Salem Chapel. Volume 2/2

CHAPTER XV

SUNDAY! It came again, the inevitable morning. There are pathetic stories current in the world about most of the other professions that claim the ear of the public; how lawyers prepare great speeches, which are to open for them the gates of the future, in the midst of the killing anxieties of life and poverty – how mimes and players of all descriptions keep the world in laughter while their hearts are breaking. But few people think of the sufferings of the priest, whom, let trouble or anxiety come as they please, necessity will have in the inexorable pulpit Sunday after Sunday. So Vincent thought as he put on his Geneva gown in his little vestry, with the raw February air coming in at the open window, and his sermon, which was dull, lying on the table beside him. It was dull – he knew it in his heart; but after all the strain of passion he had been held at, what was to preserve him any more than another from the unavoidable lassitude and blank that followed? Still it was not agreeable to know that Salem was crowded to the door, and that this sermon, upon which the minister looked ruefully, was laboured and feeble, without any divine spark to enlighten it, or power to touch the hearts of other men. The consciousness that it was dull would, the preacher knew, make it duller still – its heaviness would affect himself as well as his audience. Still that was not to be helped now, there it lay, ready for utterance; and here in his Geneva gown, with the sound in his ears of all the stream of entering worshippers who were then arranging themselves in the pews of Salem, stood the minister prepared to speak. There was, as Vincent divined, a great crowd – so great a crowd that various groups stood during the whole service, which, by dint of being more laboured and feeble than usual, was longer too. With a certain dulness of feeling, half despairing, the minister accomplished the preliminary devotions, and was just opening his Bible to begin the work of the day when his startled eye caught a most unlooked-for accession to the flock. Immediately before him, in the same pew with Mrs. Tozer and Phœbe, what was that beautiful vision that struck him dumb for the moment? Tozer himself had brought her in during the prayers, through the groups that occupied the passage, to his own seat, where she sat expanding her rustling plumage, and looking round with all her natural sweetness, and a kind of delightful unconscious patronage and curiosity, upon the crowd of unknown people who were nobody in Carlingford. The sight of her struck the young Nonconformist dumb. He took some moments to recover himself, ere, with a pang in his heart, he began his dull sermon. It mattered nothing to Lady Western what kind of a sermon he preached. She was not clever, and probably would never know the difference; but it went to the young man’s heart, an additional pang of humiliation, to think that it was not his best he had to set before that unexpected hearer. What had brought the beauty here? Vincent’s dazzled eyes did not make out for some time the dark spare figure beside her, all sunned over with the rays of her splendour. Mrs. Tozer and Phœbe on one side, proud yet half affronted, contemplating with awe and keen observation the various particulars of Lady Western’s dress, were not more unlike her, reposing in her soft beauty within the hard wooden enclosure of the pew, beaming upon everybody in sweet ease and composure – than was the agitated restless face, with gleaming uncertain eyes that flashed everywhere, which appeared at her other side when Vincent came to be able to see. He preached his sermon with a certain self-disgust growing more and more intense every time he ventured to glance at that strange line of faces. The only attentive hearer in Tozer’s pew was Lady Western, who looked up at the young minister steadily with her sweet eyes, and listened with all the gracious propriety that belonged to her. The Tozers, for their part, drawn up in their end of the seat, gave a very divided attention, being chiefly occupied with Lady Western; and as for Mrs. Hilyard, the sight of her restlessness and nervous agitation would have been pitiful had anybody there been sufficiently interested to observe it. Mr. Vincent’s sermon certainly did not secure that wandering mind. All her composure had deserted this strange woman. Now and then she almost rose up by way apparently of relieving the restless fever that possessed her; her nervous hands wandered among the books of the Tozer pew with an incessant motion. Her eyes gleamed in all directions with a wistful anxiety and suspicion. All this went on while Vincent preached his sermon; he had no eyes for the other people in the place. Now and then the young man became rhetorical, and threw in here and there a wild flourish to break the deadness of his discourse, with no success as he saw. He read tedium in all the lines of faces before him as he came to a close with a dull despair – in all the faces except that sweet face never disturbed out of its lovely calm of attention, which would have listened to the Dissenting minister quite as calmly had he preached like Paul. With a sensation that this was one of the critical moments of his fate, and that he had failed in it, Vincent dropped into his seat in exhaustion and self-disgust, while his hearers got up to sing their hymn. It was at this moment that Tozer walked up through the aisle, steadily, yet with his heart beating louder than usual, and ascended the pulpit-stairs to give forth that intimation which had been agreed upon in the back parlour on Friday. The minister was disturbed in his uncomfortable repose by the entrance of the deacon into the pulpit, where the worthy butterman seated himself by Vincent’s side. The unconscious congregation sang its hymn, while the Nonconformist, rousing up, looked with surprised eyes upon his unexpected companion; yet there were bosoms in the flock which owned a thrill of emotion as Tozer’s substantial person partially disappeared from view behind the crimson cushion. Phœbe left off singing, and subsided into tears and her seat. Mrs. Pigeon lifted up her voice and expanded her person; meanwhile Tozer whispered ominously, with a certain agitation, in his pastor’s ear —

