"The mother you shall see for yourself to-morrow. I can't tell what she is, except a lady, though in the strangest circ.u.mstances," said Vincent.

"She has some reason--I cannot tell what--for keeping her child out of the father's hands. She appealed to me to let her send it to you, because he had been at Lonsdale already, and I could not refuse. His name is Colonel Mildmay; he has been at Lonsdale; did you hear of such a man?"

Mrs. Vincent shook her head--her face grew more and more troubled.

"I don't know about reasons for keeping a child from its father," she said, still shaking her head. "My dear, dear boy, I hope no designing woman has got a hold upon you. Why did you start so, Arthur? what had Mr. Fordham to do with the child? Susan would open my letters, of course, and I daresay she will make them very comfortable; but, Arthur dear, though I don't blame you, it was very imprudent. Is Colonel Mildmay the lady's husband? or--or what? Dear boy, you should have thought of Susan--Susan, a young girl, must not be mixed up with anybody of doubtful character. It was all your good heart, I know, but it was very imprudent, to be sure."

Vincent laughed, in a kind of agony of mingled distress, anxiety, and strange momentary amus.e.m.e.nt. His mother and he were both blaming each other for the same fault. Both of them had equally yielded to kind feelings, and the natural impulse of generous hearts, without any consideration of prudence. But his mistake could not be attended by any consequences a hundredth part so serious as hers.

"In the mean time, we must do something," he said. "If he has no friends, he has at least an address, I suppose. Susan"--and a flush of indignation and affectionate anger crossed the young man's face--"Susan, no doubt, writes to the rascal. Susan! my sister! Good heaven!"

"Arthur!" said Mrs. Vincent. "Your dear papa always disapproved of such exclamations: he said they were just a kind of oath, though people did not think so. And you ought not to call him a rascal without proof--indeed, it is very sinful to come to such hasty judgments. Yes, I have got the address written down--it is in my pocket-book. But what shall you do? Will you write to himself, Arthur? or what? To be sure, it would be best to go to him and settle it at once."

"Oh, mother, have a little prudence now," cried the afflicted minister; "if he were base enough to propose marriage to Susan (confound him!

that's not an oath--my father himself would have said as much) under such circ.u.mstances, don't you think he has the courage to tell a lie as well? I shall go up to town, and to his address to-morrow, and see what is to be found there. You must rest in the mean time. Writing is out of the question; what is to be done, I must _do_--and without a moment's loss of time."

The mother took his hand again, and put her handkerchief to her eyes--"G.o.d bless my dear boy," she said, with a mother's tearful admiration--"Oh, what a thing for me, Arthur, that you are grown up and a man, and able to do what is right in such a dreadful difficulty as this! You put me in mind more and more of your dear father when you settle so clearly what is to be done. He was always ready to act when I used to be in a flutter, which was best. And, oh, how good has the Father of the fatherless been to me in giving me such a son!"

"Ah, mother," said the young minister, "you gave premature thanks before, when you thought the Father of the fatherless had brought poor Susan a happy lot. Do you say the same now?"

"Always the same, Arthur dear," cried his mother, with tears--"always the same. If it is even so, is it me, do you think, or is it _Him_ that knows best?"

After this the agitation and distress of the first meeting gradually subsided. That mother, with all her generous imprudence and innocence of heart, was, her son well knew, the tenderest, the most indulgent, the most sympathetic of all his friends. Though the little--the very little insight he had obtained into life and the world had made him think himself wiser than she was in some respects, nothing had ever come between them to disturb the boy's half-adoring, half-protecting love. He bethought himself of providing for her comfort, as she sat looking at him in the easy-chair, with her eyes smiling on him through their tears, patiently sipping the tea, which was a cold and doubtful infusion, nothing like the fragrant lymph of home. He poked the fire till it blazed, and drew her chair towards it, and hunted up a footstool which he had himself kicked out of the way, under the sofa, a month before.

When he looked at the dear tender fresh old face opposite to him, in that close white cap which even now, after the long fatiguing journey, looked fresher and purer than other people's caps and faces look at their best, a thaw came upon the young man's heart. Nature awoke and yearned in him. A momentary glimpse crossed his vision of a humble happiness long within his reach, which never till now, when it was about to become impossible for ever, had seemed real or practicable, or even desirable before.

