WHEN Vincent entered the house, the sensation of quiet in it struck him
with a vague consolation which he could scarcely explain. Perhaps only
because it was Sunday, but there was no reproachful landlady, no
distracting sound from above--all quiet, Sunday leisure, Sunday decorum,
as of old. When he went up hurriedly to his sitting-room, he found two
letters lying on his table--one a telegraphic despatch from Dover, the
other a dainty little note, which he opened as a man opens the first
written communication he receives from the woman of all women. He knew
what was in it; but he read it as eagerly as if he expected to find
something new in the mild little epistle, with its gentle attempt at
congratulation. The news was true. Either remorse had seized upon
Mildmay in the prospect of death, or the lingering traditions of honour
in his heart had asserted themselves on Susan's behalf. He had declared
her entirely innocent; he had even gone farther, he had sworn that it
was only as the companion of his daughter that Susan had accompanied
them, and as such that he had treated her. The deposition taken by the
magistrates was sent to Vincent in an abridged form, but what it
conveyed was clear beyond dispute. So far as the words of this
apparently dying man could be received, Susan was spotless--without
blood on her hand, or speck upon her good fame. The lesser and the
greater guilt were both cleared from that young head which had not been
strong enough to wait for this vindication. Though he said, Thank God,
from the bottom of his heart, an unspeakable bitterness filled Vincent's
soul as he read. Here was a deliverance, full, lavish, unlooked for; but
who could tell that the poor girl, crazed with misery, would ever be any
the better for it? who could tell whether this vindication might be of
any further use than to lighten the cloud upon Susan's grave?
With this thought in his mind he went to the sick-room, where everything
seemed quiet, not quite sure that his mother, absorbed as she was in
Susan's present danger, could be able to realise the wonderful
deliverance which had come to them. But matters were changed there as
elsewhere. Between the door and the bed on which Susan lay, a large
folding-screen had been set up, and in the darkened space between this
and the door sat Mrs. Vincent, with Dr. Rider and his wife on each side,
evidently persuading and arguing with her on some point which she was
reluctant to yield to them. They were talking in whispers under their
breath, and a certain air of stillness, of calm and repose, which
Vincent could scarcely comprehend, was in the hushed room.
"I assure you, on my word," said Dr. Rider, lifting his eyes as Vincent
opened the door, and beckoning him softly to come in, "that this change
is more than I dared hope for. The chances are she will wake up out of
danger. Nothing can be done for her but to keep her perfectly quiet; and
my wife will watch, if you will rest;--for our patient's sake!" said the
anxious doctor, still motioning Vincent forward, and appealing to him
with his eyes.
"Mr. Vincent has something to tell you," said the quick little woman,
impetuous even in her whisper, who was Dr. Rider's wife. "He must not
come and talk here. He might wake her. Take him away. Edward, take them
both away. Mrs. Vincent, you must go and hear what he has to say."
"Oh, Arthur! my dear boy," cried his mother, looking up to him with
moist eyes. "It is I who have something to tell. My child is perhaps to
get well, Arthur. Oh! my own boy, after all, she is going to get better.
We shall have Susan again. Hush! doctor, please let me go back again;
something stirred-- I think something stirred; and perhaps she might want
something, and the nurse would not observe. Tired?--no, no; I am not
tired. I have always watched them when they were ill, all their lives.
They never had any nurse in sickness but their mother. Arthur, you know
I am not tired. Oh! doctor, perhaps you would order something while he
is here, for my son; he has been agitated and anxious, and he is not so
strong--not nearly so strong as I am; but, my dear," said the widow,
looking up in her son's face with a wistful eagerness, "when Susan gets
better, all will be--well."
She said the last words with a trembling, prolonged sigh. Poor mother,
in that very moment she had recalled almost for the first time how far
from well everything would be. Her face darkened over piteously as she
spoke. She rose up, stung into new energy by this dreadful thought,
which had been hitherto mercifully obscured by Susan's danger. "Let me
go back--don't say anything. Nobody can watch my child but me," said the
heartbroken woman; and once more she looked in her son's face. She
wanted to read there what had happened--to ascertain from him, without
any one else being the wiser, all the dreadful particulars which now, in
the first relief of Susan's recovery, had burst into sudden shape upon
her sight. "Doctor, we will not detain you; her brother and I will watch
my child," said Mrs. Vincent. The light forsook her eyes as she rose in
that new and darker depth of anxiety; her little figure tottered trying
to stand as she held out her hand to her son. "You and me--only you and
me, Arthur--we must never leave her; though everybody is so kind----"
said the minister's mother, turning with her smile of martyrdom, though
her eyes were blind and she could not see them, to Dr. Rider and his
wife.
