Salem Chapel. Volume 2/2

CHAPTER XI

“AND now that’s settled, as far as we can settle it now,” said Tozer, as they left the magistrate’s office, where John Brown, the famous Carlingford solicitor, had accompanied them, “you’ll go and see some of the chapel folks, Mr. Vincent? It’ll be took kind of you to lose no time, especially if you’d say a word just as it’s all over, and let them know the news is true.”

“I will go with you first,” said Vincent, who contemplated the butterman’s shop at that moment through a little halo of gratitude and kindness. He went into the back parlour with the gratified deacon, where Mrs. Tozer sat reading over again the same ‘Gazette’ in which poor Susan’s history was summed up and ended. It seemed like a year to Vincent since he had dined with his mother at this big table, amid the distant odours of all the bacon and cheese. Mrs. Tozer put down the paper, and took off her spectacles as her visitor came in. “It’s Mr. Vincent, Phœbe,” she said, with a little exclamation. “Dear, dear, I never thought as the pastor would be such a strange sight in my house – not as I was meaning nothing unkind, Tozer, so there’s no occasion to look at me. I’m as glad as ever I can be to see the minister; and what a blessing as it’s all settled, and the poor dear getting well, too. Phœbe, you needn’t be a-hiding behind me, child, as if the pastor was thinking of how you was dressed. She has on her morning wrapper, Mr. Vincent, as she was helping her mother in, and we didn’t expect no visitors. Don’t be standing there, as if it was any matter to the minister how you was dressed.”

“Oh, ma, as if I ever thought of such a thing!” said Phœbe, extending a pink uncovered arm out of the loose sleeve of her morning dress to Vincent, and averting her face; “but to see Mr. Vincent is so like old times – and everything has seemed so different – and it is so pleasant to feel as if it were all coming back again. Oh ma! to imagine that I ever supposed Mr. Vincent could notice my dress, or think of poor me!” added Phœbe, in a postscript under her breath. The minister heard the latter words quite as well as the first. After he had shaken the pink, plump hand, he sat down on the opposite side of the table, and saw Phoebe, relieved against the light of the window, wiping a tender tear from her eye. All at once out of the darker and heavier trials which had abstracted him from common life, the young Nonconformist plunged back into the characteristic troubles of his position. As usual, he made no response to Phœbe, found nothing civil to say, but turned with desperation to Mrs. Tozer, who was luckily about to speak.

“Don’t pay no attention to her, Mr. Vincent; she’s a deal too feelin’. She oughtn’t to be minded, and then she’ll learn better,” said Mrs. Tozer. “I am sure it wasn’t no wish of ours as you should ever stop away. If we had been your own relations we couldn’t have been more took up; and where should a minister seek for sympathy if it isn’t in his own flock? There ain’t nobody so safe to put your trust in, Mr. Vincent, as Salem folks. There’s a many fine friends a young man may have when he’s in a prosperous way, but it ain’t to be supposed they would stand by him in trouble; and it’s then as you find the good of your real friends,” continued Mrs. Tozer, looking with some significance at her husband. Tozer, for his own part, rubbed his hands and stationed himself with his back to the fire, as is the custom of Englishmen of all degrees. The husband and wife contemplated Vincent with complacence. With the kindest feelings in the world, they could not altogether restrain a little triumph. It was impossible now that the minister could mistake who were his true friends.

But just then, strangely enough, a vision of a tender smile, a glance up in his face, the touch of a soft hand, came to Vincent’s mind. His fine friends! he had but one, and she had stood by him in his trouble. From Tozer’s complacence the minister’s mind went off with a bound of relief to that sweet, fruitless sympathy which was dearer than help. From her soft perfumy presence to Mrs. Tozer’s parlour, with that pervading consciousness in it of the shop hard by and its store of provisions, what a wonderful difference! It was not so easy to be grateful as he had at first thought.

