But the young Nonconformist gathered up his papers, closed his desk, and held out his hand to the kind-hearted butterman. “My sister has come back almost from the grave to-night,” said Vincent; “and we are all, for anything I can see, at the turning-point of our lives. You have done all you can do, and I thank you heartily; but now the business is in my hands.”
This was all the satisfaction Tozer got from the minister. He went home much discouraged, not knowing what to make of it, but did not confide his fears even to his wife, hoping that reflection would change the pastor’s mind, and resolved to make another effort to-morrow. And so the night fell over the troubled house. In the sick-room a joyful agitation had taken the place of the dark and hopeless calm. Susan, roused to life, lay leaning against her mother, looking at the child asleep on the sofa by her, unconscious of the long and terrible interval between the danger which that child had shared, and the delicious security to which her mind had all at once awakened. To Susan’s consciousness, it appeared as if her mother had suddenly risen out of the mists, and delivered the two helpless creatures who had suffered together. She could not press close enough to this guardian of her life. She held her arms round her, and laid her cheek against the widow’s with the dependence of a child upon her mother’s bosom. Mrs. Vincent sat upon the bed supporting her, herself supported in her weariness by love and joy, two divine attendants who go but seldom together. The two talked in whispers,—Susan because of her feebleness, the mother in the instinct of caressing tenderness. The poor girl told her story in broken syllables—broken by the widow’s kisses and murmurs of sympathy, of wonder and love. Healing breathed upon the stricken mind and feeble frame as the two clung together in the silent night, always with an unspoken reference to the beautiful forlorn creature on the sofa—that visible symbol of all the terrors and troubles past. “I told her my mother would come to save us,” said poor Susan. When she dropt to sleep at last, the mother leant her aching frame upon some pillows, afraid to move, and slept too, supreme protector, in her tender weakness, of these two young lives. As she woke from time to time to see her child sleeping by her side, thoughts of her son’s deliverance stole across Mrs. Vincent’s mind to sweeten her repose. The watch-light burned dimly in the room, and threw a gigantic shadow of her little figure, half erect on the side of the bed, still in her black gown and the close white cap, which could not be less than dainty in its neatness, even in that vigil, upon the further wall. The widow slept only in snatches, waking often and keeping awake, as people do when they grow old; her thoughts, ever alive and active, varying between her projects for the future, to save Susan from all painful knowledge of her own story, and the thankful recollection of Arthur’s rescue from his troubles. From echoes of Tozer’s speech, and of the cheers of the flock, her imagination wandered off into calculations of how she could find another place of habitation as pleasant, perhaps, as Lonsdale, and even to the details of her removal from thence, what portions of her furniture she would sell, and which take with her. “For now that Arthur has got out of his troubles, we must not stay to get him into fresh difficulties with his flock,” she said to herself, with a momentary ache in her thankful heart; and so dropped asleep for another half-hour, to wake again presently, and enter anew into the whole question. Such was the way in which Mrs. Vincent passed that agitated but joyful night.
