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.