“Good Lord!” cried the speaker at the window; then in a different tone, “I’m coming, ma’am—I’m coming.” Instinctively, without knowing why, Vincent drew his mother’s arm within his own, and held her fast. Instinctively the widow clung to him, and kept herself erect by his aid. They did not say a word—no advices now about composing his countenance. Mrs. Vincent’s face was ghastly, had there been any light to see it. She went sheer forward when the door was open, as though neither her eyes nor person were susceptible of any other motion. An inexpressible air of desolation upon the cottage parlour, where everything looked far too trim and orderly for recent domestic occupation, brought to a climax all the fanciful suggestions which had been tormenting Vincent. He called out his sister’s name in an involuntary outburst of dread and excitement, “Susan! Susan!” The words pealed into the midnight echoes—but there was no Susan to answer to the call.
“It is God that keeps her asleep to keep her happy,” said his mother, with her white lips. She dropt from his arm upon the sofa in a dreadful pause of determination, facing them with wide-open eyes—daring them to undeceive her—resolute not to hear the terrible truth, which already in her heart she knew. “Susan is asleep, asleep!” she cried, in a terrible idiocy of despair, always facing the frightened woman before her with those eyes which knew better, but would not be undeceived. The shivering midnight, the mother’s dreadful looks, the sudden waking to all this fright and wonder, were too much for the terrified guardian of the house. She fell on her knees at the widow’s feet.
“Oh, Lord! Miss Susan’s gone! I’d have kep her if I had been here. I’d have said her mamma would never send no gentleman but Mr. Arthur to fetch her away. But she’s gone. Good Lord! it’s killed my missis—I knew it would kill my missis. Oh, good Lord! good Lord! Run for a doctor, Mr. Arthur; if the missis is gone, what shall we do?”
Vincent threw the frightened creature off with a savage carelessness of which he was quite unconscious, and raised his mother in his arms. She had fallen back in a dreary momentary fit which was not fainting—her eyes fluttering under their half-closed lids, her lips moving with sounds that did not come. The shock had struck her as such shocks strike the mortal frame when it grows old. When sound burst at last from the moving lips, it was in a babble that mocked all her efforts to speak. But she was not unconscious of the sudden misery. Her eyes wandered about, taking in everything around her, and at last fixed upon a letter lying half-open on Susan’s work-table, almost the only token of disorder or agitation in the trim little room. The first sign of revival she showed was pointing at it with a doubtful but impatient gesture. Before she could make them understand what she meant, that “quick temper” of which Mrs. Vincent accused herself blazed up in the widow’s eyes. She raised herself erect out of her son’s arms, and seized the paper. It was Vincent’s letter to his sister, written from London after he had failed in his inquiries about Mr. Fordham. In the light of this dreadful midnight the young man himself perceived how alarming and peremptory were its brief injunctions. “Don’t write to Mr. Fordham again till my mother’s return; probably I shall bring her home: we have something to say to you on this subject, and in the mean time be sure you do as I tell you.” Mrs. Vincent gradually recovered herself as she read this; she said it over under her breath, getting back the use of her speech. There was not much explanation in it, yet it seemed to take the place, in the mother’s confused faculties, of an apology for Susan. “She was frightened,” said Mrs. Vincent, slowly, with strange twitches about her lips—“she was frightened.” That was all her mind could take in at once. Afterwards, minute by minute, she raised herself up, and came to self-command and composure. Only as she recovered did the truth reveal itself clearly even to Vincent, who, after the first shock, had been occupied entirely by his mother. The young man’s head throbbed and tingled as if with blows. As she sat up and gazed at him with her own recovered looks, through the dim ice-cold atmosphere, lighted faintly with one candle, they both woke up to the reality of their position. The shock of the discovery was over—Susan was gone; but where, and with whom? There was still something to hope, if everything to fear.
“She is gone to her aunt Alice,” said Mrs. Vincent, once more looking full in the eyes of the woman who had been left in charge of the house, and who stood shivering with cold and agitation, winding and unwinding round her a thin shawl in which she had wrapped up her arms. “She has gone to her aunt Alice—she was frightened, and thought something had happened. To-morrow we can go and bring her home.”
“Oh, good Lord! No; she ain’t there,” cried the frightened witness, half inaudible with her chattering teeth.
“Or to Mrs. Hastings at the farm. Susan knows what friends I can trust her to. Arthur, dear, let us go to bed. It’s uncomfortable, but you won’t mind for one night,” said the widow, with a gasp, rising up and sitting down again. She dared not trust herself to hear any explanation, yet all the time fixed with devouring eyes upon the face of the woman whom she would not suffer to speak.
“Mother, for Heaven’s sake let us understand it; let her speak—let us know. Where has Susan gone? Speak out; never mind interruptions. Where is my sister?” cried Vincent, grasping the terrified woman by the arm.
“Oh Lord! If the missis wouldn’t look at me like that! I ain’t to blame!” cried Williams, piteously. “It was the day afore yesterday as the ladies came. I come up to help Mary with the beds. There was the old lady as had on a brown bonnet and the young miss in the blue veil——”
Vincent uttered a sudden exclamation, and looked at his mother; but she would not meet his eyes—would not acknowledge any recognition of that fatal piece of gauze. She gave a little gasp, sitting bolt upright, holding fast by the back of a chair, but kept her eyes steadily and sternly upon the woman’s face.