, with no susceptibility left in him, so far as he was aware, except as concerned this sudden calamity which had swallowed up his life.
When suddenly the sound of a carriage stopping came dully upon his ears; he would not have noted or heard it but for the sound that followed of some one calling his own name, and the soft rush of footsteps on the pavement; even then he did not turn round to see who called him. It was accordingly with a thrill of strange emotion—a strange, sudden, guilty suffusion of delight over all his tingling frame and aching heart, even in the midst of his suffering, that he felt the light touch of Lady Western’s hand first laid on his arm, then softly stealing within it in the sudden sympathy which possessed her as she looked up into his colourless face. It was pity and natural kindness which prompted the young Dowager to this unwonted familiar touch. She was sorry for him to the bottom of her heart—she would fain have made him amends somehow for the terrible evil which had come upon him. With the natural impulse of a woman to caress or soothe, or cheat a man anyhow out of that look of suffering which it is intolerable to her to see on his face, Lady Western acted instinctively, without thinking what she did. She did her beautiful hand into his arm, clung to him, looked up with her lovely appealing face and eyes full of tears to the pale face of the minister, which that touch moved beyond all expression. If he did not stop and take her into his arms, and lean his great anguish upon her in a sweetness of relief unspeakable and measureless, it was only because ordinary rule and custom are stronger than even passion. He was as much deceived as if he had done it, the poor young deluded soul. Out of the thunder and storm, all at once, without prelude or warning, he thought it was the light of love that broke upon him all radiant and glorious. With that he could brave all, overcome all; for that he could be content to fathom any depths of wretchedness. So he thought, as he looked down from those sudden heights of unhoped-for tremulous blessedness into that lovely face, and saw it trembling with divine compassion and tenderness. So he thought the ice breaking, the depths stirring in his own soul. Hope, deliverance, happiness, a delight more exquisite still, that consolation of love which makes anguish itself sweet, breathed over the poor young Nonconformist as that hand slid within his arm. His very brain grew dizzy with the sweetness of relief, the sudden ease that possessed his soul.
“Oh, Mr. Vincent, my heart is breaking; what shall we do—what shall we do?” cried Lady Western. “If it is true, I shall never dare speak to you again, and I feel for you to the bottom of my heart. Oh, Mr. Vincent, you don’t think she did it? I am sure she did not do it—your sister! It was bad enough before,” cried the lovely creature, crying without restraint, but still holding his arm and gazing up into his face, “but now my heart is broken. Oh, will you tell me what I must do? I will not go to him, for he has been a bad man; and I dare not go to your dear mother as I should like to go; and I feel for you, oh, to the very bottom of my heart!”
“Then I can bear it,” said Vincent. Though he did not speak another word, the sound of his voice, the expression of his face, betrayed him. He put his hand involuntarily upon the little hand that rested on his arm. It was all so sudden that his self-command forsook him. A smile trembled upon his face as he looked down at her with all his heart in his eyes. “Then I can bear it,” said the poor young minister, overwhelmed and penetrated by that exquisite consolation. Lady Western gave a little start of alarm as she read the unmistakable meaning in his face. She withdrew her hand hastily with a flush of radiant colour and downcast look of fright and shame. What had she done? Her confusion, her agitation, her sudden withdrawal, did but increase the spell. To Vincent’s charmed soul it seemed that she had betrayed herself, and that womanly reserve alone drew her back. He attended her to her carriage with a tender devotion which could not express itself in words. When he had put her in, he lingered, gazing at the face, now so troubled and downcast, with a delicious feeling that he had a right to gaze at her. “You have made me strong to bear all things,” he said, in the low tone of passion and secret joy. In the depth of his delusion he saw no other meaning than sudden timidity and womanly reticence in her confused and alarmed looks. When the carriage drove off he stood looking after it with eyes full of dreamy light. Darkness surrounded him on every side, darkness more hideous than a nightmare. The poor young soul believed for that delicious moment that superlative and ineffable, like his misery, was to be his joy.
Harder thoughts regained the mastery when he got within his own house again. It was no longer the orderly, calm, well-regulated house which had taken in the minister of Salem by way of adding yet a finer touch to its own profound respectability. Susan’s unhappy presence pervaded the place. Boxes of other lodgers going away encumbered the hall, where the landlady hovered weeping, and admitted the pastor sullenly with an audible sob.
