“And you admitted him first?” said Mrs. Hilyard, interrogatively, “because—?” She paused. Mrs. Vincent became embarrassed and nervous.
“It was very foolish, very foolish,” said the widow, wringing her hands; “but he came to make inquiries, you know. I answered him civilly the first time, and he came again and again. It looked so natural. He had come down to see a young relation at school in the neighbourhood.”
Mrs. Hilyard uttered a sudden exclamation—very slight, low, scarcely audible; but it attracted Vincent’s attention. He could see that her thin lips were closed, her figure slightly erected, a sudden keen gleam of interest in her face. “Did he find his relation?” she asked, in a voice so ringing and distinct that the young minister started, and sat upright, bracing himself for something about to happen. It did not flash upon him yet what that meaning might be; but his pulses leapt with a prescient thrill of some tempest or earthquake about to fall.
“No; he never could find her—it did not turn out to be our Lonsdale, I think—what is the matter?” cried Mrs. Vincent; “you both know something I don’t know—what has happened? Arthur, have I said anything dreadful?—oh, what does it mean?”
“Describe him if you can,” said Mrs. Hilyard, in a tone which, sharp and calm, tingled through the room with a passionate clearness which nothing but extreme excitement could give. She had taken Mrs. Vincent’s hand, and held it tightly with a certain compassionate compulsion, forcing her to speak. As for Vincent, the horrible suspicion which stole upon him unmanned him utterly. He had sprung to his feet, and stood with his eyes fixed on his mother’s face with an indescribable horror and suspense. It was not her he saw. With hot eyes that blazed in their sockets, he was fixing the gaze of desperation upon a picture in his mind, which he felt but too certain would correspond with the faltering words which fell from her lips. Mrs. Vincent, for her part, would have thrown herself wildly upon him, and lost her head altogether in a frightened attempt to find out what this sudden commotion meant, had she not been fixed and supported by that strong yet gentle grasp upon her hand. “Describe him—take time,” said her strange companion again—not looking at her, but waiting in an indescribable calm of passion for the words which she could frame in her mind before they were said.
“Tall,” said the widow’s faltering alarmed voice, falling with a strange uncertainty through the intense stillness, in single words, with gasps between; “not—a very young man—aquiline—with a sort of eagle-look—light hair—long and thin, and as fine as silk—very light in his beard, so that it scarcely showed. Oh, God help us! what is it? what is it?—You both know whom I mean.”
Neither of them spoke; but the eyes of the two met in a single look, from which both withdrew, as if the communication were a crime. With a shudder Vincent approached his mother; and, speechless though he was, took hold of her, and drew her to him abruptly. Was it murder he read in those eyes, with their desperate concentration of will and power? The sight of them, and recollection of their dreadful splendour, drove even Susan out of his mind. Susan, poor gentle soul!—what if she broke her tender heart, in which no devils lurked? “Mother, come—come,” he said, hoarsely, raising her up in his arm, and releasing the hand which the extraordinary woman beside her still clasped fast. The movement roused Mrs. Hilyard as well as Mrs. Vincent. She rose up promptly from the side of the visitor who had brought her such news.
“I need not suggest to you that this must be acted on at once,” she said to Vincent, who, in his agitation, saw how the hand, with which she leant on the table, clenched hard till it grew white with the pressure. “The man we have to deal with spares nothing.” She stopped, and then, with an effort, went up to the half-fainting mother, who hung upon Vincent’s arm, and took her hands and pressed them close. “We have both thrust our children into the lion’s mouth,” she cried, with a momentary softening. “Go, poor woman, and save your child if you can, and so will I—we are companions in misfortune. And you are a priest, why cannot you curse him?” she exclaimed, with a bitter cry. The next moment she had taken down a travelling-bag from a shelf, and, kneeling down by a trunk, began to transfer some things to it. Vincent left his mother, and went up to her with a sudden impulse, “I am a priest, let me bless you,” said the young man, touching with a compassionate hand the dark head bending before him. Then he took his mother away. He could not speak as he supported her downstairs; she, clinging to him with double weakness, could scarcely support herself at all in her agitation and wonder when they got into the street. She kept looking in his face with a pitiful appeal that went to his heart.
“Tell me, Arthur, tell me!” She sobbed it out unawares, and over and over before he knew what she was saying. And what could he tell her? “We must go to Susan—poor Susan!” was all the young man could say.
XV
Mrs. Vincent came to a dead stop as they passed the doors of Salem, which were ajar, taking resolution in the desperateness of her uncertainty—for the feelings in the widow’s mind were not confined to one burning impulse of terror for Susan, but complicated by a wonderful amount of flying anxieties about other matters as well. She knew, by many teachings of experience, what would be said by all the connection, when it was known that the minister’s mother had been in Carlingford without going to see anybody—not even Mrs. Tufton, the late minister’s