Vincent took his mother's hands and put her tenderly back in her chair.
"I have good news, too," he said; "all will be well, mother dear. This
man who has wrought us so much trouble is not dead. I told you, but you
did not understand it; and he declares that Susan----"
"Arthur!" cried Mrs. Vincent, with a sharp outcry of alarm and
remonstrance. "Oh, God forgive me! I shall wake my child. Arthur! The
doctor is very good," added the widow, looking round upon them always
with the instinct of conciliating Arthur's friends; "and so is Mrs.
Rider; but every family has its private affairs," she concluded, with a
wistful, deprecating smile, all the time making signs to Arthur to stop
him in his indiscreet revelations. "My dear, you will tell me presently
when we are alone."
"Ah, mother," said Vincent, with a suppressed groan, "there is nothing
private now in our family affairs. Hush! listen-- Susan is cleared; he
swears she had nothing to do with it; he swears that she was his
daughter's companion only. Mother! Good heavens! doctor, what has
happened? She looks as if she were dying. Mother! What have I done? I
have killed her with my good news."
"Hush, hush--she has fainted--all will come right; let us get her away,"
cried Dr. Rider under his breath. Between them the two young men carried
her out of the room, which Mrs. Rider closed after them with a certain
triumph. The widow was not in so deep a faint but the fresher air
outside and the motion revived her. It was more a sudden failing of her
faculties in the height of emotion than actual insensibility. She made a
feeble effort to resist and return into Susan's room. "You will wake
her," said Dr. Rider in her ear; and the poor mother sank back in their
arms, fixing her wistful misty eyes, in which everything swam, upon her
son. Her lips moved as she looked at him, though he could not hear her
say a word; but the expression in her face, half awakened only from the
incomprehension of her swoon, was not to be mistaken or resisted.
Vincent bent down over her, and repeated what he had said as he carried
her to another room. "Susan is safe--Susan is innocent. It is all over;
mother, you understand me?" he said, repeating it again and again. Mrs.
Vincent leaned back upon his shoulder with a yielding of all her
fatigued frame and worn-out mind. She understood him, not with her
understanding as yet, but with her heart, which melted into unspeakable
relief and comfort without knowing why. She closed her eyes in that
wonderful consciousness of some great mercy that had happened to her;
the first time she had closed them voluntarily for many nights and days.
When they laid her down on the bed which had been hurriedly prepared for
her, her eyes were still closed, and tears stealing softly out under the
lids. She could not break out into expressions of thankfulness--the joy
went to her heart.
Dr. Rider thought it judicious to leave her so, and retired from the
bedside with Vincent, not without some anxious curiosity in his own mind
to hear all "the rights" of the matter. Perhaps the hum of their voices,
quietly though they spoke, aroused her from her trance of silent
gratitude. When she called Arthur faintly, and when they both hurried to
her, Mrs. Vincent was sitting up in her bed wiping off the tears from
her cheeks. "Arthur dear," said the widow, "I am quite sure Dr. Rider
will understand that what he has heard is in the strictest confidence;
for to be sure," she continued, with a faint smile breaking over her wan
face, "nobody could have any doubt about my Susan. It only had to be
set right--and I knew when my son came home he would set it right,"
said Mrs. Vincent, looking full in Dr. Rider's face. "It has all
happened because I had not my wits about me as I ought to have had, and
was not used to act for myself; but when my son came back-- Arthur, my
own boy, it was all my fault, but I knew you would set it right--and as
for my Susan, nobody could have any doubt; and you will both forgive
your poor mother. I don't mind saying this before the doctor," she
repeated again once more, looking in his face; "because he has seen us
in all our trouble, and I am sure we may trust Dr. Rider; but, my dear,
you know our private affairs are not to be talked of before
strangers--especially," said the widow, with a long trembling sigh of
relief and comfort, "when God has been so good to us, and all is to be
well."
The two young men looked at each other in silence with a certain awe.
