Margaret Oliphant - Salem Chapel. Volume 2/2

“Oh, dear Mrs. Vincent, I am so sorry for you!” said Lady Western again; “I know it all, and it makes my heart bleed to think of it. I will be your friend and your daughter’s friend as long as I live, if you will let me. Oh, don’t shut your heart against me! Mr. Vincent trusts me, and so must you; and I am heartbroken to think all that you must have gone through – ”

“Stop!” said Mrs. Vincent, with a gasp. “I – I cannot tell – what you mean,” she articulated, with difficulty, holding by the table to support herself, but looking with unflinching eyes in her new persecutor’s face.

“Oh, don’t shut your heart against me!” cried the young dowager, with genuine tears in her lovely eyes. “This gentleman was with Mr. Vincent yesterday – he came up here this morning. He is – Mr. Fordham.” She broke off abruptly with a terrified cry. But Mrs. Vincent had not died or fainted standing rigid there before her, as the soft creature thought. Her eyes had only taken that blank lustreless gaze, because the force of emotion beneath was too much for them, and inexpressible. Even in that extremity, it was in the widow’s heart, wrung to desperation, to keep her standing-ground of assumed ignorance, and not to know what this sudden offer of sympathy could mean.

“I do not know – the gentleman,” she said, slowly, trying to make the shadow of a curtsy to him. “I am sorry to seem uncivil; but I am tired and anxious. What – what did you want of me?” she asked, in a little outburst of uncontrollable petulance, which comforted Lady Western. It was a very natural question. Surely, in this forlorn room, where she had passed so many wretched hours, her privacy might have been sacred; and she was jealous and angry at the sight of Fordham for Arthur’s sake. It was another touch in the universal misery. She looked at Lady Western’s beauty with an angry heart. For these two, who ventured to come to her in their happiness, affronting her anguish, was Arthur’s heart to be broken too?

“We wanted – our own ends,” said Fordham, coming forward. “I was so cruel as to think of myself, and that you would prove it was another who had assumed my name. Forgive me – it was I who brought Lady Western here; and if either of us can serve you, or your daughter – or your son – ” added Fordham, turning red, and looking round at his beautiful companion —

Mrs. Vincent could bear it no longer. She made a hasty gesture of impatience, and pointed to the door. “I am not well enough, nor happy enough, to be civil,” cried Arthur’s mother; “we want nothing – nothing.” Her voice failed her in this unlooked-for exasperation. A few bitter tears came welling up hot to her eyes. It was very different from the stupor of agony – it was a blaze of short-lived passion, which almost relieved, by its sense of resentment and indignation, a heart worn out with other emotions. Fordham himself, filled with compunction, led Lady Western to the door; but it was not in the kind, foolish heart of the young beauty to leave this poor woman in peace. She came back and seized Mrs. Vincent’s trembling hands in her own; she begged to be allowed to stay to comfort her; she would have kissed the widow, who drew back, and, half fainting with fatigue and excitement, still kept her erect position by the table. Finally, she went away in tears, no other means of showing her sympathy being practicable. Mrs. Vincent dropped down on her knees beside the table as soon as she was alone, and leaned her aching, throbbing head upon it. Oh, dreadful lingering day, which was not yet half gone! Unconsciously groans of suffering, low but repeated, came out of her heart. The sound brought Mary, with whom no concealment was possible, and who gave what attendance and what sympathy she might to her mistress’s grievous trouble. Perhaps the work of this dreadful day was less hard than the vigil to which the mother had now to nerve her heart.

WAS it possible that she had slept? A moment ago and it was daylight – a red sunset afternoon: now the pale half-light, struggling with the black darkness, filled the apartment. She was lying on the sofa where Mary had laid her, and by her side, upon a chair within her reach, was some tea untasted, which Mary must have brought after she had fallen into that momentary slumber. The fire burned brightly, with occasional little outbreaks of flame. Such a silence seemed in the house – silence that crept and shuddered – and to think she should have slept!

