CHAPTER XXVII.

A NIGHT-JOURNEY.

The Trevors were not long to remain alone. The flames from the house, seen far and wide, soon drew to the spot the inmates of farms and cottages dotted over the neighbouring land. Amongst the first arrivals at the scene of the conflagration was that of Mr. Trevor's own servant, who was driving the pony-chaise in which he had returned from S----. Susan, who had found the paper left by Emmie, and who was alarmed at her young lady being out in the storm, had despatched Joe with all speed by the road, after heaping the chaise with warm wraps to protect Miss Trevor from the cold. Susan herself had accompanied Joe, in whose intelligence and promptitude no great trust was reposed by the old family servant.

Very thankful was Emmie for the arrival of the chaise, which afforded a means of carrying her brother quickly home; for Bruce was in so exhausted a state that she feared that he would faint by the way. The young man let Emmie spread her own cloak around him, and cushion him up with shawls; his submission to such offices of kindness was so unlike Bruce's former self, that Emmie saw in it a token of prostration of mind as well as of body. Not a word was uttered by either during the short drive back to Myst Court. Bruce leaned back with his eyes closed; his sister scarcely knew whether or not he were conscious of what was passing around him.

"I dare not tell him in his present weak state of what has happened to Vibert," thought Emmie, whose mind now recurred to the troubles of her younger brother, which had been for a while forgotten in the excitement of the late scenes.

Myst Court was soon reached. Bruce was gently assisted out of the chaise, which was then at once sent off to S---- to bring a surgeon. Bruce's wound had never bled much, as it had been inflicted by a blunt instrument. Susan had offered to bind it, but the sufferer had refused to let his injured head be touched save by professional hands. A ghastly sight the young man presented, as he slowly entered the hall of Myst Court, leaning on the arm of his sister; but it was then that he startled Emmie with the abrupt question, "Has Vibert returned from London?"

"Not yet," was her faltered reply.

"Then I must go thither at once. When does the next train start?--I have lost count of time--days, weeks seem to have passed since I was last here," said Bruce, with an evident effort to collect his scattered thoughts. He seated himself wearily on one of the large oak chairs in the hall, and in his own decided manner repeated the words, "When does the next train start?"

"Bruce, dearest, you are utterly unable to attempt to take such a journey," said Emmie soothingly. She feared that her brother's mind was beginning to wander. Bruce perhaps guessed her suspicion, for calmly meeting her anxious gaze he reiterated his question, "Only tell me, when does the next train start for London?"

"Not till after dark," replied Emmie.

"Then after dark I go up to London, unless Vibert return," said Bruce. "I must warn him--I must give notice to the police--I must telegraph at once," and with an effort the young man rose to his feet. At that moment the superintendent of police entered the hall, not a little surprised to see before him, living, the man for whose corpse he and his companions had been making most diligent search. The appearance of Bruce showed but too plainly how narrowly he had escaped the fate to which he had been supposed to have fallen a victim.

"What brought _him_ here?" cried Bruce, glancing at the official, and then turning his inquiring eyes on his sister.

Concealment was no longer possible; Emmie began to break gently the evil tidings which had come that morning from London, but had scarcely uttered a sentence before Bruce anticipated all that she was about to tell him.

"Vibert has been arrested," he cried, "the dupe of the villany of a forger. Emmie, I must go to the study with this officer; I can give him information of the greatest importance. He will send telegraphs to London and to Liverpool, and he and I will go up to town by the next train. There is a nefarious plot to be unravelled, and the events of last night have placed the end of the clue in my hand."

His sister saw at once that opposition would be useless. The more ill Bruce felt himself to be, the more resolved he was to speak and act while the power to do so remained. Till he had had his conference with the superintendent, the sufferer would take neither rest nor refreshment, save copious draughts of water, eagerly swallowed to quench his feverish thirst. Bruce's hand trembled violently as he replenished the tumbler again and again; but this was but the weakness of the nerves,--the will of the soul was as strong as ever.

"Will you not suffer us first to bathe and bind your poor head?" suggested Emmie, who could not look on the injured brow without a thrill of pain.

"There will be time for all that," exclaimed Bruce with impatient gesture; "more important matters press,--is not our brother's honour at stake?"

