WAS it possible that she had slept? A moment ago and it was daylight--a
red sunset afternoon: now the pale half-light, struggling with the black
darkness, filled the apartment. She was lying on the sofa where Mary had
laid her, and by her side, upon a chair within her reach, was some tea
untasted, which Mary must have brought after she had fallen into that
momentary slumber. The fire burned brightly, with occasional little
outbreaks of flame. Such a silence seemed in the house--silence that
crept and shuddered--and to think she should have slept!
The night had found covert in all the corners, so dark they were; but
one pale line of light came from the window, and the room had a little
ruddy centre in the fire. Mrs. Vincent, in the poignant anguish of her
awakening, grew superstitious; some other breath--some other
presence--seemed in the room besides her own. She called "Mary," but
there was no answer. In her excited condition anything was possible--the
bounds of the living world and the possible seemed gone for ever. She
might see anything--hear anything--in the calm of her desperation. She
got up, and hastily lighted the candle which stood on the table. As she
looked over the little light a great cry escaped her. What was it?
rising darkly, rising slowly, out of the shadows in which it had been
crouching, a huddled indistinct figure. Oh God! not Susan! not her
child! As it rose slowly facing her, the widow cried aloud once more,
and put her hand over her eyes to shut out the dreadful vision. Ghastly
white, with fixed dilated eyes--with a figure dilated and
grandiose--like a statue stricken into marble, raised to grandeur--could
it be Susan who stood there, without a word, without a movement, only
with a blank dark gaze at the horrified woman, who dared not meet those
dreadful eyes? When life rallied in Mrs. Vincent's horror-stricken
heart, she went to the ghastly creature, and put warm arms round it, and
called it Susan! Susan! Had it any consciousness at all, this dreadful
ghost? had it come from another world? The mother kissed it with lips
that woke no answer--held it motionless in her trembling arms. She cried
again aloud--a great outcry--no longer fearing anything. What were
appearances now? If it was Susan, it was Susan dead whom she held, all
unyielding and terrible in her warm human arms.
Mary heard and came with exclamations of terror and sympathy. They got
her between them to the fire, and chafed her chill hands and feet.
Nobody knew how she had got in, where she had come from; no one was with
her--no one had admitted her. She sat a marble woman in the chair where
they had placed her, unresistant, only gazing, gazing--turning her awful
eyes after her mother. At last she drew some long gasping breaths, and,
with a shudder which shook her entire frame, seemed to come to herself.
"I am Susan Vincent," said the awful ghost. No tears, nor cries, nor
wild pressure of her mother's arms, nor entreaties poured into her cold
ear, could extract any other words. Mrs. Vincent lost her
self-possession: she rushed out of the room for remedies--rung the
bell--called for Arthur in a voice of despair--could nobody help her,
even in this horrible crisis? When she had roused the house she
recollected herself, and shut the door upon the wondering strangers, and
returned once more to her hopeless task. "Oh, Mary! what are we to do?
Oh, Susan, my child, my darling! speak to your poor mother," cried the
widow; but the marble figure in the chair, which was Susan, made no
reply. It began to shiver with dreadful trembling fits--to be convulsed
with long gasping sobs. "I am--Susan--Susan Vincent"--it said at
intervals, with a pitiful iteration. The sight of her daughter in this
frightful condition, coming after all her fatigue and strain of
excitement, unnerved Mrs. Vincent completely. She had locked the door in
her sudden dismay. She was kneeling, clasping Susan's knees--wasting
vain adjurations upon her--driven beyond hope, beyond sense, beyond
capacity. Little rustic Mary had all the weight of the emergency thrown
upon her shoulders. It was she who called to the curious landlady
outside to send for the doctor, and who managed to get Susan put into
her mother's bed. When they had succeeded in laying her down there, a
long interval, that seemed like years, passed before Dr. Rider came. The
bed was opposite the window, through which the pale rays of the
twilight were still trembling. The candle on the other side showed Mrs.
