Salem Chapel. Volume 2/2

“Oh, Mr. Vincent, my heart is breaking; what shall we do – what shall we do?” cried Lady Western. “If it is true, I shall never dare speak to you again, and I feel for you to the bottom of my heart. Oh, Mr. Vincent, you don’t think she did it? I am sure she did not do it – your sister! It was bad enough before,” cried the lovely creature, crying without restraint, but still holding his arm and gazing up into his face, “but now my heart is broken. Oh, will you tell me what I must do? I will not go to him, for he has been a bad man; and I dare not go to your dear mother as I should like to go; and I feel for you, oh, to the very bottom of my heart!”

“Then I can bear it,” said Vincent. Though he did not speak another word, the sound of his voice, the expression of his face, betrayed him. He put his hand involuntarily upon the little hand that rested on his arm. It was all so sudden that his self-command forsook him. A smile trembled upon his face as he looked down at her with all his heart in his eyes. “Then I can bear it,” said the poor young minister, overwhelmed and penetrated by that exquisite consolation. Lady Western gave a little start of alarm as she read the unmistakable meaning in his face. She withdrew her hand hastily with a flush of radiant colour and downcast look of fright and shame. What had she done? Her confusion, her agitation, her sudden withdrawal, did but increase the spell. To Vincent’s charmed soul it seemed that she had betrayed herself, and that womanly reserve alone drew her back. He attended her to her carriage with a tender devotion which could not express itself in words. When he had put her in, he lingered, gazing at the face, now so troubled and downcast, with a delicious feeling that he had a right to gaze at her. “You have made me strong to bear all things,” he said, in the low tone of passion and secret joy. In the depth of his delusion he saw no other meaning than sudden timidity and womanly reticence in her confused and alarmed looks. When the carriage drove off he stood looking after it with eyes full of dreamy light. Darkness surrounded him on every side, darkness more hideous than a nightmare. The poor young soul believed for that delicious moment that superlative and ineffable, like his misery, was to be his joy.

Harder thoughts regained the mastery when he got within his own house again. It was no longer the orderly, calm, well-regulated house which had taken in the minister of Salem by way of adding yet a finer touch to its own profound respectability. Susan’s unhappy presence pervaded the place. Boxes of other lodgers going away encumbered the hall, where the landlady hovered weeping, and admitted the pastor sullenly with an audible sob.

Though he had imagined himself invested in armour of light against all these petty assaults, Vincent was not strong enough, even in the fictitious strength given him by Lady Western’s kindness, to bear the reality of his position. The very face of his landlady brought before him the whole array of faces at Salem, which he must shortly encounter, all directed towards him in judicial severity – an awful tribunal. When he reached the shelter of his room up-stairs, the ‘Carlingford Gazette’ lay upon his table, folded out so as to show that mysterious story of Miss – , which some one in the house had certainly identified. The poor minister took it in his hands with an impulse to tear it in pieces – to trample it under foot – to give some outlet, now he was by himself, to the rage and indignation with which he saw his own calamity turned into a romance for the amusement of the public. He checked himself with a bitter smile at his own folly; unconsciously he bethought himself of Tozer’s back-parlour, of Mr. Tufton’s sitting-room, of all the places about where he had seen his people gleaning information and amusement from the ‘Carlingford Gazette.’ How the little paper, generally so harmless, would amuse and excite its readers to-day! What surmises there would be, and how soon the fatal knowledge would ooze out and be talked over on all sides! It was no matter of feeling to him – it was ruin in every way to the poor young minister, whose credit and living depended solely upon the caprice of his “flock.” The sight of the newspaper had so stunned him, that it was some time before he perceived a letter lying under it on the table. When he saw that the post-mark was Dover, he snatched up this letter eagerly and tore it open. It was from the lawyer whom he had consulted there. For the first moment he did not comprehend the information it conveyed. Good news! – what news could be good under his dreadful circumstances? The young man’s mind was stupified, and could not take it in. It was the copy of a doctor’s certificate – the opinion of a famous surgeon who had been summoned from London – to the effect that Colonel Mildmay’s wound was not necessarily fatal, and that if fever did not come on he might recover. The minister read it over again and again before he could comprehend it, and when he did comprehend it, the fact seemed rather an aggravation than a comfort to his misery. He was not dead – this destroyer. Perhaps at this moment, when his unhappy victim lay struggling between life and death, he, with the horrible good fortune of wickedness, was coming back from the edge of the grave. At the first shock it did not seem good news to Vincent. Not dead! – “the cursed villain,” he said through his clenched teeth. The earth was not rid of that pitiless wretch. It looked like another grand injustice in the world, where all the landmarks were overturned, and only evil seemed to prosper. He did not connect it anyhow with possible relief or deliverance to Susan; on the contrary, it raised in his own mind all the resentment and rage which had been quenched by Mildmay’s supposed death. He could scarcely compose himself after that unexpected information. If all went well, it would naturally change the character of the case – perhaps, under the circumstances, there might be no prosecution, said the lawyer’s letter. Vincent was young – excited out of all self-command or prudential considerations. In his soul he resented even this hope, which might still save his sister, and grudged what he felt to be the diabolical good-luck of her destroyer. Not dead! – not going to die! – not punished anyhow. About, after all the misery he had occasioned, to recover, and go on prosperously again, and spread wretchedness and ruin upon others. “He shall render me an account,” cried the minister fiercely to himself. “He shall answer for it to me!” He felt it intolerable, that this guilty soul should escape its punishment.

