"My nerves are strong," she answered. "It is a pity you should take the trouble to be melodramatic. Do you think I am vain enough to imagine that you could subject yourself to all the unpleasant accessories of being hanged on my account? Fancy a rough hempen rope, and the dirty fingers that would adjust it. Pah! you would not risk it for me."

Her companion swore a muttered oath. "By Jove! I believe you'd be content to be murdered, to make such an end of me," he answered, in the baffled tone of rage which a man naturally sinks into when engaged in unequal conflict of recrimination with a woman.

"This is too conjugal," said Mrs. Hilyard; "it reminds me of former experiences: come to the point, I beg of you. You did not come here and seek me out that we might have an amusing conversation--what do you want with me?"

"Don't tempt me too far with your confounded impertinence," exclaimed the man, "or there is no telling what may happen. I want to know where that child is; you know I do. I mean to reclaim my rights so far as she is concerned. If she had been a ward in Chancery, a man might have submitted. But I am a reformed individual--my life is of the most exemplary description--no court in Christendom would keep her from my custody now. I want the girl for her own good--she shall marry brilliantly, which she never could do with you. I know she's grown up as lovely as I expected----"

"How do you know?" interrupted Mrs. Hilyard, with a certain hoa.r.s.eness in her voice.

"Ah! I have touched you at last. Remembering what her mother was," he went on, in a mocking tone, "though I am grieved to see how much you have gone off in late years--and having a humble consciousness of her father's personal advantages, and, in short, of her relatives in general, I know she's a little beauty--and, by Jove, she shall be a d.u.c.h.ess yet."

There was a pause--something like a hard sob thrilled in the air, rather a vibration than a sound; and Vincent, making a desperate gesture of rage towards the school-room, from which a burst of applause at that moment sounded, approached closer to the window. Then the woman's voice burst forth pa.s.sionate, but subdued.

"You have seen her! you!--you that blasted her life before she was born, and confused her sweet mind for ever--how did you dare to look at my child? And I," cried the pa.s.sionate voice, forgetting even caution--"_I_, that would give my life drop by drop to restore what never can be restored to that victim of your sin and my weakness--I do not see her. I refuse myself that comfort. I leave it to others to do all that love and pity can do for my baby. You speak of murder--man! if I had a knife, I could find it in my heart to put an end to your horrid career; and, look you, I will--Coward! I will! I will kill you before you shall lay your vile hands on my child."

"She-wolf!" cried the man, grinding his teeth, "do you know how much it would be to my advantage if you never left this lonely spot you have brought me to? By Jove, I have the greatest mind----"

Another momentary silence. Vincent, wound up to a high state of excitement, sprang noiselessly to his feet, and was rushing to the window to proclaim his presence, when Mrs. Hilyard's voice, perfectly calm, and in its usual tone, brought him back to himself.

"Second thoughts are best. It would compromise you horribly, and put a stop to many pleasures--not to speak of those dreadful dirty fingers arranging that rough rope round your neck, which, pardon me, I can't help thinking of when you a.s.sociate your own name with such a vulgar suggestion as murder. _I_ should not mind these little details, but _you_! However, I excited myself unreasonably, you have not seen her.

That skilful inference of yours was only a lie. She was not at Lonsdale, you know."

"How the devil do you know I was at Lonsdale?" said her companion.

"I keep myself informed of the movements of so interesting a person. She was not there."

"No," replied the man, "she was not there; but I need not suggest to your clear wits that there are other Lonsdales in England. What if Miss Mildmay were in her father's lawful guardianship now?"

Here the air palpitated with a cry, the cry as of a wild creature in sudden blind anguish. It was echoed by a laugh of mockery and exultation. "Should you like me to tell you which of the Lonsdales you honoured with your patronage?" continued the mocking voice: "that in Derbyshire, or that in Devonshire, or that in c.u.mberland? I am afflicted to have defeated your skilful scheme so easily. Now that you see I am a match for you, perhaps you will perceive that it is better to yield peaceably, and unite with me in securing the girl's good. She needs only to be seen to----"

"Who do you imagine you are addressing, Colonel Mildmay?" said Mrs.