In the adjoining room Arthur sat up late over his papers. He was not writing, or doing any work; for hours together he sat leaning his head on his hands, gazing intently at the lamp, which his mother had adjusted, until his eyes were dazzled, and the gloom of the room around became spotted with discs of shade. Was he to permit the natural gratification into which Tozer’s success had reluctantly moved him, to alter his resolve? Was he to drop into his old harness and try again? or was he to carry out his purpose in the face of all entreaties and inducements? The natural inclination to adopt the easiest course—and the equally natural, impetuous, youthful impulse to take the leap to which he had made up his mind, and dash forth in the face of his difficulties—gave him abundant occupation for his thoughts as they contended against each other. He sat arguing the question within himself long after his fire had sunk into ashes. When the penetrating cold of the night drove him at last to bed, the question was still dubious. Even in his sleep the uneasy perplexity pursued him;—a matter momentous enough, though nobody but Tozer—who was as restless as the minister, and disturbed his wife by groans and murmurs, of which, when indignantly woke up to render an account, he could give no explanation—knew or suspected anything. Whether to take up his anchors altogether and launch out upon that sea of life, of which, much as he had discussed it in his sermons, the young Nonconformist knew next to nothing? The widow would not have mused so quietly with her wakeful eyes in the dim room next to him, had she known what discussions were going on in Arthur’s mind. As for the congregation of Salem, they slept soundly, with an exhilarating sensation of generosity and goodness,—all except the Pigeons, who were plotting schism, and had already in their eye a vacant Temperance Hall, where a new preaching station might be organised under the auspices of somebody who would rival Vincent. The triumphant majority, however, laughed at the poulterer, and anticipated, with a pleasurable expectation, the meeting of next night, and the relief and delight of the pastor, who would find he had no explanations to make, but only his thanks to render to his generous flock. The good people concluded that they would all stop to shake hands with him after the business was over. “For it’s as good as receiving of him again, and giving him the right hand of fellowship,” said Mrs. Brown at the Dairy, who was entirely won over to the minister’s side. Only Tozer, groaning in his midnight visions, and disturbing the virtuous repose of his wedded partner, suspected the new cloud that hung over Salem. For before morning the minister’s mind was finally made up.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE next day dawned amid the agitations natural to such a crisis of affairs. Almost before it was daylight, before Susan had woke, or the young stranger stirred upon her sofa, Miss Smith, troubled and exemplary, had returned to see after her charge. Miss Smith was in a state of much anxiety and discomfort till she had explained to Mrs. Vincent all the strange circumstances in which she found herself; and the widow, who had ventured to rise from Susan’s side, and had been noiselessly busy putting the room in order, that her child might see nothing that was not cheerful and orderly when she woke, was not without curiosity to hear, and gladly took this opportunity, before even Arthur was stirring, to understand, if she could, the story which was so connected with that of her children. She ventured to go into the next room with Miss Smith, where she could hear every movement in the sick-chamber. The widow found it hard to understand all the tale. That Mrs. Hilyard was Mildmay’s wife, and that it was their child who had sought protection of all the world from Susan Vincent, whom the crimes of her father and mother had driven to the very verge of the grave, was so hard and difficult to comprehend, that all the governess’s anxious details of how little Alice first came into her hands, of her mother’s motives for concealing her from Colonel Mildmay, even of the ill-fated flight to Lonsdale, which, instead of keeping her safe, had carried the child into her father’s very presence—and all the subsequent events which Miss Smith had already confided to the minister, fell but dully upon the ears of Susan’s mother. “Her daughter—and his daughter—and she comes to take refuge with my child,” said the widow, with a swelling heart. Mrs. Vincent did not know what secret it was that lay heavy on the soul of the desperate woman who had followed her last night from Grove Street, but somehow, with a female instinct, felt, though she did not understand, that Mrs. Hilyard or Mrs. Mildmay, whatever her name might be, was as guilty in respect to Susan as was her guilty husband—the man who had stolen like a serpent into the Lonsdale cottage and won the poor girl’s simple heart. Full of curiosity as she was, the widow’s thoughts wandered off from Miss Smith’s narrative; her heart swelled within her with an innocent triumph; the good had overcome the evil. This child, over whom its father and mother had fought with so deadly a struggle, had flown for protection to Susan, whom that father and mother had done their utmost to ruin and destroy. They had not succeeded, thank God! Through the desert and the lions the widow’s Una had come victorious, stretching her tender virgin shield over this poor child of passion and sorrow. While Miss Smith maundered through the entire history, starting from the time when Miss Russell married Colonel Mildmay, the widow’s mind was entirely occupied with this wonderful victory of innocence over wickedness. She forgot the passionate despair of the mother whose child did not recognise her. She began immediately to contrive, with unguarded generosity, how Susan and she, when they left Carlingford, should carry the stranger along with them, and nurse her clouded mind into full development. Mrs. Vincent’s trials had not yet taught her any practical lessons of worldly wisdom. Her heart was still as open as when, unthinking of evil, she admitted the false Mr. Fordham into her cottage, and made a beginning of all the misery which seemed now, to her sanguine heart, to be passing away. She went back to Susan’s room full of this plan—full of tender thoughts towards the girl who had chosen Susan for her protector, and of pride and joy still more tender in her own child, who had overcome evil. It was, perhaps, the sweetest solace which could have been offered, after all her troubles, to the minister’s mother. It was at once a vindication of the hard “dealings” of Providence, and of that strength of innocence and purity, in which the little woman believed with all her heart.