Thoughts more reasonable, however, came to him after a time. He began to see the importance of the intelligence to Susan – and even to himself. At least she could not be accused of shedding blood – at least she might be hidden somewhere in her shame, poor lost soul, and kept from the cruel eyes of the world. When he began to feel the influence of this gleam of comfort, he ventured to go to the sick-room to tell his mother, whom he had not yet seen; but Mrs. Vincent was deaf and insensible to everything but her child, whose need and danger were too urgent to permit more distant spectres, however terrible, to be visible in her sick-chamber. Mary, already worn out with fatigue, had gone to bed with a headache, with the liveliest conviction in her mind that she had taken the fever too. The widow, who had lived for the past week as though she had no physical frame at all, sat sleepless, with hot eyes and pallid face, by her daughter’s bed. She could still smile – smiles more heart-breaking than any outcry of anguish – and leaned her poor head upon her son, as he came near to her, with a tender pressure of her arms and strain of absolute dependence which went to his heart. She could not speak, or say, as she had said so often, that her boy must take care of his sister – that Susan had no one else to stand by her. Leaning upon him in an unspeakable appeal of love and weakness, smiling on him with her wistful quivering lips, was all the poor mother could do now.

All; for in that room no one could speak. One voice filled its silence. The restless movement of the head on that pillow turning from side to side in search of the rest which was nowhere to be found, stilled every other motion. Not even fever could flush the marble whiteness of her face. Awfully alone, in her mother’s anxious presence, with her brother by her bedside, Susan went on unconscious through the wild distracted world of her own thoughts – through what had been her own thoughts before horror and anguish cast them all astray. Vincent stood aside in breathless attention like the rest, before he had been many minutes in the room. We say to each other how strange it is that no heart can ever fully communicate itself to another; but when that revelation does take place, awful is the spectacle. All unawares, in her dread distraction, Susan opened up her heart.

“What does it matter what they will say?” said Susan; “I will never see them again. Unless – yes, put down her veil; she is pretty, very pretty; but what has Herbert to do with her? He said it was me he wanted; and why did he bring me away if he did not love me? Love me! and deceived me, and told me lies. Oh God, oh God! is it not Carlingford? Where is it? I am taking God’s name in vain. I was not thinking of Him – , I was thinking – . His name is Fordham, Herbert Fordham, – do you hear? What do you mean by Mildmay? I know no Mildmay. Stop and let me think. Herbert – Herbert! Oh, where are you – where are you? Do you think it never could be him, but only a lie? Well! if he did not love me, I could bear it; but why, why did he cheat me, and bring me away? The door is locked; they will not let me get out. Herbert! was there never, never any Herbert in the world? Oh, come back, even if you are only a dream! Locked! If they would only kill me! What do they mean to do with me? Oh God, oh God! but I must marry him if he says so. I must, must marry him, though he has told me lies. I must, whatever he does. Even if I could get through the window and escape; for they will call me wicked. Oh, mamma, mamma! and Arthur a minister, and to bring disgrace on him! But I am not disgraced. Oh no, no; never, never! – I will die first – I will kill him first. Open the door; oh, open the door! Let me go!”