Hilyard, haughtily; "there has been enough of this: you are mistaken if you think you can deceive me for more than a moment: my child is not in your hands, and never will be, please G.o.d. But mark what I say," she continued, drawing a fierce, hard breath, "if you should ever succeed in tracing her--if you should ever be able to s.n.a.t.c.h her from me--then confess your sins, and say your last prayers, for as sure as I live you shall die in a week."

"She-devil! murderess!" cried her companion, not without a certain shade of alarm in his voice; "if your power were equal to your will----"

"In that case my power should be equal to my will," said the steady, delicate woman's voice, as clear in very fine articulation as if it were some peaceful arrangement of daily life for which she declared herself capable: "you should not escape if you surrounded yourself with a king's guards. I swear to you, if you do what you say, that I will kill you somehow, by whatever means I can attain--and I have never yet broken my word."

An unsteady defiant laugh was the only reply. The man was evidently more impressed with the sincerity, and power to execute her intentions, of the woman than she with his. Apparently they stood regarding each other for another momentary interval in silence. Again Mrs. Hilyard was the first to speak.

"I presume our conference is over now," she said, calmly; "how you could think of seeking it is more than I can understand. I suppose poor pretty Alice, who thinks every woman can be persuaded, induced you to attempt this. Don't let me keep you any longer in a place so repugnant to your taste. I am going to the tea-meeting at Salem Chapel to hear my young friend the minister speak: perhaps this unprofitable discussion has lost me that advantage. You heard him the other night, and were pleased, I trust. Good-night. I suppose, before leaving you, I should thank you for having spared my life."

Vincent heard the curse upon her and her stinging tongue, which burst in a growl of rage from the lips of the other, but he did not see the satirical curtsy with which this strange woman swept past, nor the scarcely controllable impulse which made the man lift his stick and clench it in his hand as she turned away from him those keen eyes, out of which even the gloom of night could not quench the light. But even Mrs. Hilyard herself never knew how near, how very near, she was at that moment to the unseen world. Had her step been less habitually firm and rapid,--had she lingered on her way--the temptation might have been too strong for the man, maddened by many memories. He made one stride after her, clenching his stick. It was perfectly dark in that narrow pa.s.sage which led out to the front of the chapel. She might have been stunned in a moment, and left there to die, without any man being the wiser. It was not virtue, nor hatred of bloodshed, nor repugnance to harm her, which restrained Colonel Mildmay's hand: it was half the rapidity of her movements, and half the instinct of a gentleman, which vice itself could not entirely obliterate. Perhaps he was glad when he saw her disappear from before him down the lighted steps into the Salem schoolroom. He stood in the darkness and watched her out of sight, himself unseen by any one, and then departed on his way, a splendid figure, all unlike the population of Grove Street. Some of the Salem people, dispersing at the moment, saw him sauntering down the street grand and leisurely, and recognised the gentleman who had been seen in the Music Hall with Lady Western. They thought he must have come privately once more to listen to their minister's eloquence. Probably Lady Western herself, the leader of fashion in Carlingford, would appear next Sunday to do Mr. Vincent honour. The sight of this very fine gentleman picking his leisurely way along the dark pavement of Grove Street, leaning confidingly upon that stick over which his tall person swayed with fashionable languor, gave a climax to the evening in the excited imaginations of Mr. Vincent's admirers. n.o.body but the minister and one utterly unnoted individual in the crowd knew what had brought the Colonel and his stick to such a place. n.o.body but the Colonel himself, and the watchful heavens above, knew how little had prevented him from leaving a silent, awful witness of that secret interview upon the chapel steps.

When Mr. Vincent returned to the platform, which he did hurriedly, Mr.

