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——”