She struggled up in one of her wilder paroxysms. She had thrown herself half out of bed, rising up wildly, and tossing her arms into the air, before her startled brother could rush forward to control her. But as the voice of the unhappy girl rose into frenzy, some unseen attendants stole in and took her out of his unskilful hands. The sight was too painful for unaccustomed eyes – for eyes of love, which could scarcely bear, even for her own sake, to see such means of restraint employed upon Susan. Mrs. Vincent stood by, uttering unconscious cries, imploring the two strong women who held her daughter, oh, not to hurt her, not to grasp her so tightly; while Susan herself beat the air in vain, and entreated, with passionate outcries, to be set free – to be let go. When she was again subdued, and sank into the quiet of exhaustion, Vincent withdrew from this saddest scene of all, utterly depressed and broken-spirited. The wretch lived who had wrought this dread wreck and ruin. What did it matter? Within that room it gave no relief, eased no heart, to say that he was not dead. Forms more terrific still than those of law and public vengeance – madness and death – stood on either side of Susan’s bed; till they had fought out the desperate quarrel, what matter to those most immediately concerned whether a greater or a lesser penalty lowered over her head? The minister went back to his own retirement with an aching heart, utterly dejected and depressed. He threw himself into a chair to think it all over, as he said to himself; but as he sat there, hopeless and solitary, his mind strayed from Susan. Could any one blame him? Who does not know what it is to have one secret spot of personal consolation to fly to in the midst of trouble? Vincent betook himself there in the utter darkness of everything around. Once more he seemed to feel that sudden touch which took away half his burden. No words could have spoken to his heart like that fairy hand upon his arm. He brooded over it, not thinking, only living over again the moment which had made so great a difference in the world. He forgot Fordham; he forgot everything; he took neither reason nor likelihood with him in his self-delusion. A sudden rosy mist suffused once more the cruel earth upon which he was standing; whatever came, he had something of his own to fall back upon, an ineffable secret sweetness, which stanched every wound before it was made. The young minister, out of the very depths of calamity, escaped into this garden of delights; he put aside the intolerable misery of the house; he thrust away from him all the lesser troubles which bristled thick in front of him in the very name of Salem. He fled to that one spot of joy which he thought remained to him in the middle of the waste, doubly sweet and precious. It gave him strength to hold out through his trouble, without being overwhelmed. He escaped to that delicious resting-place almost against his will, not able to resist the charm of the indescribable solace he found there. He alone, of all concerned, had that footbreadth of personal happiness to take refuge in amid the bitter storm. He did not know it was all delusion, self-deception, a woeful miserable blunder. He hugged it to his heart in secret, and took a comfort not to be spoken from the thought. Vanity of vanities; but nothing else in the world could have stolen with such fairy balms of consolation and strength to the heart of the poor minister. It was not long till he was called to face his fate again, and all the heavy front of battle set in array against him; but it was with a feeling of sweet guilt that he started up in the winter twilight, and left his room to see Tozer, who waited for him below. That room henceforward was inhabited by the fairy vision. When he went back to it, Love, the consolatrix, met him again, stealing that visionary hand within his arm. Blank darkness dwelt all around; here, falsest, fairest mirage of imagination, palpitated one delicious gleam of light.

