Salem Chapel. Volume 2/2. Oliphant Margaret

door upon him with all her feeble strength, locked it, put a chair against it; then she stumbled and fell as she stretched out for another – fell down upon her knees, poor soul! and remained so, forgetting, as it seemed, how she came there, and gradually, by instinct, putting together the hands which trembled like leaves in the wind – “Lord, Lord!” cried the mother, hovering on the wild verge between passion and insensibility. She called Him by name only as utter anguish alone knows how; she had nothing to tell Him; she could only call upon Him by His name.

      Dr. Rider took the half-insensible form up in his arms and carried her to the bedside, where Susan still lay motionless with her eyes wide open, in an awful abstraction and unconsciousness. He put Mrs. Vincent tenderly into the chair, and held the hands that shook with that palsied irrestrainable tremor. “No one can bring her to life but you,” said the doctor, turning the face of the miserable mother towards her child. “She has kept her senses till she reached you; when she was here she no longer wanted them; she has left her life in your hands.” He held those hands fast as he spoke; pressed them gently, but firmly; repeated his words over again. “In your hands,” said the doctor once more, struck to his heart with horror and pity. Susan’s bare beautiful arm lay on the coverlid, white, round, and full, like marble. The doctor, who had never seen the fair Saxon girl who was Mrs. Vincent’s daughter a week ago, thought in his heart that this full developed form and face, rapt to grandeur by the extremity of woe, gave no contradiction to the accusation he had just heard with so much horror. That week had obliterated Susan’s soft girlish innocence and the simplicity of her eighteen years. She was a grand form as she lay there upon that bed – might have loved to desperation – fallen – killed. Unconsciously he uttered aloud the thought in his heart – “Perhaps it would be better she should die!”

      Then the mother rose. Once more her painful senses came back to the woman who was still the minister’s mother, and, even in this hideous dream of misery, had not forgotten the habits of her life. “When my son comes he will settle it all,” said Mrs. Vincent. “I expect him – any time – he may come any minute. Some one has made – a mistake. I don’t know what that man said; but he has made – a mistake, doctor. My son, Mr. Vincent, will see to all that. It has nothing to do with us. Tell me what we are to do for my child. Cut off her hair? Oh, yes, yes, anything! I don’t mind it, though it is a sacrifice. She has had – a – a great fright, doctor. She could not tell me particulars. When her brother comes home, we will hear all – ” said the widow, looking with a jealous gaze in his eyes to see if he believed her. The scene altogether overcame Dr. Rider. He turned away and went to the other side of the room, and took a glass of water from the table before he could answer her or meet that appeal. Then he soothed her as he best could with directions about Susan. He went away immediately to come back in an hour, if perhaps there might be any change – so he said; but, in reality, he wanted to escape, to hear this dreadful story, to think what was best. Friendless, with nobody near to protect them, and the officer of justice waiting at the door, what were these women to do? perhaps death waited closer than the visible messenger of fate. Would it be well to stay that more merciful executioner on his way?

      The doctor found the officer outside the door, waiting, not without pity, at his post. He heard what was this man’s version of the strange tragedy – strange, and yet not unfamiliar to human ears. The young woman had been betrayed and ruined. In wild vengeance and misery she had seized one of her seducer’s pistols and shot him through the head – such was the story. And now she had fled from the scene of the murder, tracked step by step by the avenger. The whole house was in a tumult, as may be supposed. The indignant landlady, who was a member of Salem, could scarcely be prevented going into the jealously-closed room and turning out the unhappy criminal. Another lodger, a nervous woman, had already collected her goods to fly from the place. Outside, some mysterious instinct had collected a few people about the door of the hitherto irreproachable house, which imagination magnified into a crowd. Already Tozer had set out from his shop, red with anger, to inquire into this incipient excitement, which nobody could explain. And still Arthur had not appeared to stand by the miserable women in this horrible climax of fate.

