Salem Chapel

the young man, who was by this time half frantic. He went up to the elder woman and grasped her by the arm. “Where is she? show me the way!” he said, hoarsely, unable to utter an unnecessary word. He held the terrified woman fast, and thrust her before him, he could not tell where, into the unknown house, all dark and miserable in the wretchedness of the dawn. “Show me the way!” he cried, with his broken hoarse voice. A confused and inarticulate scene ensued, which Vincent remembered afterwards only like a dream; the woman’s scream⁠—the interference of Fordham, upon whom his fellow-traveller turned with sudden fury⁠—the explanation to which he listened without understanding it, and which at first roused him to wild rage as a pretence and falsehood. But even Vincent at last, struggling into soberer consciousness as the day broadened ever chiller and more grey over the little group of strange faces round him, came to understand and make out that both Fordham and he had been deceived. Nobody had been there⁠—letters addressed both to Fordham himself, and to Colonel Mildmay, had been for some days received; but these, it appeared, were only a snare laid to withdraw the pursuers from the right scent. Not to be convinced, in the sullen stupor of his excitement, Vincent followed Fordham into all the gloomy corners of the neglected house⁠—seeing everything without knowing what he saw. But one thing was plain beyond the possibility of doubt, that Susan was not there.

“I am to blame for this fruitless journey,” said Fordham, with a touch of sympathy more than he had yet exhibited; “perhaps personal feeling had too much share in it; now I trust you will have some breakfast before you set out again. So far as my assistance can be of any use to you⁠—”

“I thank you,” said Vincent, coldly; “it is a business in which a stranger can have no interest. You have done all you cared to do,” continued the young man, hastily gathering up the overcoat which he had thrown down on entering; “you have vindicated yourself⁠—I will trouble you no further. If I encounter anyone interested in Mr. Fordham,” he concluded, with difficulty and bitterness, but with a natural generosity which, even in his despair, he could not belie, “I will do him justice.” He made an abrupt end, and turned away, not another word being possible to him. Fordham, not without a sentiment of sympathy, followed him to the door, urging refreshment, rest, even his own society, upon his companion of the night. Vincent’s face, more and more haggard⁠—his exhausted excited air⁠—the poignant wretchedness of his youth, on which the older man looked, not without reminiscences, awoke the sympathy and compassion of the looker-on, even in the midst of less kindly emotions. But Fordham’s sympathy was intolerable to poor Vincent. He took his seat with a sullen weariness once more by the talkative driver, who gave him an unheeded history of all the Fordhams. As they drove along the bleak moorland road, an early church-bell tingled into the silence, and struck, with horrible iron echoes, upon the heart of the minister of Salem. Sunday morning! Life all disordered, incoherent, desperate⁠—all its usages set at nought and duties left behind. Nothing could have added the final touch of conscious derangement and desperation like the sound of that bell; all his existence and its surroundings floated about him in feverish clouds, as it came to his mind that this wild morning, hysterical with fatigue and excitement, was the Sunday⁠—the day of his special labours⁠—the central point of all his former life. Chaos gloomed around the poor minister, who, in his misery, was human enough to remember Beecher’s smile and Phoebe Tozer’s invitation, and to realise how all the “Chapel folks” would compare notes, and contrast their own pastor, to whom they had become accustomed, with the new voice from Homerton, which, half in pride and half in disgust, Vincent acknowledged to be more in their way. He fancied he could see them all collecting into their mean pews, prepared to inaugurate the “coorse” for which Tozer had struggled, and the offence upon their faces when the minister’s absence was known, and the sharp stimulus which that offence would give to their appreciation of the new preacher⁠—all this, while he was driving over the bleak Northumberland wilds, with the cutting wind from the hills in his face, and the church-bell in his distracted ear, breaking the Sunday! Not a bright spot, so far as he could perceive, was anywhere around him, in earth, or sky, or sea.

Sunday night!⁠—once more the church-bells, the churchgoing groups, the floating world, which he had many a time upbraided from the pulpit seeking its pleasure. But it was in London now, where he stood in utter exhaustion, but incapable of rest, not knowing where to turn. Then the thought occurred to him that something might be learned at the railway stations of a party which few people could see without remarking it. He waited till the bustle of arrival was over, and then began to question the porters. One after another shook his head, and had nothing to say. But the men were interested, and gathered in a little knot round him, trying what they could recollect, with the ready humanity of their class. “I’d speak to the detective police, sir, if I was you,” suggested one; “it’s them as finds out all that happens nowadays.” Then a little gleam of light penetrated the darkness. One man began to recall a light-haired gentleman with a mustache, and two ladies, who “went off sudden in a cab, with no luggage.” “An uncommon swell he did look,” said the porter, instinctively touching his cap to Vincent, on the strength of the connection; “and, my eyes! she was a beauty, that one in the blue veil. It was⁠—let me see⁠—Wednesday night; no⁠—not Wednesday⁠—that day as the up-train was an hour late⁠—Friday afternoon, to be sure. It