“Mr. Tozer has been my real friend indeed, and a most honest and thorough one,” said Vincent. “But I don’t think I have any other in Salem so sure and steady,” added the minister, after a little pause, half gratefully, half in bitterness. This sentiment was not, however, resented by the assembled family. Phœbe leaned over her mother’s chair, and whispered, “Oh, ma, dear! didn’t I always say he was full of feeling?” somewhat to the discomfiture of the person commented on; while Tozer himself beamed upon the minister from before the blazing fire.

“I said as we’d pull you through,” said Tozer, “and I said as I’d stand by you; and both I’ll do, sir, you take my word, if you’ll but stick to your duty; and as for standing bail in a hundred pound or two,” continued the butterman, magnanimously, “for a poor young creature as couldn’t be nothing but innocent, I don’t mind that, nor a deal more than that, to keep all things straight. It’s nothing but my duty. When a man is a responsible man, and well-known in a place, it’s his business to make use of his credit, Mr. Vincent, sir, and his character, for the good of his friends.”

“It may be your duty, but you know there ain’t a many as would have done it,” said his straight-forward wife, “as Mr. Vincent sees himself, and no need for nobody a-telling of him. There ain’t a many as would have stood up for the pastor, right and wrong, and finished off with the likes of this, and the minister don’t need us to say so. Dear, dear, Mr. Vincent, you ain’t a-going away already, and us hasn’t so much as seen you for I can’t tell how long? I made sure you’d stop and take a bit of dinner at least, not making no ceremony,” said Mrs. Tozer, “for there’s always enough for a friend, and you can’t take us wrong.”

Vincent had risen hurriedly to his feet, under the strong stimulant of the butterman’s self-applause. Conscious as he was of all that Tozer had really done, the minister found it hard to listen and echo, with due humility and gratitude, the perfect satisfaction of the pair over their own generosity. He had no thanks to say when thus forestalled. “Oh, ma, how can you make so much of it?” cried Phœbe. “The minister will think us so selfish; and, oh, please Mr. Vincent, when you go home, will you speak to your mother, and ask her to let me come and help with her nursing? I should do whatever she told me, and try to be a comfort to her – oh, I should indeed!” said Phœbe, clasping those pink hands. “Nobody could be more devoted than I should be.” She cast down her eyes, and stood the image of maidenly devotedness between Vincent and the window. She struck him dumb, as she always did. He never was equal to the emergency where Phœbe was concerned. He took up his hat in his hands, and tried to explain lamely how he must go away – how he had visits to make – duties to do – and would have stuck fast, and lost Mrs. Tozer’s favour finally and for ever, had not the butterman interposed.

“It’s me as is to blame,” said the worthy deacon. “If it hadn’t have been as the pastor wouldn’t pass the door without coming in, I’d not have had him here to-day; and if you women would think, you’d see. We’re stanch – and Mr. Vincent ain’t no call to trouble himself about us; but Pigeon and them, you see, as went off in a huff yesterday – that’s what the minister has got to do. You shan’t be kep’ no longer, sir, in my house. Duty afore pleasure, that’s my maxim. Good mornin’, and I hope as you won’t meet with no unpleasantness; but if you should, Mr. Vincent, don’t be disheartened, sir – we’ll pull you through.”

With this encouraging sentiment, Vincent was released from Mrs. Tozer’s parlour. He drew a long breath when he got out to the fresh air in the street, and faced the idea of the Pigeons and other recusants whom he was now bound to visit. While he thought of them, all so many varieties of Mrs. Tozer’s parlour, without the kindness which met him there, the heart of the young Nonconformist failed him. Nothing but gratitude to Tozer could have sent him forth at all on this mission of conciliation; but now on the threshold of it, smarting from even Tozer’s well-intentioned patronage, a yearning for a little personal comfort seized upon Vincent’s mind. It was his duty to go away towards Grove Street, where the poulterer’s residence was; but his longing eyes strayed towards Grange Lane, where consolation dwelt. And, besides, was it not his duty to watch over the real criminal, for whose mysterious wickedness poor Susan had suffered? It was not difficult to foresee how that argument would conclude. He wavered for a few minutes opposite Masters’s shop, gave a furtive glance back towards the butterman’s, and then, starting forward with sudden resolution, took his hasty way to Lady Western’s door; only for a moment; only to see that all was safe, and his prisoner still in custody. Vincent sighed over the thought with an involuntary quickening of his heart. To be detained in such custody, the young man thought, would be sweeter than heaven; and the wild hope which came and went like a meteor about his path, sprang up with sudden intensity, and took the breath from his lips, and the colour from his cheek, as he entered at that green garden door.