      When the doctor went back to the room where Susan was, he found Mrs. Vincent in a state of agitated activity. Mary and she were flitting about the room, moving lights before Susan’s eyes, making what noises they could with the furniture, keeping a fantastic commotion about the bed. “She stirred, doctor, and we were trying to rouse her,” said the widow, who had put everything but Susan’s bodily extremity from her eyes at the moment. The doctor, who was desperate, and whose heart was moved, resorted to desperate measures. He gathered them about the bed, set Mrs. Vincent to support the insensible form, and raising that white marble arm which had developed into such glorious proportion, touched the swollen blue vein with his lancet. The touch acted like magic. In another moment she had struggled up out of her mother’s grasp, and thrown out the arm, from which the blood flowed, up above her head: the crimson stream caught her wild eye as she raised her arm in the air. A convulsive shudder shook her frame. She threw herself over on her face with a cry of horror, far more than a match, in her strength of youth and passion, for the agitated arms that held her. “Mother, mother, mother! it is his blood! it is his life!” cried that despairing voice. The confused bed, the convulsed frame, the flowing blood, all pitifully lighted up by Mary’s candle, made up of themselves a scene like murder; and Dr. Rider vainly tried to forget the dreadful words which forced upon his mind their untimely testimony. He shuddered at the touch of that white woman’s hand as he bound up the wounded arm. He withdrew his eyes from the pallid grandeur of the stricken face. In spite of himself, horror mingled with his pity. A heavier stain was upon her than those crimson traces on her pearly skin. Other words followed in an incoherent stream. Fever of the heart and brain, burning up into consuming frenzy, had seized upon this lost creature, who was no longer a girl or innocent. Ere long they had to send for nurses, to restrain her delirium. She, raving with a wild madness which betrayed in every wandering exclamation the horror upon her soul, lay desperate in the room which had enclosed for so many lingering hours her mother’s anguish of suspense and fear. In an adjoining room, the man who had followed her to this refuge still waited, watchful yet pitiful, intent that his prisoner should not escape him. While outside a few gazers lingered, looking up at the lights in the windows, with a strange perception that something unusual had happened, though nobody knew what it was. Such was the scene upon which Arthur Vincent, not unwarned, yet incredulous, came suddenly with eyes of horror and wild indignation as he reached his own door.

      CHAPTER IV

      WHEN Vincent was set down, in the darkness and silence of the Sunday night, in the Dover railway station, it was some minutes before he could collect himself, and understand where he was. He had fallen into a feverish sleep during the journey, little as he could have supposed himself capable of sleeping at such a moment; but he was young, and unused to the ceaseless fatigue and excitement and total want of rest which had obliterated for him the natural distinction between night and day. While his fellow-passengers trooped away with all the bustle and excitement of travellers, who had then only completed the first stage of their journey, to the pier and the night-boat which waited to carry them across the Channel, he, whom various porters and attendants stimulated with adjurations to make haste, and warnings that he would be late, stumbled out into the dark, collecting his faculties, and trying to think what he must do first. He was giddy and feverish with that insufficient snatch of sleep which had lost him the time in which he might have been laying his plans. But when he got outside the station into the unknown place, into the gloom of night, and heard the “moanings of the homeless sea” sounding sullen against the unseen shore, recollection and energy came back to him. That very sound, booming through the darkness, inspired Susan’s brother. He thought of her forlorn, desolate, succourless, a weary wanderer seeking rest and finding none, shrouded up in darkness and danger, lost in the mysterious gloom – such was the sentiment of the night. The minister went on rapidly to the town, with its restless lights, through which everybody seemed to be passing towards the unseen sea. Should he follow with the stream, or should he stop at the hotel of which Mary had told him? He quickened his steps as he reached the open door of the inn, and plunged in to make rapid inquiries. Nobody knew either Colonel Mildmay or Mr. Fordham, but the party which he described had been there, and had left only an hour before – not for the boat, the attendants thought: but the boat was ringing its bells through the night;