“It’s three words of an intimation as I’d like to give – nothing of no importance; a meeting of the flock as some of us would like to call, if it’s quite agreeable – nothing as you need mind, Mr. Vincent. We wouldn’t go for to occupy your time, sir, attending of it. There wasn’t no opportunity to tell you before. I’ll give it out, if it’s agreeable,” said Tozer, with hesitation – “or if you’d rather – ”

“Give it to me,” said the minister quickly. He took the paper out of the butterman’s hand, who drew back uncomfortable and embarrassed, wishing himself anywhere in the world but in the pulpit, from which that revolutionary document menaced the startled pastor with summary deposition. It was a sufficiently simple notice of a meeting to be held on the following Monday evening, in the schoolroom, which was the scene of all the tea and other meetings of Salem. This, however, was no tea-meeting. Vincent drew his breath hard, and changed colour, as he bent down under the shadow of the pulpit-cushion and the big Bible, and read this dangerous document. Meanwhile the flock sang their hymn, to which Tozer, much discomposed, added a few broken notes of tremulous bass as he sat by the minister’s side. When Mr. Vincent again raised his head, and sat erect with the notice in his hand, the troubled deacon made vain attempts to catch his eye, and ask what was to be done. The Nonconformist made no reply to these telegraphic communications. When the sinking was ended he rose, still with the paper in his hand, and faced the congregation, where he no longer saw one face with a vague background of innumerable other faces, but had suddenly woke up to behold his battle-ground and field of warfare, in which everything dear to him was suddenly assailed. Unawares the assembled people, who had received no special sensation from the sermon, woke up also at the sight of Vincent’s face. He read the notice to them with a voice that tingled through the place; then he paused. “This meeting is one of which I have not been informed,” said Vincent. “It is one which I am not asked to attend. I invite you to it, all who are here present; and I invite you thereafter,” continued the minister, with an unconscious elevation of his head, “to meet me on the following evening to hear what I have to say to you. Probably the business will be much the same on both occasions, but it will be approached from different sides of the question. I invite you to meet on Monday, according to this notice; and I invite you on Tuesday, at the same place and hour, to meet me.”

Vincent did not hear the audible hum and buzz of surprise and excitement which ran through his startled flock. He did not pay much attention to what Tozer said to him when all was over. He lingered in his vestry, taking off his gown, until he could hear Lady Western’s carriage drive off after an interval of lingering. The young Dowager had gone out slowly, thinking to see him, and comfort him with a compliment about his sermon, concerning the quality of which she was not critical. She was sorry in her kind heart to perceive his troubled looks, and to discover that somehow, she could not quite understand how, something annoying and unexpected had occurred to him. And then this uneasy companion, to whom he had bound her, and whose strange agitation and wonderful change of aspect Lady Western could in no way account for – But the carriage rolled away at last, not without reluctance, while the minister still remained in his vestry. Then he hurried home, speaking to no one. Mrs. Vincent did not understand her son all day, nor even next morning, when he might have been supposed to have time to calm down. He was very silent, but no longer dreamy or languid, or lost in the vague discontent and dejection with which she was familiar. On the contrary, the minister had woke up out of that abstraction. He was wonderfully alert, open-eyed, full of occupation. When he sat down to his writing-table it was not to muse, with his pen in his languid fingers, now and then putting down a sentence, but to write straight forward with evident fire and emphasis. He was very tender to herself, but he did not tell her anything. Some new cloud had doubtless appeared on the firmament where there was little need for any further clouds. The widow rose on the Monday morning with a presentiment of calamity on her mind – rose from the bed in Susan’s room which she occupied for two or three hours in the night, sometimes snatching a momentary sleep, which Susan’s smallest movement interrupted. Her heart was rent in two between her children. She went from Susan’s bedside, where her daughter lay in dumb apathy, not to be roused by anything that could be said or done, to minister wistfully at Arthur’s breakfast, which, with her heart in her throat, the widow made a pitiful pretence of sharing. She could not ask him questions. She was silent, too, in her great love and sorrow. Seeing some new trouble approaching – wistfully gazing into the blank skies before her, to discover, if that were possible, without annoying Arthur, or compromising him, what it was; but rather than compromise or annoy him, contenting herself not to know – the greatest stretch of endurance to which as yet she had constrained her spirit.