Pigeon was addressing the meeting. In the flutter of inquiries whether he was better, and gentle hopes from Phoebe that his studies had not been too much for him, n.o.body appeared to mark the eagerness of his eyes, and the curiosity in his face. He sat down in his old place, and pretended to listen to Mr. Pigeon. Anxiously from under the shadow of his hands he inspected the crowd before him, who had recovered their spirits. In a corner close to the door he at last found the face he was in search of. Mrs. Hilyard sat at the end of a table, leaning her face on her hand. She had her eyes fixed upon the speaker, and there pa.s.sed now and then across the corners of her close-shut mouth that momentary movement which was her symbol for a smile. She was not _pretending_ to listen, but giving her entire attention to the honest poulterer. Now and then she turned her eyes from Pigeon, and perused the room and the company with rapid glances of amus.e.m.e.nt and keen observation. Perhaps her eyes gleamed keener, and her dark cheek owned a slight flush--that was all. Out of her mysterious life--out of that interview, so full of violence and pa.s.sion--the strange woman came, without a moment's interval, to amuse herself by looking at and listening to all those homely innocent people. Could it be that she was taking notes of Pigeon's speech? Suddenly, all at once, she had taken a pencil out of her pocket and began to write, glancing up now and then towards the speaker. Mr. Vincent's head swam with the wonder he was contemplating--was she flesh and blood after all, or some wonderful skeleton living a galvanic life? But when he asked himself the question, her cry of sudden anguish, her wild, wicked promise to kill the man who stole her daughter, came over his mind, and arrested his thoughts. He, dallying as he was on the verge of life, full of fantastic hopes and disappointment, could only pretend to listen to Pigeon; but the good poulterer turned gratified eyes towards Mrs. Hilyard. He recognised her real attention and interest; was it the height of voluntary sham and deception?--or was she really taking notes?

The mystery was solved after the meeting was over. There was some music, in the first place--anthems in which all the strength of Salem united, Tozer taking a heavy ba.s.s, while Phoebe exerted herself so in the soprano that Mr. Vincent's attention was forcibly called off his own meditations, in terror lest something should break in the throat so hardly strained. Then there were some oranges, another speech, a hymn, and a benediction; and then Mr. Raffles sprang joyfully up, and leaned over the platform to shake hands with his friends. This last process was trying. Mr. Vincent, who could no longer take refuge in silence, descended into the retiring throng. He was complimented on his speech, and even by some superior people, who had a mind to be fashionable, upon the delightful evening they had enjoyed. When they were all gone, there were still the Tozers, the Browns, the Pigeons, Mrs. Tufton, and Mr.

Raffles. He was turning back to them disconsolate, when he was suddenly confronted by Mrs. Hilyard out of her corner with the fly-leaf of the hymn-book the unscrupulous woman had been writing in, torn out in her hand.

"Stop a minute!" she cried; "I want to speak to you. I want your help, if you will give it me. Don't be surprised at what I ask. Is your mother a good woman--was it she that trained you to act to the forlorn as you did to me last night? I have been too hasty--I take away your breath;--never mind, there is no time to choose one's words. The b.u.t.terman is looking at us, Mr. Vincent. The ladies are alarmed; they think I want spiritual consolation at this unsuitable moment. Make haste--answer my question. Would she do an act of Christian charity to a woman in distress?"

"My mother is--yes, I know she would, what do you want of her?--my mother is the best and tenderest of women," cried Vincent, in utter amazement.

"I want to send a child to her--a persecuted, helpless child, whom it is the object of my life to keep out of evil hands," said Mrs. Hilyard, her dark thin face growing darker and more pallid, her eyes softening with tears. "She will be safe at Lonsdale now, and I cannot go in my own person at present to take her anywhere. Here is a message for the telegraph," she added, holding up the paper which Vincent had supposed to be notes of Mr. Pigeon's speech; "take it for me--send it off to-night--you will? and write to your mother; she shall suffer no loss, and I will thank her on my knees. It is life or death."

"I know--I am aware!" cried Vincent, not knowing what he said. "There is no time to be lost."

She put the paper into his hand, and clasped it tight between both of hers, not knowing in the excitement which she was so well trained to repress, that he had betrayed any special knowledge of her distress. It seemed natural, in that strain of desperation, that everybody should understand her. "Come to-morrow and tell me," she said, hurriedly, and then hastened away, leaving him with the paper folded close into his hand as her hard grasp had left it. He turned away from the group which awaited his coming with some curiosity and impatience, and read the message by the light of one of the garlanded and festive lamps. "Rachel Russell to Miss Smith, Lonsdale, Devonshire. Immediately on receiving this, take the child to Lonsdale, near Peterborough--to Mrs. Vincent's; leave the train at some station near town, and drive to a corresponding station on the Great Northern; don't enter London. Blue veil--care--not to be left for an instant. I trust all to you." Mr. Vincent put the message in his pocketbook, took it out again--tried it in his purse, his waistcoat pocket, everywhere he could think of--finally, closed his hand over it as at first, and in a high state of excitement went up to the chattering group at the little platform, the only thought in his mind being how to get rid of them, that he might hasten upon his mission before the telegraph office was closed for the night.