Lady Western was by herself in the drawing-room – that room divided in half by the closed doors which Vincent remembered so well. She rose up out of the low chair in which she reposed, like some lovely swan amid billows of dark silken drapery, and held out her beautiful hand to him – both her beautiful hands – with an effusion of kindness and sympathy. The poor young Nonconformist took them into his own, and forgot the very existence of Salem. The sweetness of the moment took all the sting out of his fate. He looked at her without saying anything, with his heart in his eyes. Consolation! It was all he had come for. He could have gone away thereafter and met all the Pigeons in existence; but more happiness still was in store for him – she pointed to a chair on the other side of her work-table. There was nobody else near to break the charm. The silken rustle of her dress, and that faint perfume which she always had about her, pervaded the rosy atmosphere. Out of purgatory, out of bitter life beset with trouble, the young man had leaped for one moment into paradise; and who could wonder that he resigned himself to the spell?

“I am so glad you have come,” said Lady Western. “I am sure you must have hated me, and everything that recalled my name; but it was impossible for any one to be more grieved than I was, Mr. Vincent. Now, will you tell me about Rachel? She sits by herself in her own room. When I go in she gives me a look of fright which I cannot understand. Fright! Can you imagine Rachel frightened, Mr. Vincent – and of me!”

“Ah, yes. I would not venture to come into the presence of the angels if I had guilt on my hands,” said Vincent, not very well knowing what he said.

“Mr. Vincent! what can you mean? You alarm me very much,” said the young Dowager; “but perhaps it is about her little girl. I don’t think she knows where her daughter is. Indeed,” said Lady Western, with a cloud on her beautiful face, “you must not think I ever approved of my brother’s conduct; but when he was so anxious to have his child, I think she might have given in to him a little – don’t you think so? The child might have done him good perhaps. She is very lovely, I hear. Did you see her? Oh, Mr. Vincent, tell me about it. I cannot understand how you are connected with it at all. She trusted in you so much, and now she is afraid of you. Tell me how it is. Hush! she is ringing her bell. She has seen you come into the house.”

“But I don’t want to see Mrs. – Mrs. Mildmay,” said Vincent, rising up. “I don’t know why I came at all, if it were not to see the sun shining. It is dark down below where I am,” said the young man, with an involuntary outburst of the passion which at that moment suddenly appeared to him in all its unreasonableness. “Forgive me. It was only a longing I had to see the light.”