Though he had imagined himself invested in armour of light against all these petty assaults, Vincent was not strong enough, even in the fictitious strength given him by Lady Western’s kindness, to bear the reality of his position. The very face of his landlady brought before him the whole array of faces at Salem, which he must shortly encounter, all directed towards him in judicial severity—an awful tribunal. When he reached the shelter of his room up-stairs, the ‘Carlingford Gazette’ lay upon his table, folded out so as to show that mysterious story of Miss ——, which some one in the house had certainly identified. The poor minister took it in his hands with an impulse to tear it in pieces—to trample it under foot—to give some outlet, now he was by himself, to the rage and indignation with which he saw his own calamity turned into a romance for the amusement of the public. He checked himself with a bitter smile at his own folly; unconsciously he bethought himself of Tozer’s back-parlour, of Mr. Tufton’s sitting-room, of all the places about where he had seen his people gleaning information and amusement from the ‘Carlingford Gazette.’ How the little paper, generally so harmless, would amuse and excite its readers to-day! What surmises there would be, and how soon the fatal knowledge would ooze out and be talked over on all sides! It was no matter of feeling to him—it was ruin in every way to the poor young minister, whose credit and living depended solely upon the caprice of his “flock.” The sight of the newspaper had so stunned him, that it was some time before he perceived a letter lying under it on the table. When he saw that the post-mark was Dover, he snatched up this letter eagerly and tore it open. It was from the lawyer whom he had consulted there. For the first moment he did not comprehend the information it conveyed. Good news!—what news could be good under his dreadful circumstances? The young man’s mind was stupified, and could not take it in. It was the copy of a doctor’s certificate—the opinion of a famous surgeon who had been summoned from London—to the effect that Colonel Mildmay’s wound was not necessarily fatal, and that if fever did not come on he might recover. The minister read it over again and again before he could comprehend it, and when he did comprehend it, the fact seemed rather an aggravation than a comfort to his misery. He was not dead—this destroyer. Perhaps at this moment, when his unhappy victim lay struggling between life and death, he, with the horrible good fortune of wickedness, was coming back from the edge of the grave. At the first shock it did not seem good news to Vincent. Not dead!—“the cursed villain,” he said through his clenched teeth. The earth was not rid of that pitiless wretch. It looked like another grand injustice in the world, where all the landmarks were overturned, and only evil seemed to prosper. He did not connect it anyhow with possible relief or deliverance to Susan; on the contrary, it raised in his own mind all the resentment and rage which had been quenched by Mildmay’s supposed death. He could scarcely compose himself after that unexpected information. If all went well, it would naturally change the character of the case—perhaps, under the circumstances, there might be no prosecution, said the lawyer’s letter. Vincent was young—excited out of all self-command or prudential considerations. In his soul he resented even this hope, which might still save his sister, and grudged what he felt to be the diabolical good-luck of her destroyer. Not dead!—not going to die!—not punished anyhow. About, after all the misery he had occasioned, to recover, and go on prosperously again, and spread wretchedness and ruin upon others. “He shall render me an account,” cried the minister fiercely to himself. “He shall answer for it to me!” He felt it intolerable, that this guilty soul should escape its punishment.
Thoughts more reasonable, however, came to him after a time. He began to see the importance of the intelligence to Susan—and even to himself. At least she could not be accused of shedding blood—at least she might be hidden somewhere in her shame, poor lost soul, and kept from the cruel eyes of the world. When he began to feel the influence of this gleam of comfort, he ventured to go to the sick-room to tell his mother, whom he had not yet seen; but Mrs. Vincent was deaf and insensible to everything but her child, whose need and danger were too urgent to permit more distant spectres, however terrible, to be visible in her sick-chamber. Mary, already worn out with fatigue, had gone to bed with a headache, with the liveliest conviction in her mind that she had taken the fever too. The widow, who had lived for the past week as though she had no physical frame at all, sat sleepless, with hot eyes and pallid face, by her daughter’s bed. She could still smile—smiles more heart-breaking than any outcry of anguish—and leaned her poor head upon her son, as he came near to her, with a tender pressure of her arms and strain of absolute dependence which went to his heart. She could not speak, or say, as she had said so often, that her boy must take care of his sister—that Susan had no one else to stand by her. Leaning upon him in an unspeakable appeal of love and weakness, smiling on him with her wistful quivering lips, was all the poor mother could do now.
All; for in that room no one could speak. One voice filled its silence. The restless movement of the head on that pillow turning from side to side in search of the rest which was nowhere to be found, stilled every other motion. Not even fever could flush the marble whiteness of her face. Awfully alone, in her mother’s anxious presence, with her brother by her bedside, Susan went on unconscious through the wild distracted world of her own thoughts—through what had been her own thoughts before horror and anguish cast them all astray. Vincent stood aside in breathless attention like the rest, before he had been many minutes in the room. We say to each other how strange it is that no heart can ever fully communicate itself to another; but when that revelation does take place, awful is the spectacle. All unawares, in her dread distraction, Susan opened up her heart.