All the dreadful interval which had passed between this Sunday afternoon
and the day of Susan's return, had been a blank to Mrs. Vincent so far
as the outer world was concerned. Her daughter's illness and danger had
rapt her altogether out of ordinary life. She took up her burden only
where it had dropped off from her in the consuming anxiety for Susan's
life and reason, in which all other fears had been lost. Just at the
point where she had forgotten it, where she had still faced the world
with the despairing assumption that all would be right when Arthur
returned, she bethought herself now of that frightful shadow which had
never been revealed in its full horror to her eyes. Now that Arthur's
assurance relieved her heart of that, the widow took up her old position
instinctively. She knew nothing of the comments in the newspapers, the
vulgar publicity to which poor Susan's story had come. She wanted to
impress upon Dr. Rider's mind, by way of making up for her son's
imprudence, that he was specially trusted, and that she did not mind
speaking before him because he had seen all their trouble. Such was the
poor mother's idea as she sat upon the bed where they had carried her,
wiping the tears of joy from her wan and worn face. She forgot all the
weary days that had come and gone. She took up the story just at the
point where she, after all her martyrdom and strenuous upholding of
Arthur's cause, had suddenly sunk into Susan's sick-room and left it.
Now she reappeared with Arthur's banner once more in her hands--always
strong in that assumption that nobody could doubt as to Susan, and that
Arthur had but to come home to set all right. Dr. Rider held up his
warning finger when he saw Vincent about to speak. This delusion was
salvation to the widow.
"But I must go back to Susan, doctor," said Mrs. Vincent. "If she should
wake and find a stranger there!--though Mrs. Rider is so kind. But I am
much stronger than I look--watching never does me any harm; and now that
my mind is easy-- People don't require much sleep at my time of life.
And, Arthur, when my dear child sees me, she will know that all is
well--all is well," repeated the widow, with trembling lips. "I must go
to Susan, doctor; think if she should wake!"
"But she must not wake," said Dr. Rider; "and if you stay quietly here
she will not wake, for my wife will keep everything still. You will have
a great deal to do for her when she is awake and conscious. Now you must
rest."
"I shall have a great deal to do for her? Dr. Rider means she will want
nursing, Arthur," said Mrs. Vincent, "after such an illness; but she
might miss me even in her sleep, or she might----"
"Mother, you must rest, for Susan's sake; if you make yourself ill, who
will be able to take care of her?" said Vincent, who felt her hand
tremble in his, and saw with how much difficulty she sustained the
nervous shivering of her frame. She looked up into his face with those
anxious eyes which strove to read his without being able to comprehend
all the meanings there. Then the widow turned with a feminine artifice
to Dr. Rider.
"Doctor, if you will bring me word that my child is still asleep--if you
will tell me exactly what you think, and that she is going on well,"
said Mrs. Vincent; "you are always so kind. Oh, Arthur, my dear boy,"
cried the widow, taking his hand and caressing it between her own, "now
that he is gone, tell me. Is it quite true?--is all well again? but you
must never bring in Susan's name. Nobody must have it in their power to
say a word about your sister, Arthur dear. And, oh, I hope you have been
prudent and not said anything among your people. Hush! he will be coming
back; is it quite true, Arthur? Tell me that my dear child has come
safe out of it all, and nothing has happened. Tell me! Oh, speak to me,
Arthur dear!"
"It is quite true," said Vincent, meeting his mothers eyes with a
strange blending of pity and thankfulness. He did not say enough to
satisfy her. She drew him closer, looking wistfully into his face. The
winter afternoon was darkening, the room was cold, the atmosphere
dreary. The widow held her son close, and fixed upon him her anxious
inquiring eyes. "It is quite true, Arthur! There is nothing behind that
you are hiding from me?" she said, with her lips almost touching his
cheek, and her wistful eyes searching his meaning. "Oh, my dear boy,
don't hide anything from me. I am able to bear it, Arthur. Whatever it
is, I ought to know."
"What I have told you is the simple truth, mother," said Vincent, not
without a pang. "He has made a declaration before the magistrates----"
Mrs. Vincent started so much that the bed on which she sat shook.
"Before the magistrates!" she said, with a faint cry. Then after a
pause--"But, thank God, it is not here, Arthur, nor at Lonsdale, nor
anywhere where we are known. And he said that--that--he had never harmed
my child? Oh, Arthur, Arthur--your sister!--that she should ever be
spoken of so! And he was not killed? I do not understand it, my dear. I
cannot see all the rights of it; but it is a great comfort to have you
to myself for a moment, and to feel as if perhaps things might come
right again. Hush! I think the doctor must be coming. Speak very low.
My dear boy, you don't mean it, but you are imprudent; and, oh, Arthur,
with a troublesome flock like yours you must not commit yourself! You
must not let your sister's name be talked of among the people. Hush,
hush, I hear the doctor at the door."
And the widow put her son away from her, and leant her head upon her
hands instead of on his shoulder. She would not even let the doctor
suppose that she had seized that moment to inquire further, or that she
was anything but sure and confident that all was going well.