And, as was to be expected, Mr. Vincent found it no easy matter to get rid of the Tozers and Pigeons, who were all overflowing about the tea-party, its provisions, its speeches, and its success. He stood with that bit of paper clenched in his hand, and endured the jokes of his reverend brother, the remarks of Mrs. Tufton, the blushes of Phoebe.

He stood for half an hour at least perforce in unwilling and constrained civility--at last he became desperate;--with a wild promise to return presently, he rushed out into the night. The station was about half a mile out of Carlingford, at the new end, a long way past Dr. Rider's.

When Vincent reached it, the telegraph clerk was putting on his hat to go away, and did not relish the momentary detention; when the message was received and despatched, the young minister drew breath--he went out of the office, wiping his hot forehead, to the railway platform, where the last train for town was just starting. As Vincent stood recovering himself and regaining his breath, the sudden flash of a match struck in one of the carriages attracted his attention. He looked, and saw by the light of the lamp inside a man stooping to light his cigar. The action brought the face, bending down close to the window, clearly out against the dark-blue background of the empty carriage; hair light, fine, and thin, in long but scanty locks--a high-featured eagle-face, too sharp for beauty now, but bearing all the traces of superior good looks departed--a light beard, so light that it did not count for its due in the aspect of that remarkable countenance--a figure full of ease and haughty grace: all these particulars Vincent noted with a keen rapid inspection. In another moment the long leash of carriages had plunged into the darkness. With a strange flush of triumph he watched them disappear, and turned away with a smile on his lips. The message of warning was already tingling along the sensitive wires, and must outspeed the slow human traveller. This face, which so stamped itself upon his memory, which he fancied he could see pictured on the air as he returned along the dark road, was the face of the man who had been Lady Western's companion at the lecture. That it was the same face which had confronted Mrs. Hilyard in the dark graveyard behind Salem Chapel he never doubted. With a thrill of active hatred and fierce enmity which it was difficult to account for, and still more difficult for a man of his profession to excuse, the young man looked forward to the unknown future with a certainty of meeting that face again.

We drop a charitable veil over the conclusion of the night. Mr. Raffles and Mr. Vincent supped at Pigeon's, along with the Browns and Tozers; and Phoebe's testimony is on record that it was a feast of reason and a flow of soul.

CHAPTER XI.

The next morning Vincent awoke with a sense of personal occupation and business, which perhaps is only possible to a man engaged with the actual occurrences of individual life. Professional duties and the general necessities of existing, do not give that thrill of sensible importance and use which a man feels who is busy with affairs which concern his own or other people's very heart and being. The young Nonconformist was no longer the sentimentalist who had made the gaping a.s.sembly at Salem Chapel uneasy over their tea-drinking. That dark and secret ocean of life which he had apostrophised, opened up to him immediately thereafter one of its most mysterious scenes. This had shaken Vincent rudely out of his own youthful vagaries. Perhaps the most true of philosophers, contemplating, however profoundly, the secrets of nature or thought, would come to a sudden standstill over a visible abyss of human guilt, wretchedness, heroic self-restraint, and courage, yawning apparent in the meditative way. What, then, were the poor dialectics of Church and State controversy, or the fluctuations of an uncertain young mind feeling itself superior to its work, to such a spectacle of pa.s.sionate life, full of evil and of n.o.ble qualities--of guilt and suffering more intense than anything philosophy dreams of?

The thin veil which youthful ignorance, believing in the supremacy of thought and superior charm of intellectual concerns, lays over the world, shrivelled up under the fiery lurid light of that pa.s.sionate scene. Two people clearly, who had once loved each other, hating each other to the death, struggling desperately over a lesser thread of life proceeding from them both--the mother, driven to the lowest extremities of existence, standing up like a wild creature to defend her offspring--what could philosophy say to such phenomena? A wild circle of pa.s.sion sprang into conscious being under the young man's half-frightened eyes--wild figures that filled the world, leaving small s.p.a.ce for the calm suggestions of thought, and even to truth itself so little vantage-ground. Love, Hatred, Anger, Jealousy, Revenge--how many more? Vincent, who was no longer the lofty reasoning Vincent of Homerton, found life look different under the light of those torch-bearers. But he had no leisure on this particular morning to survey the subject. He had to carry his report and explanation to the strange woman who had so seized upon and involved him in her concerns.