Lady Western looked up with her sweet eyes in the minister’s face. She was not ignorant of the condition of mind he was in, but she was sorry for him to the bottom of her heart. To cheer him a little could not harm any one. “Come back soon,” she said, again holding out her hand with a smile. “I am so sorry for your troubles; and if we can do anything to comfort you, come back soon again, Mr. Vincent.” When the poor Nonconformist came to himself after these words, he was standing outside the garden door, out of paradise, his heart throbbing, and his pulse beating in a kind of sweet delirium. In that very moment of delight he recognised, with a thrill of exaltation and anguish, the madness of his dream. No matter. What if his heart broke after? Now, at least, he could take the consolation. But if it was hard to face Mrs. Pigeon before, it may well be supposed that it was not easy now, with all this world of passionate fancies throbbing in his brain, to turn away from his elevation, and encounter Salem and its irritated deacons. Vincent went slowly up Grange Lane, trying to make up his mind to his inevitable duty. When he was nearly opposite the house of Dr. Marjoribanks, he paused to look back. The garden door was again open, and somebody else was going into the enchanted house. Somebody else; – a tall slight figure, in a loose light-coloured dress, which he recognised instinctively with an agony of jealous rage. A minute before he had allowed to himself, in an exquisite despair, that to hope was madness; but the sight of his rival awoke other thoughts in the mind of the minister. With quick eyes he identified the companion of his midnight journey – he in whose name all Susan’s wretchedness had been wrought – he whom Lady Western could trust “with life – to death.” Vincent went back at the sight of him, and found the door now close shut, through which his steps had passed. Close shut – enclosing the other – shutting him out in the cold external gloom. He forgot all he had to do for himself and his friends – he forgot his duty, his family, everything in the world but hopeless love and passionate jealousy, as he turned again to Lady Western’s door.

CHAPTER XII

THUS while THUS while Mrs. Vincent sat in Susan’s sick-room, with her mind full of troubled thoughts, painfully following her son into an imaginary and unequal conflict with the wife of the rebellious deacon; and while the Salem congregation in general occupied itself with conjectures how this internal division could be healed, and what the pastor would do, the pastor himself was doing the very last thing he ought to have done in the circumstances – lingering down Grange Lane in the broad daylight with intent to pass Lady Western’s door – that door from which he had himself emerged a very few minutes before. Why did he turn back and loiter again along that unprofitable way? He did not venture to ask himself the question; he only did it in an utterly unreasonable access of jealousy and rage. If he had been Lady Western’s accepted lover instead of the hopeless worshipper afar off of that bright unattainable creature, he could still have had no possible right to forbid the entrance of Mr. Fordham at that garden gate. He went back with a mad, unreasoning impulse, only excusable in consideration of the excited state of mind into which so many past events had concurred to throw him. But the door opened again as he passed it. Instinctively Vincent stood still, without knowing why. It was not Mr. Fordham who came out. It was a stealthy figure, which made a tremulous pause at sight of him, and, uttering a cry of dismay, fixed eyes which still gleamed, but had lost all their steadiness, upon his face. Vincent felt that he would not have recognised her anywhere but at this door. Her thin lips, which had once closed so firmly, and expressed with such distinctness the flying shades of amusement and ridicule, hung apart loosely, with a perpetual quiver of hidden emotion. Her face, always dark and colourless, yet bearing such an unmistakable tone of vigour and strength, was haggard and ghastly; her once assured and steady step furtive and trembling. She gave him an appalled look, and uttered a little cry. She shivered as she looked at him, making desperate vain efforts to recover her composure and conceal the agitation into which his sudden appearance had thrown her. But nature at last had triumphed over this woman who had defied her so long. She had not strength left to accomplish the cheat. “You!” she cried, with a shrill tone of terror and confusion in her voice, “I did not look for you!” It was all her quivering lips would say.

The sight of her had roused Vincent. “You were going to escape,” he said. “Do you forget your word? Must I tell her everything, or must I place you in surer custody? You have broken your word.”

“My word! I did not give you my word,” she cried, eagerly. “No. I – I never said – : and,” after a pause, “if I had said it, how do you imagine I was going to escape? Escape! from what? That is the worst – one cannot escape,” said the miserable woman, speaking as if by an uncontrollable impulse, “never more; especially if one keeps quiet in one place and has nothing to do,” she continued after a pause, recovering herself by strange gleams now and then for a moment; “that is why I came out, to escape, as you say, for half an hour, Mr. Vincent. Besides, I don’t have news enough – not nearly enough. How do you think I can keep still when nobody sends me any news? How long is it since I saw you last? And I have heard nothing since then – not a syllable! and you expect me to sit still, because I have given my word? Besides,” after another breathless pause, and another gleam of self-recovery, “the laws of honour don’t extend to women. We are weak, and we are allowed to lie.”

