Salem Chapel. Volume 2/2

CHAPTER IX

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.