removed, a host of complicated anxieties hasten in to fill up its
place. She was no longer bowed down under an overwhelming dread, but she
was consumed by restless desires to be doing--cravings to know
all--fears for what might at the moment be happening out of her range
and influence. What might Arthur, always incautious, be confiding to
Tozer even now?--perhaps telling him those "private affairs" which the
widow would have defended against exposure with her very life--perhaps
chafing at Salem and rejecting that yoke which, being a minister, he
must bear. It was all Mrs. Vincent could do to keep herself still on her
chair, and to maintain that quietness which was necessary for Susan. If
only she could have been there to soften his impatience and make the
best of his unnecessary confidences! Many a time before this, the widow
had been compelled to submit to that female tribulation--to be shut up
apart, and leave the great events outside to be transacted by those
incautious masculine hands, in which, at the bottom of her heart, a
woman seldom has perfect confidence when her own supervising influence
is withdrawn. Mrs. Vincent felt instinctively that Arthur would commit
himself as she sat resigned but troubled by Susan's bed.
Tozer went directly to the door of Vincent's room, where the minister,
only half-dressed, but much alarmed to see the colloquy which was going
on between his mother and the butterman, was waiting for him. The deacon
squeezed the young man's hand with a hearty pressure. His aspect was so
fatherly and confidential, that it brought back to the mind of the young
Nonconformist a certain rueful half-comic recollection of the suppers
in the back parlour, and all the old troubles of the pastor of Salem,
which heavier shadows had driven out of his mind. Tozer held up
triumphantly the paper in his hand.
"You've seen it, sir?" said the butterman; "first thing I did this
morning was to look up whether there wasn't nothing about it in the
latest intelligence; for the 'Gazette' has been very particular,
knowing, at Carlingford, folks would be interested--and here it is sure
enough, Mr. Vincent; and we nigh gave three cheers, me and the lads in
the shop."
To this Vincent listened with a darkening brow and an impatience which
he did not attempt to conceal. He took the paper with again that quick
sense of the intolerable which prompted him to tear the innocent
broadsheet in pieces and tread it under foot. The 'Gazette' contained,
with a heading in large characters, the following paragraph:--
"THE DOVER TRAGEDY.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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