The night had found covert in all the corners, so dark they were; but one pale line of light came from the window, and the room had a little ruddy centre in the fire. Mrs. Vincent, in the poignant anguish of her awakening, grew superstitious; some other breath – some other presence – seemed in the room besides her own. She called “Mary,” but there was no answer. In her excited condition anything was possible – the bounds of the living world and the possible seemed gone for ever. She might see anything – hear anything – in the calm of her desperation. She got up, and hastily lighted the candle which stood on the table. As she looked over the little light a great cry escaped her. What was it? rising darkly, rising slowly, out of the shadows in which it had been crouching, a huddled indistinct figure. Oh God! not Susan! not her child! As it rose slowly facing her, the widow cried aloud once more, and put her hand over her eyes to shut out the dreadful vision. Ghastly white, with fixed dilated eyes – with a figure dilated and grandiose – like a statue stricken into marble, raised to grandeur – could it be Susan who stood there, without a word, without a movement, only with a blank dark gaze at the horrified woman, who dared not meet those dreadful eyes? When life rallied in Mrs. Vincent’s horror-stricken heart, she went to the ghastly creature, and put warm arms round it, and called it Susan! Susan! Had it any consciousness at all, this dreadful ghost? had it come from another world? The mother kissed it with lips that woke no answer – held it motionless in her trembling arms. She cried again aloud – a great outcry – no longer fearing anything. What were appearances now? If it was Susan, it was Susan dead whom she held, all unyielding and terrible in her warm human arms.

Mary heard and came with exclamations of terror and sympathy. They got her between them to the fire, and chafed her chill hands and feet. Nobody knew how she had got in, where she had come from; no one was with her – no one had admitted her. She sat a marble woman in the chair where they had placed her, unresistant, only gazing, gazing – turning her awful eyes after her mother. At last she drew some long gasping breaths, and, with a shudder which shook her entire frame, seemed to come to herself. “I am Susan Vincent,” said the awful ghost. No tears, nor cries, nor wild pressure of her mother’s arms, nor entreaties poured into her cold ear, could extract any other words. Mrs. Vincent lost her self-possession: she rushed out of the room for remedies – rung the bell – called for Arthur in a voice of despair – could nobody help her, even in this horrible crisis? When she had roused the house she recollected herself, and shut the door upon the wondering strangers, and returned once more to her hopeless task. “Oh, Mary! what are we to do? Oh, Susan, my child, my darling! speak to your poor mother,” cried the widow; but the marble figure in the chair, which was Susan, made no reply. It began to shiver with dreadful trembling fits – to be convulsed with long gasping sobs. “I am – Susan – Susan Vincent” – it said at intervals, with a pitiful iteration. The sight of her daughter in this frightful condition, coming after all her fatigue and strain of excitement, unnerved Mrs. Vincent completely. She had locked the door in her sudden dismay. She was kneeling, clasping Susan’s knees – wasting vain adjurations upon her – driven beyond hope, beyond sense, beyond capacity. Little rustic Mary had all the weight of the emergency thrown upon her shoulders. It was she who called to the curious landlady outside to send for the doctor, and who managed to get Susan put into her mother’s bed. When they had succeeded in laying her down there, a long interval, that seemed like years, passed before Dr. Rider came. The bed was opposite the window, through which the pale rays of the twilight were still trembling. The candle on the other side showed Mrs. Vincent walking about the room wringing her hands, now and then coming to the bedside to look at the unconscious form there, rent by those gasping sobs, uttering those dreadful words. Mary stood crying at the foot of the bed. As for the widow, her eyes were tearless – her heart in an intolerable fever of suffering. She could not bear it. She said aloud she could not bear it – she could not bear it! Then she returned again to call vainly upon her child, her child! Her strength had given way – she had spent all her reserves, and had nothing to resist this unexpected climax of misery.