"Mother, dear," said Vincent, with a tremulous smile, "you shall come here, Susan and you, to me; and we shall all be together again--and comfort each other," he added, with a deeper gravity still, thinking of his own lot.

His mother did not answer in many words. She said, "My own boy!" softly, following him with her eyes. It was hard, even with Susan's dreadful danger before her, to help being tearfully happy in seeing him again--in being his guest--in realising the full strength of his manhood and independence. She gave herself up to that feeling of maternal pride and consolation as she once more dried the tears which would come, notwithstanding all her efforts. Then he sat down beside her, and resigned himself to that confidential talk which can rarely be but between members of the same family. He had unburdened his mind unconsciously in his letters about Tozer and the deacons; and it cannot be told what a refreshment it was to be able to utter roundly in words his sentiments on all those subjects. The power of saying it out with no greater hindrance than her mild remonstrances, mingled, as they were, with questions which enabled him to complete his sketches, and smiles of amus.e.m.e.nt at his descriptive powers, put him actually in better humour with Salem. He felt remorseful and charitable after he had said his worst.

"And are you sure, dear," said Mrs. Vincent, at last resuming the subject nearest her heart, "that you can go away to-morrow without neglecting any duty? You must not neglect a duty, Arthur--not even for Susan's sake. Whatever happens to us, you must keep right."

"I have no duty to detain me," said Vincent, hastily. Then a sudden glow came over the young man, a flush of happiness which stole upon him like a thief, and brightened his own personal firmament with a secret unacknowledgable delight; "but I must return early," he added, with a momentary hesitation--"for if you won't think it unkind to leave you, mother, I am engaged to dinner. I should scarcely like to miss it," he concluded, after another pause, tying knots in his handkerchief, and taking care not to look at her as he spoke.

"To dinner, Arthur? I thought your people only gave teas," said Mrs.

Vincent, with a smile.

"The Salem people do; but this--is not one of the Salem people," said the minister, still hesitating. "In fact, it would be ungracious of me not to go, and cowardly, too--for _that_ curate, I believe, is to meet me--and Lady Western would naturally think----"

"Lady Western!" said Mrs. Vincent, with irrestrainable pleasure; "is that one of the great people in Carlingford?" The good woman wiped her eyes again with the very tenderest and purest demonstration of that adoration of rank which is said to be an English instinct. "I don't mean to be foolish, dear," she said, apologetically; "I know these distinctions of society are not worth your caring about; but to see my Arthur appreciated as he should be, is----" She could not find words to say what it was--she wound up with a little sob. What with trouble and anxiety, and pride and delight, and bodily fatigue added to all, tears came easiest that night.

Vincent did not say whether or not these distinctions of society were worth caring about. He sat abstractedly, untying the knots in his handkerchief, with a faint smile on his face. Then, while that pleasurable glow remained, he escorted his mother to his own sleeping-room, which he had given up to her, and saw that her fire burned brightly, and that all was comfortable. When he returned to poke his solitary fire, it was some time before he took out the letter which had disturbed his peace. The smile died away first by imperceptible degrees from his face. He gradually erected himself out of the meditative lounge into which he had fallen; then, with a little start, as if throwing dreams away, he took out and examined the letter. The more he looked at it, the graver and deeper became the anxiety in his face. It had every appearance of being genuine in its bad writing and doubtful spelling. And Vincent started again with an unexplainable thrill of alarm when he thought how utterly unprotected his mother's sudden journey had left that little house in Lonsdale. Susan had no warning, no safeguard. He started up in momentary fright, but as suddenly sat down again with a certain indignation at his own thoughts.

n.o.body could carry her off, or do any act of violence; and as for taking advantage of her solitude, Susan, a straightforward, simple-minded English girl, was safe in her own pure sense of right.

CHAPTER XIII.

