“Oh, stop her, Arthur—stop her!—Susan will be at Carlingford when we get there; Susan will go nowhere else but to her mother,” cried Mrs. Vincent, as the door closed on the nocturnal visitors—“I am as sure—as sure——! Oh, my dear, do you think I can have any doubt of my own child? As for Susan going astray—or being carried off—or falling into wickedness—Arthur!” said his mother, putting back her veil from her pale face, “now I have got over this dreadful night, I know better—nobody must breathe such a thing to me. Tell her so, dear—tell her so!—call her back—they will be at Carlingford when we get there!”
Vincent drew his mother’s arm through his own, and led her out into the darkness, which was morning and no longer night. “A few hours longer and we shall see,” he said, with a hard-drawn breath. Into that darkness Mrs. Hilyard and her companion had disappeared. There was another line of railway within a little distance of Lonsdale, but Vincent was at pains not to see his fellow-travellers as he placed his mother once more in a carriage, and once more caught the eye of the man whose curious look had startled him. When the grey morning began to dawn, it revealed two ashen faces, equally speechless and absorbed with thoughts which neither dared communicate to the other. They did not even look at each other, as the merciful noise and motion wrapped them in that little separate sphere of being. One possibility and no more kept a certain coherence in both their thoughts, otherwise lost in wild chaos—horrible suspense—an uncertainty worse than death.
CHAPTER XVIII.
IT was the very height of day when the travellers arrived in Carlingford. It would be vain to attempt to describe their transit through London in the bustling sunshine of the winter morning after the vigil of that night, and in the frightful suspense and excitement of their minds. Vincent remembered, for years after, certain cheerful street-corners, round which they turned on their way from one station to another, with shudders of recollection, and an intense consciousness of all the life circulating about them, even to the attitudes of the boys that swept the crossings, and their contrast with each other. His mother made dismal attempts now and then to say something; that he was looking pale; that after all he could yet preach, and begin his course on the Miracles; that it would be such a comfort to rest when they got home; but at last became inaudible, though he knew by her bending across to him, and the motion of those parched lips with which she still tried to smile, that the widow still continued to make those pathetic little speeches without knowing that she had become speechless in the rising tide of her agony. But at last they reached Carlingford, where everything was at its brightest, all the occupations of life afloat in the streets, and sunshine, lavish though ineffectual, brightening the whole aspect of the town. When they emerged from the railway, Mrs. Vincent took her son’s arm, and for the last time made some remark with a ghastly smile—but no sound came from her lips. They walked up the sunshiny street together with such silent speed as would have been frightful to look at had anybody known what was in their hearts. Mrs. Pigeon, who was coming along the other side, crossed over on purpose to accost the minister and be introduced to his mother, but was driven frantic by the total blank unconsciousness with which the two swept past her; “taking no more notice than if he had never set eyes on me in his born days!” as she described it afterwards. The door of the house where Vincent lived was opened to them briskly by the little maid in holiday attire; everything wore the most sickening, oppressive brightness within in fresh Saturday cleanliness. Vincent half carried his mother up the steps, and held fast in his own to support her the hand which he had drawn tightly through his arm. “Is there any one here? Has anybody come for me since I left?” he asked, with the sound of his own words ringing shrilly into his ears. “Please, sir, Mr. Tozer’s been,” said the girl, alertly, with smiling confidence. She could not comprehend the groan with which the young man startled all the clear and sunshiny atmosphere, nor the sudden rustle of the little figure beside him, which moved somehow, swaying with the words as if they were a wind. “Mother, you are going to faint!” cried Vincent—and the little maid flew in terror to call her mistress, and bring a glass of water. But when she came back, the mother and son were no longer in the bright hall with its newly cleaned wainscot and whitened floor. When she followed them up-stairs with the water, it was the minister who had dropped into the easy-chair with his face hidden on the table, and his mother was standing beside him. Mrs. Vincent looked up when the girl came in and said, “Thank you—that will do,” looking in her face, and not at what she carried. She was of a dreadful paleness, and looked with eyes that were terrible to that wondering observer upon the little attendant. “Perhaps there have been some letters or messages,” said Mrs. Vincent. “We—we expected somebody to come; think! a young lady came here?—and when she found we were gone——”
“Only Miss Phœbe!” said the girl, in amazement—“to say as her Ma——”
“Only Miss Phœbe!” repeated the widow, as if she did not comprehend the words. Then she turned to her son, and smoothed down the ruffled locks on his head; then held out her hand again to arrest the girl as she was going away. “Has your mistress got anything in the house,” she asked—“any soup or cold meat, or anything? Would you bring it up, please, directly?—soup would perhaps be best—or a nice chop. Ask what she has got, and bring it up on a tray. You need not lay the cloth—only a tray with a napkin. Yes, I see you know what I mean.”