“You are speaking wildly,” said Vincent, with some compassion and some horror, putting his hand on her arm to guide her back to the house. Mrs. Hilyard gave a slight convulsive start, drew away from his touch, and gazed upon him with an agony of fright and terror in her eyes.

“We agreed that I was to stay with Alice,” she said. “You forget I am staying with Alice: she – she keeps me safe, you know. Ah! people change so; I am sometimes – half afraid – of Alice, Mr. Vincent. My child is like her – my child – she did not know me!” cried the wretched woman, with a sob that came out of the depths of her heart; “after all that happened, she did not know me! To be sure, that was quite natural,” she went on again, once more recovering her balance for an instant, “she could not know me! and I am not beautiful, like Lady Western, to please a child’s eye. Beauty is good – very good. I was once pretty myself; any man would have forgiven me as you did when Alice came with her lovely face; but I daresay your mother would not have minded had it been she. Ah, that reminds me,” said Mrs. Hilyard, gradually acquiring a little more steadiness, “that was why I came out: to go to your mother – to ask if perhaps she had heard anything – from my child.”

“This is madness,” said Vincent; “you know my mother could not possibly hear about your child; you want to escape – I can see it in your eyes.”

“If you will tell me what kind of things people can escape from, I will answer you,” said his strange companion, still becoming more composed. “Hush! I said what was true. The governess, you know, had your address. Is it very long since yesterday when I got that news from Dover? Never mind. I daresay I am asking wild questions that cannot have any answer. Do you remember being here with me once before? Do you remember looking through the grating and seeing – ? Ah, there is Mr. Fordham now with Alice! Poor young man!” said Mrs. Hilyard, turning once more to look at him, still vigilant and anxious, but with a softened glance. “Poor minister! I told you not to fall in love with her lovely face. I told you she was kind, too kind – she does not mean any harm. I warned you. Who could have thought then that we should have so much to do with each other?” she resumed, shrinking from him, and trying to conceal how she shrank with another convulsive shiver; “but you were going to visit your people or something. I must not keep you, Mr. Vincent; you must go away.”

“Not till you have returned to the house; and given me your word of honour,” said Vincent, “not to escape, or to attempt to escape; or else I must tell her everything, or give you up into stronger hands. I will not leave you here.”

“My word! but women are not bound by their honour; our honour means – not our word,” cried Mrs. Hilyard, wildly; “my parole, he means; soldiers, and heroes, and men of honour give their parole; you don’t exact it from women. Words are not kept to us, Mr. Vincent; do you expect us to keep them? Yes, yes; I know I am talking wildly. Is it strange, do you think? But what if I give you my word, and nobody sends me any further news – nothing about my child? Women are only wild animals when their children are taken from them. I will forget it, and go away for news – news! That is what I want. Escape!” she repeated, with a miserable cry; “who can escape? I do not understand what it means.”

“But you must not leave this house,” said Vincent, firmly. “You understand what I mean. You must not leave Lady Western. Go with her where she pleases; but unless you promise on your honour to remain here, and with her, I shall be obliged – ”