Next morning Mr. Vincent got up early, with an indescribable commotion in all his thoughts. He was to inst.i.tute inquiries which might be life or death to his sister, but yet could not keep his mind to the contemplation of that grave necessity. A flicker of private hope and expectation kept gleaming with uncertain light over the dark weight of anxiety in his heart. He could not help, in the very deepest of his thoughts about Susan, breaking off now and then into a momentary digression, which suddenly carried him into Lady Western's drawing-room, and startled his heart with a thrill of conscious delight, secret and exquisite, which he could neither banish nor deny. In and out, and round about that grievous doubt which had suddenly disturbed the quiet history of his family, this capricious fairy played, touching all his anxious thoughts with thrills of sweetness. It seemed an action involuntary to himself, and over which he had no power; but it gave the young man an equally involuntary and causeless cheer and comfort. It did not seem possible that any dreadful discovery could be made that day, in face of the fact that he was to meet Her that night.

When he met his mother at breakfast, the recollection of Mrs. Hilyard and the charge she had committed to him, came to his mind again. No doubt Susan would take the wanderers in--no doubt they were as safe in the cottage as it was possible to be in a humble inviolable English home, surrounded by all the strength of neighbours and friends, and the protection of a spotless life which everybody knew; but yet---- That was not what his strange acquaintance had expected or bargained for. He felt as if he had broken faith with her when he realised his mother's absence from her own house. Yet somehow he felt a certain hesitation in broaching the subject, and unconsciously prepared himself for doubts and reluctance. The certainty of this gave a forced character to the a.s.sumed easiness with which he spoke.

"You will go to see Mrs. Hilyard," he said; "I owe it to her to explain that you were absent before her child went there. They will be safe enough at home, no doubt, with Susan; but still, you know, it would have been different had you been there."

"Yes, Arthur," said Mrs. Vincent, with an indescribable dryness in her voice.

"You will find her a very interesting woman," said her son, instinctively contending against that unexpressed doubt--"the strangest contrast to her surroundings. The very sound of her voice carries one a thousand miles from Salem. Had I seen her in a palace, I doubt whether I should have been equally impressed by her. You will be interested in spite of yourself."

"It is, as you say, very strange, Arthur," said Mrs. Vincent--the dryness in her voice increasing to the extent of a short cough; "when does your train start?"

"Not till eleven," said Vincent, looking at his watch; but you must please me, and go to see her, mother."

"That reminds me, dear," said Mrs. Vincent, hurriedly, "that now I am here, little as it suits my feelings, you must take me to see some of your people, Arthur. Mrs. Tufton, and perhaps the Tozers, you know. They might not like to hear that your mother had been in Carlingford, and had not gone to see them. It will be hard work visiting strangers while I am in this dreadful anxiety, but I must not be the means of bringing you into any trouble with your flock."

"Oh, never mind my flock," said Vincent, with some impatience; "put on your bonnet, and come and see her, mother."

"Arthur, you are going by the first train," said his mother.

"There is abundant time, and it is not too early for _her_," persisted the minister.

But it was not so easy to conquer that meek little woman. "I feel very much fatigued to-day," she said, turning her eyes, mild but invincible, with the most distinct contradiction of her words to her son's face; "if it had not been my anxiety to have all I could of you, Arthur, I should not have got up to-day. A journey is a very serious matter, dear, for an old woman. One does not feel it so much at first," continued this plausible defendant, still with her mild eyes on her son's face, secure in the perfect reasonableness of her plea, yet not unwilling that he should perceive it was a pretence; "it is the next day one feels it. I shall lie down on the sofa, and rest when you are gone."

And, looking into his mother's soft eyes, the young Nonconformist retreated, and made no more attempts to shake her. Not the invulnerability of the fortress alone discouraged him--though that was mildly obdurate, and proof to argument--but a certain uneasiness in the thought of that meeting, an inclination to postpone it, and stave off the thought of all that might follow, surprised himself in his own mind.

Why he should be afraid of the encounter, or how any complication could arise out of it, he could not by any means imagine, but such was the instinctive sentiment in his heart.