The condition in which Bruce Trevor appeared, and the circumstances under which he had been found, had removed from the mind of the police official all suspicion that he could ever have been leagued with the forgers. He had evidently barely escaped with life from the hands of the ruffians, and their shallow device for implicating him in their guilt was transparent to all. The superintendent eagerly received from Bruce such information regarding the forgers as was likely to lead to their apprehension before they should have time to make their escape from the shores of Britain.

To Emmie, in her anxiety for her brother, the interview held in the study seemed to be painfully long; but Bruce had not been half an hour in the house when a policeman, despatched in haste by the superintendent, was on his way to S----, commisssioned to telegraph from thence to Liverpool and to London.

Then, the immediate strain on his energies being over, Bruce collapsed for a brief time into a state of utter prostration. When the surgeon arrived from S----, he found his patient stretched on the drawing-room sofa in something between a sleep and a swoon, with his pale, anxious sister watching beside him.

Emmie remained present while the surgeon performed his part, giving such trifling aid as she could. When Dr. Weir had done his work and left the room, Miss Trevor followed him into the hall, most anxious to know his opinion as to the extent of the injury which her brother had sustained from the blow.

"The wound is not in itself of so _very_ serious a character," said the surgeon gravely, "if the brain itself have not suffered. But there is a strong tendency to fever, and the patient should be kept as quiet and as free from excitement as is possible."

"But he actually insists on travelling to London to-night," cried Emmie; "and it is so difficult, so impossible to resist the will of my brother when he thinks that a duty must be performed."

The surgeon shrugged his shoulders. He, like every one else at S----, had heard of Vibert's arrest, and could understand that no light cause drew his brother towards the metropolis. He had seen already also something of his patient's decided character, and recalled to mind the well-known words of one who, when told that to travel might be to die, replied, "It is not necessary that I should live, but it is necessary that I should go." Bruce had a few minutes before in Dr. Weir's presence, expressed a similar sentiment.

"To oppose him would, I fear, bring on the very evil which we would guard against," said the surgeon, after a minute's reflection. "I dare not, under existing circumstances, absolutely forbid the journey to London." Perhaps Dr. Weir, in giving his reluctant consent to what he saw that he could not prevent, was but making a virtue of necessity.

"Then I will accompany my brother," said Emmie.

As soon as the surgeon had departed, Emmie began to make preparations for the journey, which should at least be made to Bruce as comfortable and as little fatiguing as it was possible for a night-journey in the depth of winter to be.

"My young lady is a changed being," thought Susan, as she found Miss Trevor actively engaged in packing her brother's carpet-bag. "After all the dreadful news which she heard this morning, after her exposure to the most fearful of storms, after the horror of finding her brother half-murdered, and the narrow escape of both from being burned to death, I should have expected to have seen my mistress either in violent hysterics, or in a burning fever! But here is Miss Trevor able to think of all, arrange all, care for all, speaking no word of fear, showing no sign of weakness! I never thought that my lady could have learned so soon how to 'glorify God in the fires!'"

Before the arrival of the close vehicle ordered by Emmie to convey her brother and herself to the station, the sister made one more earnest attempt to dissuade Bruce from making an effort which, in his present state, would probably bring on serious illness. Was it indeed, she urged, so needful for him to appear in person in London?

"Emmie, I have wronged a brother, and shall I not do what I can to right him?" was Bruce's reply. "Yes," he added, "though I knew that to go to him now were to go indeed to my grave." Emmie attempted no further remonstrance.

The vehicle came, and the travellers started. Susan accompanied the Trevors as far as the station, to take their railway tickets, and look after their comforts. Emmie would have been thankful to have taken her faithful attendant with her all the way to London, but difficulties stood in the way. Not only had money run short (for Emmie's purse had been empty, and her brother's had been so poorly supplied that they had had to borrow from their servant), but Miss Trevor was afraid further to encroach on the hospitality of her aunt, whose house might already be full.