"She is in the most beautiful sleep," said the enthusiastic doctor, "and
Nettie is by her. Now, Mrs. Vincent, here is something you must take;
and when you wake up again I will take you to your daughter, and I have
very little doubt you will find her on the fair way for
recovery--recovery in every sense," added Dr. Rider, incautiously;
"twice saved--and I hope you will have no more of such uneasiness as you
have suffered on her behalf."
"Indeed, I have had very little uneasiness with my children," said Mrs.
Vincent, drawing up her little figure on the bed. "Susan never had a
severe illness before. When she came here first she was suffering from
a--a bad fright, doctor. I told you so at the time; and I was so weak
and so alarmed, Arthur dear, that I fear Dr. Rider has misunderstood me.
When one is not much used to illness," said the mother, with her
pathetic jesuitry, "one thinks there never was anything so bad as one's
own case, and I was foolish and upset. Yes, I will take it, doctor. Now
that I am easy in my mind, I will take anything you please; and you will
let me know if she wakes, or if she stirs. Whatever happens, you will
let me know that moment? Arthur, you will see that they let me know."
The doctor promised, anxiously putting the draught into her hands: he
would have promised any impossible thing at the moment, so eager was he
to get her persuaded to rest.
"I have not talked so much for-- I wonder how long it is?" said the
widow, with a faint smile. "Oh, Arthur dear, I feel as if somehow a
millstone had been on my heart, and God had taken it off. Doctor, it
is--it is--all your doing, under Providence," said the little woman,
looking full in his face. Perhaps she believed it--at least she meant
him to believe so. She swallowed the draught he gave her with that smile
upon her face, and laid down her throbbing head in the quietness and
darkness. "Go with the doctor, Arthur dear," she said, denying the
yearning in her heart to question her son farther, lest Dr. Rider might
perhaps suppose all was not so well as she said; "and, oh be sure to
tell me the very moment that Susan wakes?" She watched them gliding
noiselessly out of the room, two dark figures, in the darkness. She lay
down alone, throbbing all over with thrills of pain, which were half
pleasure. She began to be conscious again of her own body and life; and
the wistful curiosity that possessed her was not strong enough to
neutralise the positive unmistakable joy. Susan was recovering. Susan
was innocent. What trouble could there be heavy enough to take away the
comfort out of words like these!
"Now she will sleep. Mr. Vincent, I congratulate you on having such pure
blood in your veins; not robust, you know, but far better--such sweet,
perfect health as one rarely meets with nowadays," said the doctor,
under his breath, with professional enthusiasm; "all the better for your
sister that she came of such a stock. My wife, now, is another
example--not robust, as I say--natures delicately organised, but in such
exquisite adjustment, and with such elasticity! Mrs. Vincent will go to
sleep like a baby, and wake able for--anything that God may please to
send her," said Dr. Rider with reverence. "They will both sleep till
to-morrow if all goes well. Hush!-- Well, I may be absurd, for neither of
them could hear us here; but still it is best to err on the safe side."
"But Susan--you are not deceiving us--Susan is----" said Vincent, with
sudden alarm.
"She is asleep," said Dr. Rider; "and, if I can, I will remain till she
wakes; it is life or death."
They parted thus--the doctor to the little room below-stairs, where
Vincent's dinner awaited him, and the young minister himself to his own
room, where he went into the darkness with a kind of bewildered
uncertainty and incomprehension of the events about him. To think that
this day, with all its strange encounters and unexpected incidents, was
Sunday, as he suddenly remembered it to be--that this morning he had
preached, and this evening had to preach again, completed in Vincent's
mind the utter chaos and disturbance of ordinary life. It struck him
dumb to remember that by-and-by he must again ascend the pulpit, and go
through all his duties. Was he an impostor, doing all this mechanically?
He debated the question dully in his own mind, as he sat too much
bewildered to do anything else in the dark in his bed-chamber, pondering
with a certain confused gravity and consolation over all that had
happened. But faculties, which are confused by sudden comfort and
relief, are very different from faculties obscured and confounded by
suffering. He sat vaguely in the dark, wondering over his strange
position. This morning, even in the height of his despair, he had at
least some idea what he was going to do in that pulpit of Salem. It was
a sacrifice--a martyrdom to accomplish--a wild outcry and complaint to
pour forth to the world. This evening he sat wasting the precious
moments in the soft darkness, without knowing a word of what he was to
say--without being able to realise the fact, that by-and-by he should
have to go out through the sharp air echoing with church-bells--to see
once more all those watchful faces turned upon him, and to communicate
such instruction as was in him to his flock. A sense of exhaustion and
satisfaction was in Vincent's heart. He sat listless in a vague comfort
and weariness, his head throbbing with the fumes of his past excitement,
yet not aching. It was only now that he realised the rolling off from
his head of this dark cloud of horror and shame. Susan was
recovering--Susan was innocent. He became aware of the facts much in the
same way as his mother became aware of them ere she dropped to sleep in
the blessed darkness of the adjoining room. Confused as he was, with his
brain still full of the pulsations of the past, he was so far conscious
of what had happened. He sat in his reverie, regardless of the time, and
everything else that he ought to have attended to. The little maid came
and knocked at his door to say his dinner had been waiting for an hour,
and he answered, "Yes; he was coming," but sat still in the darkness.