Vincent walking about the room wringing her hands, now and then coming
to the bedside to look at the unconscious form there, rent by those
gasping sobs, uttering those dreadful words. Mary stood crying at the
foot of the bed. As for the widow, her eyes were tearless--her heart in
an intolerable fever of suffering. She could not bear it. She said aloud
she could not bear it--she could not bear it! Then she returned again to
call vainly upon her child, her child! Her strength had given way--she
had spent all her reserves, and had nothing to resist this unexpected
climax of misery.
It was quite dark when Dr. Rider came. Mary held the candle for him as
he felt Susan's pulse, and examined her wide-open eyes. The doctor knew
nothing about her any more than if he had not been a doctor. He said it
must have been some dreadful mental shock, with inquiring looks at Mrs.
Vincent, who began to recover herself. He put back the heavy locks of
golden brown hair, which had been loosened down from Susan's head, and
said he was afraid there was pressure on the brain. What could he
say?--he knew nothing more about it. He left some simple directions,
said he would send some medicine, and took Mrs. Vincent into a corner to
ask what it was. "Some severe mental shock?" asked Dr. Rider; but,
before she could reply, a cab drove rapidly up to the door, and sounds
of a sudden arrival were audible in the house. "Oh, doctor, thank God,
my son is come--now I can bear it," said the widow. Dr. Rider, who was
of a compassionate nature, waited with pitying eyes till the minister
should come up, and went to take another look at the patient, relieved
to think he could speak to her brother, instead of racking her mother's
heart. Mrs. Vincent grew calm in the sudden consolation of thinking
Arthur at hand. She sat down by the bedside, with her eyes fixed on the
door, yearning for her son, the only living creature from whom she could
have entire sympathy. Was it necessary that they should speak so loudly
as they came up-stairs?--could he be bringing a stranger with him to
Susan's sickroom? Her heart began to beat louder with mingled
expectation and displeasure. It was not like Arthur--and there was no
sound of his voice in the noise that swept up the stair. She rose up
instinctively as the footsteps approached--heavy steps, not like her
son's. Then the door was thrown open. It was not Arthur who stood upon
the dim threshold. It was a stranger in a rough travelling-coat,
excited, resolute, full of his own errand. He made a stride into the
room to the bedside, thrusting Mrs. Vincent aside, not wittingly, but
because she was in his way. Mary stood at the other side with the
doctor, holding up the one pale candle, which threw a flickering light
upon the marble white figure on the bed, and the utter consternation and
surprise in Dr. Rider's face. Mrs. Vincent, too much alarmed and
astonished to offer any resistance, followed the man who had thus
entered into her sanctuary of anguish. He knew what he was doing, though
nobody else did. He went straight forward to the bed. But the sight of
the unconscious figure there appalled the confident stranger. "It is
she, sure enough," he said; "are you a doctor, sir? is the lady taken
ill? I've come after her every step of the way. She's in my custody now.
I'll not give any trouble that I can help, but I must stay here."
Mrs. Vincent, who scarcely could endure to hear, and did not understand,
rushed forward while he was speaking, and seized him by the arm--"Leave
the room!" she cried with sudden passion--"He has made some impudent
mistake, doctor. God help me!--will you let my child be insulted? Leave
the room, sir--leave the room, I say! This is my daughter, Miss Vincent,
lying here. Mary, ring the bell--he must be turned out of the room.
Doctor, doctor! you are a man; you will never let my child be insulted
because her brother is away."
"What does it mean?" cried Dr. Rider--"go outside and I will come and
speak to you. Miss Vincent is in a most dangerous state--perhaps dying.
If you know her----"
"Know her, doctor! you are speaking of my child," cried Mrs. Vincent,
who faced the intruder with blazing eyes. The man held his ground, not
impertinently, but with steadiness.
"I know her fast enough," he said; "I've tracked her every step of the
way; not to hurt the lady's feelings, I can't help what I'm doing, sir.
It's murder;--I can't let her out of my sight."
Mrs. Vincent clasped her hands together with a grasp of desperation.