Mrs. Hilyard was seated in her room, just as he had seen her before, working with flying needle and nervous fingers at her coa.r.s.est needlework. She said, "Come in," and did not rise when he entered. She gave him an eager, inquiring look, more importunate and commanding than any words, but never stopped working, moving her thin fingers as if there was some spell in the continuance of her labour. She was impatient of his silence before he had closed the door--desperate when he said the usual greeting. She opened her pale lips and spoke, but Vincent heard nothing. She was beyond speech.

"The message went off last night, and I wrote to my mother," said Vincent; "don't fear. She will do what you wish, and everything will be well."

It was some time before Mrs. Hilyard quite conquered her agitation; when she succeeded, she spoke so entirely in her usual tone that Vincent started, being inexperienced in such changes. He contemplated her with tragic eyes in her living martyrdom; she, on the contrary, more conscious of her own powers, her own strength of resistance and activity of life, than of any sacrifice, had nothing about her the least tragical, and spoke according to nature. Instead of any pa.s.sionate burst of self-revelation, this is what she said--

"Thank you. I am very much obliged to you. How everything is to be well, does not appear to me; but I will take your word for it. I hope I may take your word for your mother also, Mr. Vincent. You have a right to know how this is. Do you claim it, and must I tell you now?"

Here for the first time Vincent recollected in what an unjustifiable way he had obtained his information. Strangely enough, it had never struck him before. He had felt himself somehow identified with the woman in the strange interview he had overheard. The man was a personal enemy. His interest in the matter was so honest and simple amid all the complication of his youthful superficial insincerities, that this equivocal action was one of the very few which Vincent had actually never questioned even to himself. He was confounded now when he saw how the matter stood. His face became suddenly crimson;--shame took possession of his soul.

"Good heavens, I have done the most dishonourable action!" cried Vincent, betrayed into sudden exclamation by the horror of the discovery. Then he paused, turning an alarmed look upon his new friend.

She took it very calmly. She glanced up at him with a comic glance in her eyes, and a twitch at the corners of her mouth. Notwithstanding last night--notwithstanding the anxiety which she dared not move in her own person to alleviate--she was still capable of being amused. Her eyes said, "What now?" with no very alarming apprehensions. The situation was a frightful one for poor Vincent.

"You will be quite justified in turning me out of your house," he said, clearing his throat, and in great confusion; "but if you will believe it, I never till this moment saw how atrocious---- Mrs. Hilyard, I was in the vestry; the window was open; I heard your conversation last night."

For a moment Vincent had all the punishment he expected, and greater.

Her eyes blazed upon him out of that pale dark face with a certain contempt and lofty indifference. There was a pause. Mr. Vincent crushed his best hat in his hands, and sat speechless doing penance. He was dismayed with the discovery of his own meanness. n.o.body could deliver such a cutting sentence as he was p.r.o.nouncing on himself.

"All the world might have listened, so far as I am concerned," she said, after a while, quietly enough. "I am sorry you did it; but the discovery is worse for yourself than for me." Then, after another pause, "I don't mean to quarrel. I am glad for my own sake, though sorry for yours. Now you know better than I can tell you. There were some pleasant flowers of speech to be gathered in that dark garden," she continued, with another odd upward gleam of her eyes. "We must have startled your clerical ideas rather. At the moment, however, Mr. Vincent, people like Colonel Mildmay and myself mean what we say."

"If I had gained my knowledge in a legitimate way," said the shame-stricken minister, not venturing to look her in the face, "I should have said that I hoped it was only for the moment."

Mrs. Hilyard laid down her work, and looked across at him with undisguised amus.e.m.e.nt. "I am sorry there is n.o.body here to perceive this beautiful situation," she said. "Who would not have their ghostly father commit himself, if he repented after this fashion? Thank you, Mr.

Vincent, for what you don't say. And now we shall drop the subject, don't you think? Were the deacons all charmed with the tea-meeting last night?"