The next morning brought no letters except from Susan. Fordham, if so
true as Lady Western called him, was not, Vincent thought with
bitterness, acting as an honourable man should in this emergency. But
perhaps he might come to Carlingford in the course of the day, to see
Susan's brother. The aspect of the young minister was changed when he
made his appearance at the breakfast table. Mrs. Vincent made the most
alarmed inquiries about his health, but--stopped abruptly in making them
by his short and ungracious answer--came to a dead pause; and with a
pang of fright and mortification, acknowledged to herself that her son
was no longer her boy, whose entire heart she knew, but a man with a
life and concerns of his own, possibly not patent to his mother. That
breakfast was not a cheerful meal. There had been a long silence, broken
only by those anxious attentions to each other's personal comfort, with
which people endeavour to smooth down the embarrassment of an
intercourse apparently confidential, into which some sudden
unexplainable shadow has fallen. At last Vincent got up from the table,
with a little outbreak of impatience.
"I can't eat this morning; don't ask me. Mother, get your bonnet on,"
said the young man; "we must go to see Mrs. Hilyard to-day."
"Yes, Arthur," said Mrs. Vincent, meekly; she had determined _not_ to
see Mrs. Hilyard, of whom her gentle respectability was suspicious; but,
startled by her son's looks, and by the evident arrival of that period,
instinctively perceived by most women, at which a man snatches the reins
out of his adviser's hand, and has his way, the alarmed and anxious
mother let her arms fall, and gave in without a struggle.
"The fact is, I heard of Mr. Fordham last night," said Vincent, walking
about the room, lifting up and setting down again abstractedly the
things on the table. "Lady Western knows him, it appears; perhaps Mrs.
Hilyard does too."
"Lady Western knows him? Oh, Arthur, tell me--what did she say?" cried
his mother, clasping her hands.
"She said he could be trusted--with life--to death," said Vincent, very
low, with an inaudible groan in his heart. He was prepared for the joy
and the tears, and the thanksgiving with which his words were received;
but he could not have believed, how sharply his mother's exclamation,
"God bless my Susan! now I am happy about her, Arthur. I could be
content to die," would go to his heart. Susan, yes;--it was right to be
happy about her; and as for himself, who cared? He shut up his heart in
that bitterness; but it filled him with an irritation and restlessness
which he could not subdue.
"We must go to Mrs. Hilyard; probably she can tell us more," he said,
abruptly; "and there is her child to speak of. I blame myself," he
added, with impatience, "for not telling her before. Let us go now
directly--never mind ringing the bell; all that can be done when we are
out. Dinner? oh, for heaven's sake, let _them_ manage that! Where is
your bonnet, mother? the air will do me good after a bad night."
"Yes, dear," said Mrs. Vincent, moved by this last argument. It must be
his headache, no doubt, she tried to persuade herself. Stimulated by the
sound of his footstep in the next room, she lost very little time over
her toilette. Perhaps the chill January air, sharp with frost, air full
of natural exhilaration and refreshment, did bring a certain relief to
the young Nonconformist's aching temples and exasperated temper. It was
with difficulty his mother kept time with his long strides, as he
hurried her along the street, not leaving her time to look at Salem,
which was naturally the most interesting point in Carlingford to the
minister's mother. Before she had half prepared herself for this
interview, he had hurried her up the narrow bare staircase which led to
Mrs. Hilyard's lodgings. On the landing, with the door half open, stood
Lady Western's big footman, fully occupying the narrow standing-ground,
and shedding a radiance of plush over the whole shabby house. The result
upon Mrs. Vincent was an immediate increase of comfort, for surely the
woman must be respectable to whom people sent messages by so grand a
functionary. The sight of the man struck Vincent like another pang. She
had sent to take counsel, no doubt, on the evidently unlooked-for
information which had startled her so last night.
"Come in," said the inhabitant of the room. She was folding a note for
which the footman waited. Things were just as usual in that shabby
place. The coarse stuff at which she had been working lay on the table
beside her. Seeing a woman with Vincent, she got up quickly, and turned
her keen eyes upon the new-comer. The timid doubtful mother, the young
man, somewhat arbitrary and self-willed, who had brought his companion
there against her will, the very look, half fright, half suspicion,
which Mrs. Vincent threw round the room, explained matters to this quick
observer. She was mistress of the position at once.
"Take this to Lady Western, John," said Mrs. Hilyard. "She may come when
she pleases--I shall be at home all day; but tell her to send a maid
next time, for you are much too magnificent for Back Grove Street. This
is Mrs. Vincent, I know. Your son has brought you to see me, and I hope
you have not come to say that I was too rash in asking a Christian
kindness from this young man's mother. If he had not behaved like a
paladin, I should not have ventured upon it; but when a young man
conducts himself so, I think his mother is a good woman. You have taken
in my child?"