Accordingly he went up to London by the train, leaving Mrs. Hilyard unwarned, and his mother reposing on the sofa, from which, it is sad to say, she rose a few minutes after he was gone, to refresh herself by tidying his bookcase and looking over all his linen and stockings, in which last she found a very wholesome subject of contemplation, which relieved the pressure of her thoughts much more effectually than could have been done by the rest which she originally proposed. Arthur, for his part, went up to London with a certain nervous thrill of anxiety rising in his breast as he approached the scene and the moment of his inquiries; though it was still only by intervals that he realised the momentous nature of those inquiries, on the result of which poor Susan's harmless girlish life, all unconscious of the danger that threatened it, hung in the balance. Poor Susan! just then going on with a bride's preparations for the approaching climax of her youthful existence. Was she, indeed, really a bride, with nothing but truth and sweet honour in the contract that bound her, or was she the sport of a villanous pastime that would break her heart, and might have shipwrecked her fair fame and innocent existence? Her brother set his teeth hard as he asked himself that question. Minister as he was, it might have been a dangerous chance for Fordham, had he come at that moment without ample proofs of guiltlessness in the Nonconformist's way.

When he got to town, he whirled, as fast as it was possible to go, to the address where Susan's guileless letters were sent almost daily. It was in a street off Piccadilly, full of lodging-houses, and all manner of hangers-on and ministrants to the world of fashion. He found the house directly, and was somewhat comforted to find it really an actual house, and not a myth or Doubtful Castle, or a post-office window. He knocked with the real knocker, and heard the bell peal through the comparative silence in the street, and insensibly cheered up, and began to look forward to the appearance of a real Mr. Fordham, with unquestionable private history and troops of friends. A quiet house, scrupulously clean, entirely respectable, yet distinct in all its features of lodging-house; a groom in the area below, talking to an invisible somebody, also a man, who seemed to be cleaning somebody else's boots; up-stairs, at the first-floor balcony, a smart little tiger making a fashion of watering plants, and actually doing his best to sprinkle the conversational groom below; altogether a superabundance of male attendants, quite incompatible with the integrity of the small dwelling-place as a private house. Another man, who evidently belonged to the place, opened the door, interrupting Vincent suddenly in his observations--an elderly man, half servant, half master, in reality the proprietor of the place, ready either to wait or be waited on as occasion might require. Turning with a little start from his inspection of the attendant circ.u.mstances, Vincent asked, did Mr. Fordham live there?

The man made a momentary but visible pause; whatever it might betoken, it was not ignorance. He did not answer with the alacrity of frank knowledge or simple non-information. He paused, then said, "Mr. Fordham, sir?" looking intently at Vincent, and taking in every particular of his appearance, dress, and professional looks, with one rapid glance.

"Mr. Fordham," repeated Vincent, "does he live here?"

Once more the man perused him, swiftly and cautiously. "No, sir, he does not live here," was the second response.

"I was told this was his address," said Vincent. "I perceive you are not ignorant of him; where does he live? I know his letters come here."

"There are a many gentlemen in the house in the course of the season,"

answered the man, still on the alert to find out Vincent's meaning by his looks--"sometimes letters keep on coming months after they are gone. When we knows their home address, sir, we sends them; when we don't, we keeps them by us till we see if any owner turns up. Gen'leman of the name of Fordham?--do you happen to know, sir, what part o' the country _he_ comes from? There's the Lincolnshire Fordhams, as you know, sir, and the Northumberland Fordhams; but there's no gen'leman of that name lives here."

"I am sure you know perfectly whom I mean," said Vincent, in his heat and impatience. "I don't mean Mr. Fordham any harm--I only want to see him, or to get some information about him, if he is not to be seen. Tell me where he does live, or tell me which of his friends is in town, that I may ask them. I tell you I don't mean Mr. Fordham any harm."

"No, sir?--nor I don't know as anybody means any harm," said the man, once more examining Vincent's appearance. "What was it as you were wishing to know? Though I ain't acquainted with the gen'leman myself, the missis or some of the people may be. We have a many coming and going, and I might confuse a name.--What was it as you were wishful to know?"

"I wish to see Mr. Fordham," said Vincent, impatiently.

"I have told you, sir, he don't live here," said the guardian of the house.

"Then, look here; you don't deceive me, remember. I can see you know all about him," said Vincent; "and, as I tell you, I mean him no harm; answer me one or two simple questions, and I will either thank or reward you as you like best. In the first place, Is this Mr. Fordham a married man? and, Has he ever gone by another name?"