“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 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.”