"What is murder?" she said, in a voice that echoed through the room. The
doctor, with an exclamation of horror, repeated the same question.
Murder! it seemed to ring through the shuddering house.
"It's hard upon a lady, not to say her mother," said the man,
compassionately; "but I have to do my duty. A gentleman's been shot
where she's come from. She's the first as suspicion falls on. It often
turns out as the one that's first suspected isn't the criminal. Don't
fret, ma'am," he added, with a glance of pity, "perhaps it's only as a
witness she'll be wanted--but I must stay here. I daren't let her out of
my sight."
There was a dreadful pause. Mrs. Vincent looked up at the two men before
her with a heartrending appeal in her eyes. Would anybody tell her what
it meant?--would nobody interfere for Susan? She moaned aloud
inarticulate in her voiceless misery. "And Arthur is not here!" was the
outcry which at last burst from her heart. She was beyond feeling what
this was--her senses were confused with extremity of suffering. She only
felt that another blow had been dealt at her, and that Arthur was not
here to help to bear it. Then the stranger, who had put himself so
horribly in possession of Susan's sickroom, once more began to speak.
The widow could not tell what he said--the voice rang in her ears like a
noise of unmeaning sound, but it stirred her to a flush of female
passion, as violent as it was shortlived. She sprang forward and took
hold of his arm with her white little trembling hand: "Not here--not
here!" cried the mother in her passion. With her feeble force excited
into something irresistible, she put the astonished stranger out of the
room before he knew what she was doing. If an infant had done it the man
could not have been more utterly astonished. Outside, the people of the
house were standing in an excited group. She thrust the dreadful
messenger of justice out with those hands that shook with tremors of
anguish and weakness. She shut the door upon him with all her feeble
strength, locked it, put a chair against it; then she stumbled and fell
as she stretched out for another--fell down upon her knees, poor soul!
and remained so, forgetting, as it seemed, how she came there, and
gradually, by instinct, putting together the hands which trembled like
leaves in the wind--"Lord, Lord!" cried the mother, hovering on the wild
verge between passion and insensibility. She called Him by name only as
utter anguish alone knows how; she had nothing to tell Him; she could
only call upon Him by His name.
Dr. Rider took the half-insensible form up in his arms and carried her
to the bedside, where Susan still lay motionless with her eyes wide
open, in an awful abstraction and unconsciousness. He put Mrs. Vincent
tenderly into the chair, and held the hands that shook with that palsied
irrestrainable tremor. "No one can bring her to life but you," said the
doctor, turning the face of the miserable mother towards her child. "She
has kept her senses till she reached you; when she was here she no
longer wanted them; she has left her life in your hands." He held those
hands fast as he spoke; pressed them gently, but firmly; repeated his
words over again. "In your hands," said the doctor once more, struck to
his heart with horror and pity. Susan's bare beautiful arm lay on the
coverlid, white, round, and full, like marble. The doctor, who had never
seen the fair Saxon girl who was Mrs. Vincent's daughter a week ago,
thought in his heart that this full developed form and face, rapt to
grandeur by the extremity of woe, gave no contradiction to the
accusation he had just heard with so much horror. That week had
obliterated Susan's soft girlish innocence and the simplicity of her
eighteen years. She was a grand form as she lay there upon that
bed--might have loved to desperation--fallen--killed. Unconsciously he
uttered aloud the thought in his heart--"Perhaps it would be better she
should die!"
Then the mother rose. Once more her painful senses came back to the
woman who was still the minister's mother, and, even in this hideous
dream of misery, had not forgotten the habits of her life. "When my son
comes he will settle it all," said Mrs. Vincent. "I expect him--any
time--he may come any minute. Some one has made--a mistake. I don't know
what that man said; but he has made--a mistake, doctor. My son, Mr.