She had taken Mrs. Vincent by both hands, and placed her in a chair, and
sat down beside her. The widow had not a word to say. What with the
praise of her son, which was music to her ears--what with the confusion
of her own position, she was painfully embarrassed and at a loss, and
anxiously full of explanations. "Susan has, I have no doubt; but I am
sorry I left home on Wednesday morning, and we did not know then they
were expected; but we have a spare room, and Susan, I don't doubt----"
"The fact is, my mother had left home before they could have reached
Lonsdale," interposed Vincent; "but my sister would take care of them
equally well. They are all safe. A note came this morning announcing
their arrival. My mother," said the young man, hastily, "returns almost
immediately. It will make no difference to the strangers."
"I am sure Susan will make them comfortable, and the beds would be well
aired," said Mrs. Vincent; "but I had sudden occasion to leave home, and
did not even know of it till the night before. My dear," she said, with
hesitation, "did you think Mrs. Hilyard would know? I brought Susan's
note to show you," she added, laying down that simple performance in
which Susan announced the receipt of Arthur's letter, and the subsequent
arrival of "a governess-lady, and the most beautiful girl that ever was
seen." The latter part of Susan's hurried note, in which she declared
this beautiful girl to be "very odd--a sort of grown-up baby," was
carefully abstracted by the prudent mother.
The strange woman before them took up the note in both her hands and
drank it in, with an almost trembling eagerness. She seemed to read over
the words to herself again and again with moving lips. Then she drew a
long breath of relief.
"Miss Smith is the model of a governess-lady," she said, turning with a
composure wonderfully unlike that eagerness of anxiety to Mrs. Vincent
again--"she never writes but on her day, whatever may happen; and
yesterday did not happen to be her day. Thank you; it is Christian
charity. You must not be any loser meantime, and we must arrange these
matters before you go away. This is not a very imposing habitation," she
said, glancing round with a movement of her thin mouth, and comic gleam
in her eye--"but that makes no difference, so far as they are concerned.
Mr. Vincent knows more about me than he has any right to know,"
continued the strange woman, turning her head towards him for the moment
with an amused glance--"a man takes one on trust sometimes, but a woman
must always explain herself to a woman: perhaps, Mr. Vincent, you will
leave us together while I explain my circumstances to your mother?"
"Oh, I am sure it--it is not necessary," said Mrs. Vincent, half
alarmed; "but, Arthur, you were to ask----"
"What were you to ask?" said Mrs. Hilyard, laying her hand with an
involuntary movement upon a tiny note lying open on the table, to which
Vincent's eyes had already wandered.
"The fact is," he said, following her hand with his eyes, "that my
mother came up to inquire about some one called Fordham, in whom she is
interested. Lady Western knows him," said Vincent, abruptly, looking in
Mrs. Hilyard's face.
"Lady Western knows him. You perceive that she has written to ask me
about him this morning. Yes," said Mrs. Hilyard, looking at the young
man, not without a shade of compassion. "You are quite right in your
conclusions; poor Alice and he _were_ in love with each other before she
married Sir Joseph. He has not been heard of for a long time. What do
you want to know, and how is it he has showed himself now?"
"It is for Susan's sake," cried Mrs. Vincent, interposing; "oh, Mrs.
Hilyard, you will feel for me better than any one--my only daughter! I
got an anonymous letter the night before I left. I am so flurried, I
almost forget what night it was--Tuesday night--which arrived when my
dear child was out. I never kept anything from her in all her life, and
to conceal it was dreadful--and how we got through that night----"
"Mother, the details are surely not necessary now," said her impatient
son. "We want to know what are this man's antecedents and his
character--that is all," he added, with irrestrainable bitterness.
Mrs. Hilyard took up her work, and pinned the long coarse seam to her
knee. "Mrs. Vincent will tell me herself," she said, looking straight at
him with her amused look. Of all her strange peculiarities, the faculty
of amusement was the strangest. Intense restrained passion, anxiety of
the most desperate kind, a wild will which would pause at nothing, all
blended with and left room for this unfailing perception of any
ludicrous possibility. Vincent got up hastily, and, going to the window,
looked out upon the dismal prospect of Salem, throwing its shabby shadow
upon those dreary graves. Instinctively he looked for the spot where
that conversation must have been held which he had overheard from the
vestry window; it came most strongly to his mind at that moment. As his
mother went through her story, how Mr. Fordham had come accidentally to
the house--how gradually they had admitted him to their friendship--how,
at last, Susan and he had become engaged to each other--her son stood at
the window, following in his mind all the events of that evening, which
looked so long ago, yet was only two or three evenings back. He recalled
to himself his rush to the telegraph office; and again, with a sharp
stir of opposition and enmity, recalled, clear as a picture, the
railway-carriage just starting, the flash of light inside, the face so
clearly evident against the vacant cushions. What had he to do with that
face, with its eagle outline and scanty long locks? Somehow, in the
meshes of fate he felt himself so involved that it was impossible to
forget this man. He came and took his seat again with his mind full of
that recollection. The story had come to a pause, and Mrs. Hilyard sat
silent, taking in with her keen eyes every particular of the gentle
widow's character, evidently, as Vincent could see, following her
conduct back to those springs of gentle but imprudent generosity and
confidence in what people said to her, from which her present
difficulties sprang.