“What does it matter what they will say?” said Susan; “I will never see them again. Unless—yes, put down her veil; she is pretty, very pretty; but what has Herbert to do with her? He said it was me he wanted; and why did he bring me away if he did not love me? Love me! and deceived me, and told me lies. Oh God, oh God! is it not Carlingford? Where is it? I am taking God’s name in vain. I was not thinking of Him—, I was thinking——. His name is Fordham, Herbert Fordham,—do you hear? What do you mean by Mildmay? I know no Mildmay. Stop and let me think. Herbert—Herbert! Oh, where are you—where are you? Do you think it never could be him, but only a lie? Well! if he did not love me, I could bear it; but why, why did he cheat me, and bring me away? The door is locked; they will not let me get out. Herbert! was there never, never any Herbert in the world? Oh, come back, even if you are only a dream! Locked! If they would only kill me! What do they mean to do with me? Oh God, oh God! but I must marry him if he says so. I must, must marry him, though he has told me lies. I must, whatever he does. Even if I could get through the window and escape; for they will call me wicked. Oh, mamma, mamma! and Arthur a minister, and to bring disgrace on him! But I am not disgraced. Oh no, no; never, never!— I will die first— I will kill him first. Open the door; oh, open the door! Let me go!”
She struggled up in one of her wilder paroxysms. She had thrown herself half out of bed, rising up wildly, and tossing her arms into the air, before her startled brother could rush forward to control her. But as the voice of the unhappy girl rose into frenzy, some unseen attendants stole in and took her out of his unskilful hands. The sight was too painful for unaccustomed eyes—for eyes of love, which could scarcely bear, even for her own sake, to see such means of restraint employed upon Susan. Mrs. Vincent stood by, uttering unconscious cries, imploring the two strong women who held her daughter, oh, not to hurt her, not to grasp her so tightly; while Susan herself beat the air in vain, and entreated, with passionate outcries, to be set free—to be let go. When she was again subdued, and sank into the quiet of exhaustion, Vincent withdrew from this saddest scene of all, utterly depressed and broken-spirited. The wretch lived who had wrought this dread wreck and ruin. What did it matter? Within that room it gave no relief, eased no heart, to say that he was not dead. Forms more terrific still than those of law and public vengeance—madness and death—stood on either side of Susan’s bed; till they had fought out the desperate quarrel, what matter to those most immediately concerned whether a greater or a lesser penalty lowered over her head? The minister went back to his own retirement with an aching heart, utterly dejected and depressed. He threw himself into a chair to think it all over, as he said to himself; but as he sat there, hopeless and solitary, his mind strayed from Susan. Could any one blame him? Who does not know what it is to have one secret spot of personal consolation to fly to in the midst of trouble? Vincent betook himself there in the utter darkness of everything around. Once more he seemed to feel that sudden touch which took away half his burden. No words could have spoken to his heart like that fairy hand upon his arm. He brooded over it, not thinking, only living over again the moment which had made so great a difference in the world. He forgot Fordham; he forgot everything; he took neither reason nor likelihood with him in his self-delusion. A sudden rosy mist suffused once more the cruel earth upon which he was standing; whatever came, he had something of his own to fall back upon, an ineffable secret sweetness, which stanched every wound before it was made. The young minister, out of the very depths of calamity, escaped into this garden of delights; he put aside the intolerable misery of the house; he thrust away from him all the lesser troubles which bristled thick in front of him in the very name of Salem. He fled to that one spot of joy which he thought remained to him in the middle of the waste, doubly sweet and precious. It gave him strength to hold out through his trouble, without being overwhelmed. He escaped to that delicious resting-place almost against his will, not able to resist the charm of the indescribable solace he found there. He alone, of all concerned, had that footbreadth of personal happiness to take refuge in amid the bitter storm. He did not know it was all delusion, self-deception, a woeful miserable blunder. He hugged it to his heart in secret, and took a comfort not to be spoken from the thought. Vanity of vanities; but nothing else in the world could have stolen with such fairy balms of consolation and strength to the heart of the poor minister. It was not long till he was called to face his fate again, and all the heavy front of battle set in array against him; but it was with a feeling of sweet guilt that he started up in the winter twilight, and left his room to see Tozer, who waited for him below. That room henceforward was inhabited by the fairy vision. When he went back to it, Love, the consolatrix, met him again, stealing that visionary hand within his arm. Blank darkness dwelt all around; here, falsest, fairest mirage of imagination, palpitated one delicious gleam of light.