Vincent, will see to all that. It has nothing to do with us. Tell me
what we are to do for my child. Cut off her hair? Oh, yes, yes,
anything! I don't mind it, though it is a sacrifice. She has had--a--a
great fright, doctor. She could not tell me particulars. When her
brother comes home, we will hear all--" said the widow, looking with a
jealous gaze in his eyes to see if he believed her. The scene altogether
overcame Dr. Rider. He turned away and went to the other side of the
room, and took a glass of water from the table before he could answer
her or meet that appeal. Then he soothed her as he best could with
directions about Susan. He went away immediately to come back in an
hour, if perhaps there might be any change--so he said; but, in reality,
he wanted to escape, to hear this dreadful story, to think what was
best. Friendless, with nobody near to protect them, and the officer of
justice waiting at the door, what were these women to do? perhaps death
waited closer than the visible messenger of fate. Would it be well to
stay that more merciful executioner on his way?
The doctor found the officer outside the door, waiting, not without
pity, at his post. He heard what was this man's version of the strange
tragedy--strange, and yet not unfamiliar to human ears. The young woman
had been betrayed and ruined. In wild vengeance and misery she had
seized one of her seducer's pistols and shot him through the head--such
was the story. And now she had fled from the scene of the murder,
tracked step by step by the avenger. The whole house was in a tumult, as
may be supposed. The indignant landlady, who was a member of Salem,
could scarcely be prevented going into the jealously-closed room and
turning out the unhappy criminal. Another lodger, a nervous woman, had
already collected her goods to fly from the place. Outside, some
mysterious instinct had collected a few people about the door of the
hitherto irreproachable house, which imagination magnified into a
crowd. Already Tozer had set out from his shop, red with anger, to
inquire into this incipient excitement, which nobody could explain. And
still Arthur had not appeared to stand by the miserable women in this
horrible climax of fate.
When the doctor went back to the room where Susan was, he found Mrs.
Vincent in a state of agitated activity. Mary and she were flitting
about the room, moving lights before Susan's eyes, making what noises
they could with the furniture, keeping a fantastic commotion about the
bed. "She stirred, doctor, and we were trying to rouse her," said the
widow, who had put everything but Susan's bodily extremity from her eyes
at the moment. The doctor, who was desperate, and whose heart was moved,
resorted to desperate measures. He gathered them about the bed, set Mrs.
Vincent to support the insensible form, and raising that white marble
arm which had developed into such glorious proportion, touched the
swollen blue vein with his lancet. The touch acted like magic. In
another moment she had struggled up out of her mother's grasp, and
thrown out the arm, from which the blood flowed, up above her head: the
crimson stream caught her wild eye as she raised her arm in the air. A
convulsive shudder shook her frame. She threw herself over on her face
with a cry of horror, far more than a match, in her strength of youth
and passion, for the agitated arms that held her. "Mother, mother,
mother! it is his blood! it is his life!" cried that despairing voice.
The confused bed, the convulsed frame, the flowing blood, all pitifully
lighted up by Mary's candle, made up of themselves a scene like murder;
and Dr. Rider vainly tried to forget the dreadful words which forced
upon his mind their untimely testimony. He shuddered at the touch of
that white woman's hand as he bound up the wounded arm. He withdrew his
eyes from the pallid grandeur of the stricken face. In spite of himself,
horror mingled with his pity. A heavier stain was upon her than those
crimson traces on her pearly skin. Other words followed in an incoherent
stream. Fever of the heart and brain, burning up into consuming frenzy,
had seized upon this lost creature, who was no longer a girl or
innocent. Ere long they had to send for nurses, to restrain her
delirium. She, raving with a wild madness which betrayed in every
wandering exclamation the horror upon her soul, lay desperate in the
room which had enclosed for so many lingering hours her mother's anguish
of suspense and fear. In an adjoining room, the man who had followed her
to this refuge still waited, watchful yet pitiful, intent that his
prisoner should not escape him. While outside a few gazers lingered,
looking up at the lights in the windows, with a strange perception that
something unusual had happened, though nobody knew what it was. Such was
the scene upon which Arthur Vincent, not unwarned, yet incredulous, came
suddenly with eyes of horror and wild indignation as he reached his own
door.