The minister himself was much less agreeably moved when he found the governess in possession of his sitting-room. Anything more utterly vexatious could hardly have occurred to Vincent than to find this troubled good woman, herself much embarrassed and disturbed by her own position, seated at his breakfast-table on this eventful morning. Miss Smith was as primly uncomfortable as it was natural for an elderly single woman, still conscious of the fact that she was unmarried, to be, in an absolute tête-à-tête with a young man. She, poor lady, was as near blushing as her grey and composed non-complexion would permit. She moved uneasily in her seat, and made tremulous explanations, as Vincent, who was too young and inexperienced to be absolutely uncourteous, took his place opposite to her. “I am sure I feel quite an intruder,” said poor Miss Smith; “but your mother, Mr. Vincent, and little Alice—and indeed I did not know I was to be left here alone. It must seem so odd to you to find a lady—dear, dear me! I feel I am quite in the way,” said the embarrassed governess; “but Mrs. Mildmay will be here presently. I know she will be here directly. I am sure she would have come with me had she known. But she sat up half the night hearing what I had to tell her, and dropped asleep just in the morning. She is wonderfully changed, Mr. Vincent—very, very much changed. She is so nervous—a thing I never could have looked for. I suppose, after all, married ladies, however much they may object to their husbands, can’t help feeling a little when anything happens,” continued Miss Smith, primly; “and there is something so dreadful in such an accident. How do you think it can have happened? Could it be his groom, or who could it be? but I understand he is getting better now?”
“Yes, I believe so,” said Vincent.
“I am so glad,” said Miss Smith, “not that if it had been the will of Providence.—I would make the tea for you, Mr. Vincent, if you would not think it odd, and I am sure Mrs. Mildmay will be here directly. They were in a great commotion at Grange Lane. Just now, you know, there is an excitement. Though she is not a young girl, to be sure it is always natural. But for that I am sure they would all have come this morning; but perhaps Mr. Fordham——”
“Not any tea, thank you. If you have breakfasted, I will have the things removed. I have only one sitting-room, you perceive,” said the minister, rather bitterly. He could not be positively uncivil—his heart was too young and fresh to be rude to any woman; but he rang the bell with a little unnecessary sharpness when Miss Smith protested that she had breakfasted long before. Her words excited him with a touch beyond telling. He could not, would not ask what was the cause of the commotion in Grange Lane; but he walked to the window to collect himself while the little maid cleared the table, and, throwing it open, looked out with the heart beating loud in his breast. Were these the bells of St. Roque’s chiming into the ruddy sunny air with a confused jangle of joy? It was a saint’s day, no doubt—a festival which the perpetual curate took delight in proclaiming his observance of; or—if it might happen to be anything else, what was that to the minister of Salem, who had so many other things on his mind? As he looked out a cab drove rapidly up to the door—a cab from which he saw emerge Mrs. Hilyard and another figure, which he recognised with a start of resentment. What possible right had this man to intrude upon him in this moment of fate? The minister left the window hastily, and stationed himself with a gloomy countenance on the hearthrug. He might be impatient of the women; but Fordham, inexcusable as his intrusion was, had to be met face to face. With a flash of sudden recollection, he recalled all his previous intercourse with the stranger whose name was so bitterly inter-woven with the history of the last six months. What had he ever done to wake so sharp a pang of dislike and injury in Vincent’s mind? It was not for Susan’s sake that her brother’s heart closed and his countenance clouded against the man whose name had wrought her so much sorrow. Vincent had arrived at such a climax of personal existence that Susan had but a dim and secondary place in his thoughts. He was absorbed in his own troubles and plans and miseries. On the eve of striking out for himself into that bitter and unknown life in which his inexperienced imagination rejected the thought of any solace yet remaining, what malicious influence brought this man here?
They came in together into the room, “Mrs. Mildmay and Mr. Fordham”—not Mrs. Hilyard: that was over; and, preoccupied as the minister was, he could not but perceive the sudden change which had come over the Back Grove Street needlewoman. Perhaps her despair had lasted as long as was possible for such an impatient spirit. She came in with the firm, steady step which he had observed long ago, before she had begun to tremble at his eye. Another new stage had commenced in her strange life. She went up to him without any hesitation, clear and decisive as of old.