“Hush!” she said, trembling – “hush! My honour! – and you still trust in it? I will promise,” she continued, turning and looking anxiously round into the dull winter daylight, as if calculating what chance she had of rushing away and eluding him. Then her eyes returned to the face of the young man, who stood firm and watchful beside her – agitated, yet so much stronger, calmer, even more resolute than she; then shrinking back, and keeping her eyes, with a kind of fascinated gaze, upon his face, she repeated the words slowly, “I promise – upon my honour. I will not go away – escape, as you call it. If I should go mad, that will not matter. Yes, ring the bell for me. You are the stronger now. I will obey you and go back. You have taken a woman’s parole, Mr. Vincent,” she went on, with a strange spasmodic shadow of that old movement of her mouth; “it will be curious to note if she can keep it. Good-bye – good-bye.” She spoke with a trembling desperation of calmness, mastering herself with all her power. She did not remove her eyes from his face till the door had been opened. “I promise, on my honour,” she repeated, with again a gleam of terror, as Vincent stood watching. Then the door closed, shutting in that tragic, wretched figure. She was gone back to her prison, with her misery, from which she could not escape. In that same garden, Vincent, with the sharp eyes of love and despair, even while watching her, had caught afar off a vision of two figures together, walking slowly, one leaning on the other, with the lingering steps of happiness. The sight went to his heart with a dull pang of certainty, which crushed down in a moment the useless effervescence of his former mood. His prisoner and he parted, going in and out, one scarcely less miserable at that moment than the other. In full sight of them both lingered for the same moment these two in the tenderest blessedness of life. Vincent turned sharp round, and went away the whole length of the long road past St. Roque’s, past the farthest village suburb of Carlingford, stifling his heart that it should say nothing. He had forgotten all about those duties which brought him there. Salem had vanished from his horizon. He saw nothing in heaven or earth but that miserable woman going back to her prison, interwoven with the vision of these two in their garden of paradise. The sight possessed him heart and spirit; he could not even feel that he felt it, his heart lying stifled in his bosom. It was, and there was no more to say.

CHAPTER XIII

MRS. VINCENT made many pilgrimages out of the sick-room that day; her mind was disturbed and restless; she could not keep still by Susan’s side. She went and strayed through her son’s rooms, looked at his books, gave a furtive glance at his linen; then went back and sat down for a little, until a renewed access of anxiety sent her wandering forth once more. Then she heard him come in, and went out to see him. But he was gloomy and uncommunicative, evidently indisposed to satisfy her in any way, absorbed in his own thoughts. Mrs. Vincent came and sat by him while he dined, thinking, in her simplicity, that it would be a pleasure to Arthur. But Arthur, with the unsocial habits of a man accustomed to live alone, had already set up a book before him while he ate, leaving his mother to wonder by herself behind what was the world of unknown thought that rapt her son, and into which her wistful wonder could not penetrate. But the widow was wise in her generation: she would not worry him with questions which it was very apparent beforehand that he did not mean to answer. She admitted to herself with a pang of mingled pain, curiosity, and resignation, that Arthur was no longer a boy having no secrets from his mother. Once more the little woman looked at the unreasonable male creature shut up within itself, and decided, with a feminine mixture of pity and awe, that it must be allowed to take its own time and way of disclosing itself, and that to torture it into premature utterance would be foolish, not to say impracticable. She left him, accordingly, to himself, and went away again, returning, however, ere long, in her vague restlessness, as she had been doing all day. The early winter evening had closed in, and the lamp was lighted – the same lamp which had smoked and annoyed Mrs. Vincent’s nice perceptions the first evening she was in Carlingford. Vincent had thrown himself on a sofa with a book, not to read, but as a disguise under which he could indulge his own thoughts, when his mother came quietly back into the room. Mrs. Vincent thought it looked dark and less cheerful than it ought. She poked the fire softly not to disturb Arthur, and made it blaze. Then she turned to the lamp, which flared huskily upon the table. “It smokes more than ever,” said Mrs. Vincent, half apologetically, in case Arthur should observe her proceedings as she took off the globe. He, as was natural, put down his book and gazed at her with a certain impatient wonder, half contemptuous of that strange female development which amid all troubles could carry through, from one crisis of life to another, that miraculous trifling, and concern itself about the smoking of a lamp. As she screwed it up and down and adjusted the wick, with the smoky light flaring upon her anxious face, and magnifying the shadow of her little figure against the wall behind, her son looked on with a feeling very similar to that which had moved Mrs. Vincent when she watched him eating his dinner with his book set up before him. These were points upon which the mother and son could not understand each other. But the sight disturbed his thoughts and touched his temper; he got up from the sofa and threw down his unread book.