Then the landlady herself, compunctious, beginning to feel the thrills
of returning comfort which had entered her house, came tapping softly to
say it was near six, and wouldn't Mr. Vincent take something before it
was time for chapel? Mr. Vincent said "Yes" again, but did not move; and
it was only when he heard the church-bells tingling into the night air
that he got up at last, and, stealing first to the door of Susan's room,
where he ascertained that she still slept, and then to his mother's,
where he could hear her soft regular breathing in the darkness, he went
away in an indescribably exalted condition of mind to Salem and his
duty. There is a kind of weakness incident to excitement of mind and
neglect of body, which is akin to the ecstatic state in which men dream
dreams and see visions. Vincent was in that condition to-night. He was
not careful what anybody would say or think; he no longer pictured to
himself the up-turned faces in Salem, all conscious of the tragedy which
was connected with his name. The sense of deliverance in his heart
emancipated him, and gave a contrary impulse to his thoughts. In the
weakness of an excited and exhausted frame, a certain gleam of the
ineffable and miraculous came over the young man. He was again in the
world where God stoops down to change with one touch of His finger the
whole current of man's life--the world of childhood, of genius, of
faith; that other world, dark sphere of necessity and fate, where
nothing could stay the development into dread immortality of the
obstinate human intelligence, and where dreary echoes of speculation
still questioned whether any change were possible in heart and spirit,
or if saving souls were a mere figure of speech, floated away far off
over his head, a dark fiction of despair. In this state of mind he went
back to the pulpit where, in the morning, he had thrilled his audience
with all those wild complications of thought which end in nothing. Salem
was again crowded--not a corner of the chapel remained unfilled; and
again, many of the more zealous members were driven out of their seats
by the influx of the crowd. Vincent, who had no sermon to preach, and
nothing except the fulness that was in his heart to say, took up again
his subject of the morning. He told his audience with the unpremeditated
skill of a natural orator, that while Reason considered all the
desperate chances, and concluded that wonderful work impossible, God,
with the lifting of His countenance, with the touch of His power, made
the darkness light before Him, and changed the very earth and heavens
around the wondering soul. Lifted out of the region of reasonableness
himself, he explained to his astonished audience how Reason halts in her
conclusions, how miracle and wonder are of all occurrences the most
natural, and how, between God and man, there are no boundaries of
possibility. It was a strange sermon, without any text or divisions,
irregular in its form, sometimes broken in its utterance; but the man
who spoke was in a "rapture"--a state of fasting and ecstasy. He saw
indistinctly that there were glistening eyes in the crowd, and felt what
was somewhat an unusual consciousness--that his heart had made
communications to other hearts in his audience almost without his
knowing it; but he did not observe that nobody came to the vestry to
congratulate him, that Tozer looked disturbed, and that the deacons
averted their benign countenances. When he had done his work, he went
home without waiting to talk to anybody--without, indeed, thinking any
more of Salem--through the crowd, in the darkness, passing group after
group in earnest discussion of the minister. He went back still in that
exalted condition of mind, unaware that he passed Mrs. Tozer and
Phoebe, who were much disposed to join him--and was in his own house
sooner than most of his congregation. All within was quiet, lost in the
most grateful and profound stillness. Sleep seemed to brood over the
delivered house. Vincent spoke to the doctor, who still waited, and
whose hopes were rising higher and higher, and then ate something, and
said his prayers, and went to rest like a child. The family, so worn out
with labour, and trial, and sorrow, slept profoundly under the quiet
stars. Those hard heavens, from which an indifferent God saw the
Innocents murdered and made no sign, had melted into the sweet natural
firmament, above which the great Father watches unwearied. The sudden
change was more than mere deliverance to the young Nonconformist. He
slept and took rest in the sweet surprise and thankfulness of his soul.
His life and heart, still young and incapable of despair, had got back
out of hard anguishes and miseries which no one could soften, to the
sweet miraculous world in which circumstances are always changing, and
God interferes for ever.