"And you admitted him first?" said Mrs. Hilyard, interrogatively,
"because----?" She paused. Mrs. Vincent became embarrassed and nervous.
"It was very foolish, very foolish," said the widow, wringing her hands;
"but he came to make inquiries, you know. I answered him civilly the
first time, and he came again and again. It looked so natural. He had
come down to see a young relation at school in the neighbourhood."
Mrs. Hilyard uttered a sudden exclamation--very slight, low, scarcely
audible; but it attracted Vincent's attention. He could see that her
thin lips were closed, her figure slightly erected, a sudden keen gleam
of interest in her face. "Did he find his relation?" she asked, in a
voice so ringing and distinct that the young minister started, and sat
upright, bracing himself for something about to happen. It did not flash
upon him yet what that meaning might be; but his pulses leapt with a
prescient thrill of some tempest or earthquake about to fall.
"No; he never could find her--it did not turn out to be our Lonsdale, I
think--what is the matter?" cried Mrs. Vincent; "you both know something
I don't know--what has happened? Arthur, have I said anything
dreadful?--oh, what does it mean?"
"Describe him if you can," said Mrs. Hilyard, in a tone which, sharp and
calm, tingled through the room with a passionate clearness which nothing
but extreme excitement could give. She had taken Mrs. Vincent's hand,
and held it tightly with a certain compassionate compulsion, forcing her
to speak. As for Vincent, the horrible suspicion which stole upon him
unmanned him utterly. He had sprung to his feet, and stood with his eyes
fixed on his mother's face with an indescribable horror and suspense. It
was not her he saw. With hot eyes that blazed in their sockets, he was
fixing the gaze of desperation upon a picture in his mind, which he
felt but too certain would correspond with the faltering words which
fell from her lips. Mrs. Vincent, for her part, would have thrown
herself wildly upon him, and lost her head altogether in a frightened
attempt to find out what this sudden commotion meant, had she not been
fixed and supported by that strong yet gentle grasp upon her hand.
"Describe him--take time," said her strange companion again--not looking
at her, but waiting in an indescribable calm of passion for the words
which she could frame in her mind before they were said.
"Tall," said the widow's faltering alarmed voice, falling with a strange
uncertainty through the intense stillness, in single words, with gasps
between; "not--a very young man--aquiline--with a sort of
eagle-look--light hair--long and thin, and as fine as silk--very light
in his beard, so that it scarcely showed. Oh, God help us! what is it?
what is it?--You both know whom I mean."
Neither of them spoke; but the eyes of the two met in a single look,
from which both withdrew, as if the communication were a crime. With a
shudder Vincent approached his mother; and, speechless though he was,
took hold of her, and drew her to him abruptly. Was it murder he read in
those eyes, with their desperate concentration of will and power? The
sight of them, and recollection of their dreadful splendour, drove even
Susan out of his mind. Susan, poor gentle soul!--what if she broke her
tender heart, in which no devils lurked? "Mother, come--come," he said,
hoarsely, raising her up in his arm, and releasing the hand which the
extraordinary woman beside her still clasped fast. The movement roused
Mrs. Hilyard as well as Mrs. Vincent. She rose up promptly from the side
of the visitor who had brought her such news.
"I need not suggest to you that this must be acted on at once," she said
to Vincent, who, in his agitation, saw how the hand, with which she
leant on the table, clenched hard till it grew white with the pressure.
"The man we have to deal with spares nothing." She stopped, and then,
with an effort, went up to the half-fainting mother, who hung upon
Vincent's arm, and took her hands and pressed them close. "We have both
thrust our children into the lion's mouth," she cried, with a momentary
softening. "Go, poor woman, and save your child if you can, and so will
I--we are companions in misfortune. And you are a priest, why cannot you
curse him?" she exclaimed, with a bitter cry. The next moment she had
taken down a travelling-bag from a shelf, and, kneeling down by a trunk,
began to transfer some things to it. Vincent left his mother, and went
up to her with a sudden impulse, "I am a priest, let me bless you," said
the young man, touching with a compassionate hand the dark head bending
before him. Then he took his mother away. He could not speak as he
supported her down-stairs; she, clinging to him with double weakness,
could scarcely support herself at all in her agitation and wonder when
they got into the street. She kept looking in his face with a pitiful
appeal that went to his heart.
"Tell me, Arthur, tell me!" She sobbed it out unawares, and over and
over before he knew what she was saying. And what could he tell her? "We
must go to Susan--poor Susan!" was all the young man could say.