CHAPTER VII

SOMEHOW the heavy week stole round without any other fluctuations but those terrible ones of Susan’s fever. Dreadful consolation and terrible doubt breathed forth in those heartrending revelations which her poor unconscious soul was continually pouring forth. The unhappy girl showed her heart all naked and undisguised to the watchers round her – a heart bewildered, alarmed, desperate, but not overwhelmed with guilty passion. Through the dreadful haze which enveloped her mind, flashes of indignation, bursts of hope, shone tragical and fierce; but she was not a disgraced creature who lay there, arguing pitifully with herself what she must do; not disgraced – but in an agony of self-preservation could she have snatched up the ready pistol – could it be true? When Vincent went into that room, it was always to withdraw with a shuddering dread. Had she escaped one horror to fall into another yet more horrible? That evidence of which, with Mrs. Hilyard’s face before his eyes, he had been half contemptuous at first, returned upon him with ever-growing probability. Driven to bay, driven mad, reason and self-control scared by the horrible emergency, had the desperate creature resorted to the first wild expedient within her reach to save herself at last? With this hideous likelihood growing in his mind, Vincent had to face the Sunday, which came upon him like a new calamity. He would fain have withdrawn, and, regardless of anything else which might happen, have sent once more for Beecher. To confront the people of Salem, to look down upon those familiar rows of faces, all of them bearing a consciousness of the story in the newspapers, acquainted with all that his landlady could tell, and guessing but too distinctly the terrible misfortune which had befallen his family, seemed more than flesh and blood could bear. He was sitting alone, pondering all this, with a letter which he had commenced to write to Beecher before him, when Tozer, who was now his constant visitor, came in. There could be no doubt of the butterman’s honest and genuine sympathy, but, unfortunately, there was just as little doubt that Tozer took a pleasure in managing the minister’s affairs at this crisis, and piloting him through the troubled waters. Tozer did all but neglect his business to meet the emergency; he carried matters with rather a high hand in the meetings of the managing committee; he took absolute control, or wished to do so, of Vincent’s proceedings. “We’ll tide it over, we’ll tide it over,” he said, rubbing his hands. To go in, in this state of mind, secure in his own resources and in the skill with which he could guide the wavering and half-informed mind of Salem, fluctuating as it did between horror and sympathy, doubtful whether to take up the minister’s cause with zeal, or to cast him off and disown him, and to find the minister himself giving in, deserting his post at the most critical moment, and making useless all that his patron was doing for him, was too much for the deacon’s patience. He sat down in indignant surprise opposite Vincent, and struck his stick against the floor involuntarily, by way of emphasis to his words.

“Mr. Vincent, sir, this ain’t the thing to do – I tell you it ain’t the thing to do. Salem has a right to expect different,” cried Tozer, in the warmth of his disappointment; “a congregation as has never said a word, and office-bearers as have stuck by you and stood up for you whatever folks liked to say! I’m a man as will never desert my pastor in trouble; but I’d like to know what you call this, Mr. Vincent, but a deserting of me? What’s the good of fighting for the minister, if he gives in and sends for another man, and won’t face nothing for himself? It’s next Sunday as is all the battle. Get that over, and things will come straight. When they see you in the pulpit in your old way, and all things as they was, bless you, they’ll get used to it, and won’t mind the papers no more nor – nor I do. I tell you, sir, it’s next Sunday as is the battle. I don’t undertake to answer for the consequences, not if you gives in, and has Mr. Beecher down for next Sunday. It ain’t the thing to do, Mr. Vincent; Salem folks won’t put up with that. Your good mother, poor thing, wouldn’t say no different. If you mean to stay and keep things straight in Carlingford, you’ll go into that pulpit, and look as if nothing had happened. It’s next Sunday as is the battle.”

“Look as if nothing had happened! – and why should I wish to stay in Carlingford, or – or anywhere?” cried Vincent, in a momentary outbreak of dejection. But he threw down his pen, and closed his blotting-book over the half-written letter. He was too wretched to have much resolution one way or another. To argue the matter was worse than to suffer any consequences, however hard they might be.

“I don’t deny it’s natural as you should feel strange,” admitted Tozer. “I do myself, as am only your friend, Mr. Vincent, when folks are a-talking in the shop, and going over one thing and another – asking if it’s true as she belongs to you, and how a minister’s daughter ever come to know the likes of him – ”

“For heaven’s sake, no more, no more! – you will drive me mad!” cried Vincent, springing to his feet. Tozer, thus suddenly interrupted, stared a little, and then changed the subject, though without quite finding out how it was that he had startled his sensitive companion into such sudden impatience. “When I was only telling him the common talk!” as he said to his wife in the privacy of their own parlour. In the mean time he had other subjects equally interesting.