“Mother!” cried Vincent, raising his head in utter fright as the maid left the room. He thought in the shock his mother’s gentle wits had gone.
“You have eaten nothing, dear, since we left,” she said, with a heartbreaking smile. “I am not going crazy, Arthur. O no, no, my dear boy! I will not go crazy; but you must eat something, and not be killed too. Susan is not here,” said Mrs. Vincent, with a ghastly, wistful look round the room; “but we are not going to distrust her at the very first moment, far less her Maker, Arthur. Oh, my dear, I must not speak, or something will happen to me; and nothing must happen to you or me till we have found your sister. You must eat when it comes, and then you must go away. Perhaps,” said Mrs. Vincent, sitting down and looking her son direct in the eyes, as if to read any suggestion that could arise there, “she has lost her way:—perhaps she missed one of these dreadful trains—perhaps she got on the wrong railway, Arthur. Oh, my dear boy, you must take something to eat, and then you must go and bring Susan home. She has nobody to take care of her but you.”
Vincent returned his mother’s look with a wild inquiring gaze, but with his lips he said “Yes,” not daring to put in words the terrible thoughts in his heart. The two said nothing to each other of the horror that possessed them both, or of the dreadful haze of uncertainty in which that Susan whom her brother was to go and bring home as if from an innocent visit, was now enveloped. Their eyes spoke differently as they looked into each other, and silently withdrew again, each from each, not daring to communicate further. Just then a slight noise came below, to the door. Mrs. Vincent stood up directly in an agony of listening, trembling all over. To be sure it was nothing. When nothing came of it, the poor mother sank back again with a piteous patience, which it was heartbreaking to look at; and Vincent returned from the window which he had thrown open in time to see Phœbe Tozer disappear from the door. They avoided each other’s eyes now; one or two heavy sobs broke forth from Mrs. Vincent’s breast, and her son walked with a dreadful funereal step from one end of the room to the other. Not even the consolation of consulting together what was to be done, or what might have happened, was left them. They dared not put their position into words—dared not so much as inquire in their thoughts where Susan was, or what had befallen her. She was to be brought home; but whence or from what abyss neither ventured to say.
Upon their misery the little maid entered again with her tray, and the hastily prepared refreshment which Mrs. Vincent had ordered for her son. The girl’s eyes were round and staring with wonder and curiosity; but she was aware, with female instinct, that the minister’s mother, awful little figure, with lynx eyes, which nothing escaped, was watching her, and her observations were nervous accordingly. “Please, sir, it’s a chop,” said the girl—“please, sir, missus sent to know was the other gentleman a-coming?—and please, if he is, there ain’t nowhere as missus knows of, as he can sleep—with the lady, and you, and all; and the other lodgers as well”—said the handmaiden with a sigh, as she set down her tray and made a desperate endeavour to turn her back upon Mrs. Vincent, and to read some interpretation of all this in the unguarded countenance of the minister; “and please, am I to bring up the Wooster sauce, and would the lady like some tea or anythink? And missus would be particklar obliged if you would say. Miss Phœbe’s been to ask the gentleman to tea, but where he’s to sleep, missus says——”