Few persons travelled in winter by the night train, which was chiefly used for luggage. Bruce and Emmie had the railway carriage to themselves, and the invalid was thus able to recline as on a couch. Very few words passed between the brother and sister during that long wearisome journey; Bruce was reserving the small residue of his strength for the morrow's effort, and as the light of the dull lamp fell on his almost corpse-like features, Emmie felt that it would be cruel to disturb him even by a question. She scarcely knew whether her brother were thinking or sleeping; but what a full current of thought was passing through her own mind, as the train rolled on through the darkness! Emmie reviewed the events of that--to her--most eventful day with emotions of horror so mixed with fervent thankfulness, that she could not herself have told which was the uppermost feeling. Emmie had, as it were, had lions close to her path, but had found that the lions were chained; she had looked on death very near, but her spirit had been so braced by prayer that she had not fainted at his awful approach. She had, for once, conquered mistrust, and by doing so had been the blessed means of saving the life of her brother. But was she to rest content with one victory over besetting sin, or could she suppose that the enemy, though once foiled, would not perpetually be returning to his too familiar abode? Had vivid light been thrown into her heart's haunted chamber, only that she should again resign it to darkness? Must not the young Christian be now constantly on the watch, and resolutely and prayerfully resolve that the thought "I fear" should never again turn her feet back from the path of duty?

Emmie was so absorbed in such reflections that she almost started when her brother broke silence at last.

"Emmie, what induced you to go to that house, and alone?" asked Bruce suddenly, opening his languid eyes, and fixing their gaze on his sister, who occupied the opposite seat. "Had anything occurred to make you suspect treachery in that most false of women?"

The question took Emmie by surprise, and she was about to return a frank reply, when there came the remembrance of her oath, like the galling of a hidden chain worn by penitents of old. Even all that had passed had not set the conscience of the maiden free from the burden of that dread oath.

"I cannot tell even you, Bruce, why I suspected Jael,--why I went through the wood in the storm,--but the thing which decided me to make my way into the house and search there for my brother was finding one of his slippers close to the garden-gate."

A faint smile, the first seen on his lips during that fearful day, passed over the face of Bruce. "Then it was not for nothing," he said, "that I contrived to detach that slipper from my foot as the villains bore me past the hedge to the gate. It was so dark that they did not notice the trace I was leaving behind me. But wherefore can you not tell me, Emmie, the cause of that suspicion of Jael which led one so timid as yourself to her dwelling in the midst of a storm so terrible, that when the bolt struck the house I thought to have been buried under its ruins?"

"Oh! Bruce, do not ask me!" murmured Emmie, shrinking from the searching gaze of her brother's eyes.

"I understand," said Bruce to himself, after a pause in which he had recalled Emmie's mysterious disappearance on the night of the eclipse, and her subsequent agony of terror. "You are bound by some promise," he continued, again addressing his sister; "there had been one moment of weakness, but how nobly redeemed! Emmie, my preserver, fear no questions from me; it is enough to know that you dared danger and death for my sake!" The look of deep grateful affection which accompanied the words repaid Emmie for all that she had suffered.

This brief conversation alone broke the silence of the Trevors ere their arrival in London. The tedious journey at length was over, the train had reached the last station. Emmie had never before travelled without being relieved of all the petty trouble which a long journey involves; now, on a night in winter, she had charge of an invalid, and had the care of all arrangements needed for his comfort. When, trembling with cold, the travellers stepped out at last on the platform, it was Emmie's part to see about luggage and cab, and then to procure at the refreshment-room wine for her almost fainting companion. Such matters, indeed, seem to be trifles; but they formed part of the discipline which was raising a self-indulgent girl, accustomed to be the object of constant attention and care, into the thoughtful and self-forgetting Christian woman.

While the church clocks of the metropolis were striking the hour of midnight, Emmie and her silent companion were passing the comparatively deserted streets on their way to Grosvenor Square. Few persons were abroad at that hour, especially in the wider streets of the West-end, save the policeman on his beat, or the waifs and strays who have no better home than the casual ward of a workhouse. The minds of both Bruce and his sister were now full of the subject of Vibert's arrest, and painful anxiety to know whether their younger brother were not at that moment the occupant of some prison-cell. The Trevors had left Myst Court just before the arrival of a telegram from their father which would have relieved their minds from this fear. Vibert had been taken before a magistrate, but his case had been remanded till the following day, when, as it was hoped, news might be received of the arrest of Colonel Standish. Heavy bail had been offered for the unhappy youth's reappearance before the court, and the securities had been accepted. Vibert had therefore been permitted to accompany his father back to the house of his aunt.