“If you’ll take my advice, you’ll begin your coorse all the same,” said Tozer; “it would have a good effect, that would. When folks are in a state of excitement, and a-looking for something, to come down upon them as before, and accordin’ to intimation, would have a wonderful effect, Mr. Vincent. You take my word, sir, it would be very telling – would that. Don’t lose no time, but begin your coorse as was intimated. It’s a providence, is the intimation. I wouldn’t say nothing about what’s happened – not plain out; but if you could bring in a kind of an inference like, nothing as had anything to do with the story in the papers, but just as might be understood – ”

The butterman sat quite calmly and at his ease, but really anxious and interested, making his sober suggestions. The unfortunate minister, unable otherwise to subdue his impatience and wretchedness, fell to walking up and down the room, as was natural. When he could bear it no longer, he came back to the table at which Tozer sat in all the pomp of advice and management. He took his unfinished letter and tore it in little pieces, then stopped the calm flow of the deacon’s counsel by a sudden outburst.

“I will preach,” cried the young man, scattering the bits of paper out of his hand unawares. “Is not that enough? don’t tell me what I am to do – the evil is sufficient without that. I tell you I will preach. I would rather cut off my right hand, if that would do as well. I am speaking like a child or a fool: who cares for my right hand, I wonder, or my life, or my senses? No more of this. I will preach – don’t speak of it again. It will not matter a hundred years hence,” muttered the minister, with that sudden adoption of the philosophy of recklessness which misery sometimes plays with. He threw himself into his chair again, and covered his face with his hands. He was thinking of Salem, and all those rows of gazing eyes. He could see them all in their pews, imagination, with a cruel freak like a mocking spirit, depicting all the finery of Mrs. Pigeon and Mrs. Brown upon that vivid canvass. The minister groaned at the thought of them; but to put it down on paper, and record the pang of exasperation and intolerable wretchedness which was thus connected with the fine winter bonnets of the poulterer’s wife and the dairy-woman would make a picture rather grotesque than terrible to unconcerned eyes. It was dreadful earnest to poor Vincent, thinking how he should stand before them on that inexorable Sunday, and preach “as if nothing had happened;” reading all the while, in case his own mind would let him forget them, the vulgarest horrors of all that had happened in all that crowd of eyes.

“And you’ll find a great consolation, take my word, sir, in the thought that you’re a-doing of your duty,” said Tozer, shaking his head solemnly, as he rose to go away; “that’s a wonderful consolation, Mr. Vincent, to all of us; and especially to a minister that knows he’s a-serving his Master and saving souls.”

Saving souls! Heaven help him! the words rang in his ears like mocking echoes long after the butterman had settled into his arm-chair, and confided to his wife and Phœbe that the pastor was a-coming to himself and taking to his duties, and that we’ll tide it over yet. “Saving souls!” the words came back and back to Vincent’s bewildered mind. They formed a measure and cadence in their constant repetition, haunting him like some spiritual suggestion, as he looked over, with senses confused and dizzy, his little stock of sermons, to make preparation for the duty which he could not escape. At last he tossed them all away in a heap, seized his pen, and poured forth his heart. Saving souls! what did it mean? He was not writing a sermon. Out of the depths of his troubled heart poured all the chaos of thought and wonder, which leapt into fiery life under that quickening touch of personal misery and unrest. He forgot the bounds of orthodox speculation – all bounds save those of the drear mortal curtain of death, on the other side of which that great question is solved. He set forth the dark secrets of life with exaggerated touches of his own passion and anguish. He painted out of his own aching fancy a soul innocent, yet stained with the heaviest of mortal crimes: he turned his wild light aside and poured it upon another, foul to the core, yet unassailable by man. Saving souls! – which was the criminal? which was the innocent? A wild confusion of sin and sorrow, of dreadful human complications, misconceptions, of all incomprehensible, intolerable thoughts, surged round and round him as he wrote. Were the words folly that haunted him with such echoes? Could he, and such as he, unwitting of half the mysteries of life, do anything to that prodigious work? Could words help it – vain syllables of exhortation or appeal? God knows. The end of it all was a confused recognition of the One half-known, half-identified, who, if any hope were to be had, held that hope in His hands. The preacher, who had but dim acquaintance with His name, paused, in the half idiocy of his awakened genius, to wonder, like a child, if perhaps his simple mother knew a little more of that far-off wondrous figure – recognised it wildly by the confused lights as the only hope in earth or heaven – and so rose up, trembling with excitement and exhaustion, to find that he had spent the entire night in this sudden inspiration, and that the wintry dawn, cold and piercing to the heart, was stealing over the opposite roofs, and another day had begun.