Arthur did not go out all that Monday. Even in the house a certain excitement was visible to Mrs. Vincent’s keen observation. The landlady herself made her appearance in tears to clear away the remains of the minister’s dinner. “I hope, sir, as you don’t think what’s past and gone has made no difference on me,” said that tearful woman in Mrs. Vincent’s hearing; “it ain’t me as would ever give my support to such doings.” When the widow asked, “What doings?” Arthur only smiled and made some half articulate remark about gossip, which his mother of course treated at its true value. As the dark wintry afternoon closed in, Mrs. Vincent’s anxiety increased under the influence of the landlady’s Sunday dress, in which she was visible progressing about the passages, and warning her husband to mind he wasn’t late. At last Mrs. Tufton called, and the minister’s mother came to a true understanding of the state of affairs. Mrs. Tufton was unsettled and nervous, filled with a not unexhilarating excitement, and all the heat of partisanship. “Don’t you take on,” said the good little woman; “Mr. Tufton is going to the meeting to tell them his sentiments about his young brother. My dear, they will never go against what Mr. Tufton says: and if I should mount upon the platform and make a speech myself, there shan’t be anything done that could vex you; for we always said he was a precious young man, and a credit to the connection; and it would be a disgrace to us all to let the Pigeons, or such people, have it all their own way.” Mrs. Vincent managed to ascertain all the particulars from the old minister’s wife. When she was gone, the widow sat down a little with a very desolate heart to think it all over. Arthur, with a new light in his eye, and determination in his face, was writing in the sitting-room; but Arthur’s mother could not sit still as he did, and imagine the scene in the Salem schoolroom, and how everybody discussed and sat upon her boy, and decided all the momentous future of his young life in this private inquisition. She went back, however, beside him, and poured out a cup of tea for him, and managed to swallow one for herself, talking about Susan and indifferent household matters, while the evening wore on and the hour of the meeting approached. A little before that hour Mrs. Vincent left Arthur, with an injunction not to come into the sick-room that evening until she sent for him, as she thought Susan would sleep. As she left the room the landlady went downstairs, gorgeous in her best bonnet and shawl, with all the personal satisfaction which a member of a flock naturally feels when called to a bed of justice to decide the future destiny of its head. The minister’s fate was in the hands of his people; and it was with a pleasurable sensation that, from every house throughout Grove Street and the adjacent regions, the good people were going forth to decide it. As for the minister’s mother, she went softly back to Susan’s room, where the nurse, who was Mrs. Vincent’s assistant, had taken her place. “She looks just the same,” said the poor mother. “Just the same,” echoed the attendant. “I don’t think myself as there’ll be no change until – ” Mrs. Vincent turned away silently in her anguish, which she dared not indulge. She wrapped herself in a black shawl, and took out the thick veil of crape which she had worn in her first mourning. Nobody could recognise her under that screen. But it was with a pang that she tied that sign of woe over her pale face. The touch of the crape made her shiver. Perhaps she was but forestalling the mourning which, in her age and weakness, she might have to renew again. With such thoughts she went softly through the wintry lighted streets towards Salem. As she approached the door, groups of people going the same way brushed past her through Grove Street. Lively people, talking with animation, pleased with this new excitement, declaring, sometimes so loudly that she could hear them as they passed, what side they were on, and that they, for their part, were going to vote for the minister to give him another trial. The little figure in those black robes, with anxious looks shrouded under the crape veil, went on among the rest to the Salem schoolroom. She took her seat close to the door, and saw Tozer and Pigeon, and the rest of the deacons, getting upon the platform, where on occasions more festive the chairman and the leading people had tea. The widow looked through her veil at the butterman and the poulterer with one keen pang of resentment, of which she repented instantly. She did not despise them as another might have done. They were the constituted authorities of the place, and her son’s fate, his reputation, his young life, all that he had or could hope for in the world, was in their hands. The decision of the highest authorities in the land was not so important to Arthur as that of the poulterer and the butterman. There they stood, ready to open their session, their inquisition, their solemn tribunal. The widow drew her veil close, and clasped her hands together to sustain herself. It was Pigeon who was about to speak.

