Salem Chapel by Margaret Oliphant

They were but these two in the railway-carriage; no other passenger broke the silent conflict of their companionship. They sat in opposite corners, as far apart as their space would permit, but on opposite sides of the carriage as well, so that one could not move without betraying his every movement to the other's keen observation. Each of them kept possession of a window, out of which he gazed into the visible blackness of the winter night. Two or three times in the course of the long darksome chilly journey, a laconic remark was made by one or the other with a deadly steadiness, and gravity, and facing of each other, as they spoke; but no further intercourse took place between them. When they first met, Fordham had made an attempt to draw his fellow-traveller into some repetition of that first passionate speech which had secured his own attention to Vincent; but the young Nonconformist perceived the attempt, and resented it with sullen offence and gloom. He took the stranger's indifference to his trouble, and undisguised and simple purpose of acquitting himself, as somehow an affront, though he could not have explained how it was so; and this notwithstanding his own consciousness of realising this silent conflict and rivalry with Fordham, even more deeply in his own person than he did the special misery which had befallen his house. Through the sullen silent midnight the train dashed on, the faint light flickering in the unsteady carriage, the two speechless figures, with eyes averted, watching each other through all the ice-cold hours. It was morning when they got out, cramped and frozen, at the little station, round which miles and miles of darkness, a black unfathomable ocean, seemed to lie -- and which shone there with its little red sparkle of light among its wild waste of moors like the one touch of human life in a desert. They had a dreary hour to wait in the little wooden room by the stifling fire, divided between the smothering atmosphere within and the thrilling cold without, before a conveyance could be procured for them, in which they set out shivering over the seven darkling miles between them and Fordham. Vincent stood apart in elaborate indifference and carelessness, when the squire was recognised and done homage to; and Fordham's eye, even while lighted up by the astonished delight of the welcome given him by the driver of the vehicle who first found him out, turned instinctively to the Mordecai in the corner who took no heed. No conversation between them diversified the black road along which they drove. Mr. Fordham took refuge in the driver, whom he asked all those questions about the people of the neighbourhood which are so interesting to the inhabitants of a district and so wearisome to strangers. Vincent, who sat in the dogcart with his face turned the other way, suffered himself to be carried through the darkness by the powerful horse, which made his own seat a somewhat perilous one, with nothing so decided in his thoughts as a dumb sense of opposition and resistance. The general misery of his mind and body -- the sense that all the firmament around him was black as this sky -- the restless wretchedness that oppressed his heart -- all concentrated into conscious rebellion and enmity. He seemed to himself at war, not only with Mr. Fordham who was helping him, but with God and life.

Morning was breaking when they reached the house. The previous day, as it dawned chilly over the world, had revealed his mother's ashy face to Vincent as they came up from Lonsdale with sickening thrills of hope that Susan might still be found unharmed. Here was another horror of a new day rising, the third since Susan disappeared into that darkness which was now lifting in shuddering mists from the bleak country round. Was she here in her shame, the lost creature? As he began to ask himself that question, what cruel spirit was it that drew aside a veil of years, and showed to the unhappy brother that prettiest dancing figure, all smiles and sunshine, sweet honour and hope? Poor lost child! what sweet eyes, lost in an unfathomable light of joy and confidence -- what truthful looks, which feared no evil! Just as they came in sight of that hidden house, where perhaps the hidden, stolen creature lay in the darkness, the brightest picture flashed back upon Vincent's eyes with an indescribably subtle anguish of contrast; how he had come up to her once -- the frank, fair Saxon girl -- in the midst of a group of gypsies -- how he found she had done a service to one of them, and the whole tribe did homage -- how he had asked, "Were you not afraid, Susan? " and how the girl had looked up at him with undoubting eyes, and answered, "Afraid, Arthur? -- yes, of wild beasts if I saw them, not of men and women. " Oh Heaven! -- and here he was going to find her in shame and ruin, hidden away in this secret place! He sprang to the ground before the vehicle had stopped, jarring his frozen limbs. He could not bear to be second now, and follow to the dread discovery which should be his alone. He rushed through the shrubbery without asking any question, and began to knock violently at the door. What did it matter to him though its master was there, looking on with folded arms and unsympathetic face? Natural love rushed back upon the young man's heart. He settled with himself, as he stood waiting, how he would wrap her in his coat, and hurry her away without letting any cold eye fall upon the lost creature. Oh, hard and cruel fate! oh, wonderful heartbreaking indifference of Heaven! The Innocents are murdered, and God looks on like a man, and does not interfere. Such were the broken thoughts of misery -- half-thought, half-recollection -- that ran through Vincent's mind as he knocked at the echoing door.