in no worse than manslaughter – ”
“You don’t understand me,” Vincent broke in; “you are talking of the criminal. Who are you talking of? – but it does not matter. I want Miss Vincent. Do you hear me? – the young lady whom he brought here last night. Where is my sister? Gone away before daybreak! You mean the criminal, but I want my sister. Susan! take me to where she is. She had nothing to do with it. I will give you anything – pay you anything, only take me to where she is.”
He moved towards the door as he spoke, half believing that, if he could but hold out and refuse to credit this horror, Susan might still be found. “Lord bless us! the poor young gentleman’s gone out of his senses,” cried the landlady. “Let him go through all the house if that’s what he wants. There ain’t nothing to conceal in my house. I’ll take you to the room as they were in – she and the other one. This way, sir. They hadn’t nothing with them but two little bags, so there wasn’t much to leave; but such as it is, being her night-things, is there. She wasn’t thinking of bags, nor any of her little comforts, when she went away. Here, sir; walk in here.”
The woman took him to a room up-stairs, where Vincent followed her mechanically. The room had evidently been occupied a very short time before. Upon a chair, open, with the contents only half thrust in, was a travelling-bag, which the minister recognised at once – a piece of family property dreadful to see in such a place. Susan had been putting her things away with the orderly instinct of her mother’s daughter when this sudden shock of terror came upon her. “Do you mean to tell me that it is she who has gone away,” said Vincent, with a look of incredulous wonder and appeal – “she – Susan Vincent, my sister? Take time to think. It was not she – somebody else. Tell me where she is – ”
“Oh, sir, don’t say anything as may come against her,” cried the landlady. “It’s nobody but her, poor soul, poor soul. If it was possible to think as it could be another, I would – but there was nobody else to do it. As soon as we heard the shot and the groan the master got up. He met her on the stair, sir, if you’ll believe me, like a woman as was walking in her sleep. He was that struck he daren’t say a word to her. He let her pass by him and go out at the door – and when he went into the gentleman’s room and found him there a-dying, she was gone clean off, and couldn’t be heard of. Folks say as my husband should have stopped her, but it wasn’t none of his business. Oh, sir, don’t say nothing as’ll put them on her track! There’s one man gone off after her already – oh, it’s dreadful! – if you’ll be advised by me, you’ll slip out the back way, and don’t come across that policeman again. If she did kill him,” cried the weeping landlady, “it was to save herself, poor dear. I’ll let you out the back way, if you’ll be guided by me.”
The horror of this accusation had come home to Vincent’s mind at last. He saw, as if by a sudden flash of dreadful enlightenment, not guilt indeed, or its awful punishment, but open shame – the disgrace of publicity – the horrible suspicions which were of themselves more than enough to kill the unhappy girl. He made a great effort to speak, but could not for the moment. He thrust in the white soft garments which were hanging out of it, into that familiar bag, which somehow gave him a pang more acute than all the terrible news he was hearing. He had travelled with it himself on innocent boyish journeys, had seen it in his mother’s innocent hands – and now to find it in this shuddering atmosphere of crime and mystery! He too shuddered as he roused himself to speak. “Hush – hush,” said Vincent, “you mistake, my sister has nothing to do with it; I – I can prove that – easily,” said the minister, getting the words out with difficulty. “Tell me how it all happened – when they came here, what passed; for instance – ” He paused, and his eye caught another evidence of the reality of his horrible position. It was the blue veil which he had followed and described, and looked for through all these weary hours. He took it up in his hand, crushing it together with an almost ungovernable impulse of rage, from where it had been thrown down on the shabby carpet. “For instance,” said Susan’s brother, restraining himself, “where is the girl who wore this? You said Miss Vincent went away alone – where was the other? was she left behind – is she here?”
The policeman had followed them up into the room in natural curiosity and suspicion. The landlady’s husband had sworn that Susan left the house by herself. Then, where was the girl? The fugitive had been tracked to the railway, the policeman said; but she was alone. Nobody had thought before of her helpless companion. The inspector arrived while they were going over the house trying if it were possible to find any traces of this forlorn creature. Vincent was much too profoundly concerned himself to keep silence about the mysterious movements of the woman whom he had seen on his way to Dover – whom he had seen that very morning in the darkness – whom he knew to be the bitterest enemy of the murdered man. It was only when he described her – when he tried to collect all the information he had ever had about her for the guidance of justice – that he saw how little he knew of her in reality. His very description was tinged with a touch of fancy; and in this frightful emergency he perceived, for the first time, how much his imagination had supplied of the interest he felt in this woman. When he had done all it was possible to do to set the pursuer on her track, and gathered all he could of the supposed proofs against Susan, he left the place where he could do nothing further. He had to describe himself fully – to prove his identity by a reference to the Dissenting minister of the place, and explain whence he had come and whither he was going, before the officers in charge of the house, although conscious that they had no grounds for detaining him, would let him go. But he was permitted to leave at last. While he waited for the next train to Carlingford, he questioned the cabman, who could give but a very faint and indistinct description of the lady whom he had seen at the pier-gates, whose appearance had stopped Colonel Mildmay in the prosecution of his journey. She was standing under a lamp, the man said: the gentleman might see her, but he didn’t think as she could see him; but dim as the vision was, this was another little link in the chain of evidence. If it did but vindicate Susan – save her, not from the penalty, but from the very shadow and suspicion of such a horror! It was this which filled the minister’s mind with every sort of frightful apprehension. To have Susan’s name exposed to such a horrible publicity – to have such a scene, such a crime anyhow connected with his sister – the idea shook Vincent’s mind utterly, and almost disabled him from thought at all. And where was she, poor horror-stricken fugitive? He scarcely dared hope that she had gone to her mother. Sudden death, madness, any misery, seemed possible to have overtaken the unhappy girl thus suddenly reft out of the peacefulness of her youth into circumstances so horrible. When he entered Carlingford, late at night, it was with insupportable pangs of suspense and alarm that he looked into the faces he met on the lighted streets. Were they looking at him already with a consciousness that some frightful shadow enveloped him? Tozer’s shop was already shut – earlier than usual, surely – and two or three people stood talking at the open door, clearly visible against the gaslight, which still burned bright within. Farther up, opposite his own house, two or three passengers had stopped to look up at the lighted windows. When Vincent thrust aside a lad who happened to be in his way, asking, with uncontrollable irritation, what he wanted there, the door opened suddenly at the sound of his voice. All was excited and confused within – common life, with its quiet summonses and answers, was over there. Wild confusion, agitation, reproach, surrounded the unfortunate minister. His landlady came forward to meet him, to bewail her own misfortune, and upbraid him with the wrong he had done her. “I took in the pastor for a lodger, because he was sure to be steady and respectable, and this is what he has brought to me!” cried the hysterical woman. “What is the meaning of all this?” cried Vincent, looking round him with restrained fury, but he did not wait for an answer. He went up to his rooms to know the worst. As he rushed breathless up-stairs, loud outcries of delirium reached him. In his horror and anguish he could not recognise the voice – was it his mother who had given way under the terrible burden? He dashed open the door of the sitting-room in which he had spent so many quiet hours – neither mother nor sister were there; instead of them a rough-featured man, in a blue travelling-coat, and Tozer, flushed and argumentative, standing by the table. Vincent had not time to ask what the controversy was that was going on between the two. The butterman grasped his hand with an almost