CHAPTER XVI

MR. PIGEON MR. PIGEON was a heavy orator; he was a tall man, badly put together, with a hollow crease across his waistcoat, which looked very much as if he might be folded in two, and so laid away out of mischief. His arms moved foolishly about in the agonies of oratory, as if they did not belong to him; but he did not look absurd through Mrs. Vincent’s crape veil, as she sat gazing at the platform on which he stood, and taking in with eager ears every syllable that came from his lips. Mr. Pigeon said it was Mr. Vincent as they had come there to discuss that night. The managers had made up their minds as it was a dooty to lay things before the flock. Mr. Vincent was but a young man, and most in that congregation was ready to make allowances; and as for misfortunes as might have happened to him, he wasn’t a-going to lay that to the pastor’s charge, nor take no mean advantages. He was for judging a man on his merits, he was. If they was to take Mr. Vincent on his merits without no prejudice, they would find as he hadn’t carried out the expectations as was formed of him. Not as there was anything to be said against his preaching; his preaching was well enough, though it wasn’t to call rousing up, which was what most folks wanted. There wasn’t no desire on the part of the managers to object to his preaching: he had ought to have preached well, that was the truth, for every one as had been connected with Salem in Mr. Tufton’s time knew as there was a deal of difference between the new pastor and the old pastor, as far as the work of a congregation went. As for Pigeon’s own feelings, he would have held his peace cheerful, if his dooty had permitted him, or if he had seen as it was for the good of the connection. But things was come to that pass in Salem as a man hadn’t ought to mind his own feelings, but had to do his dooty, if he was to be took to the stake for it. And them were his circumstances, as many a one as he had spoken to in private could say, if they was to speak up.

To all this Mrs. Vincent listened with the profoundest attention behind her veil. The schoolroom was very full of people – almost as full as on the last memorable tea-party, but the square lines of the gas-burners, coming down with two flaring lights each from the low roof, were veiled with no festoons this time, and threw an unmitigated glare upon the people, all in their dark winter-dresses, without any attempt at special embellishment. Mrs. Pigeon was in the foreground, on a side-bench near the platform, very visible to the minister’s mother, nodding her head and giving triumphant glances around now and then to point her husband’s confused sentences. Mrs. Pigeon had her daughters spread out on one side of her, all in their best bonnets, and at the corner of the same seat sat little Mrs. Tufton, who shook her charitable head when the poulterer’s wife nodded hers, and put her handkerchief to her eyes now and then, as she gazed up at the platform, not without a certain womanly misgiving as to how her husband was going to conduct himself. The Tozers had taken up their position opposite. Mrs. Tozer and her daughter had all the appearance of being in great spirits, especially Phœbe, who seemed scarcely able to contain her amusement as Mr. Pigeon went on. All this Mrs. Vincent saw as clearly as in a picture through the dark folds of her veil. She sat back as far as she could into the shade, and pressed her hands close together, and was noways amused, but listened with as profound an ache of anxiety in her heart as if Pigeon had been the Lord Chancellor. As for the audience in general, it showed some signs of weariness as the poulterer stumbled on through his confused speech; and not a restless gesture, not a suppressed yawn in the place, but was apparent to the minister’s mother. The heart in her troubled bosom beat steadier as she gazed; certainly no violent sentiment actuated the good people of Salem as they sat staring with calm eyes at the speaker. Mrs. Vincent knew how a congregation looked when it was thoroughly excited and up in arms against its head. She drew a long breath of relief, and suffered the tight clasp of her hands to relax a little. There was surely no popular passion there.

And then Mr. Tufton got up, swaying heavily with his large uncertain old figure over the table. The old minister sawed the air with his white fat hand after he had said “My beloved brethren” twice over; and little Mrs. Tufton, sitting below in her impatience and anxiety lest he should not acquit himself well, dropt her handkerchief and disappeared after it, while Mrs. Vincent erected herself under the shadow of her veil. Mr. Tufton did his young brother no good. He was so sympathetic over the misfortunes that had befallen Vincent’s family, that bitter tears came to the widow’s eyes, and her hands once more tightened in a silent strain of self-support. While the old minister impressed upon his audience the duty of bearing with his dear young brother, and being indulgent to the faults of his youth, it was all the poor mother could do to keep silent, to stifle down the indignant sob in her heart, and keep steady in her seat. Perhaps it was some breath of anguish escaping from her unawares that drew towards her the restless gleaming eyes of another strange spectator there. That restless ghost of a woman! – all shrunken, gleaming, ghastly – her eyes looking all about in an obliquity of furtive glances, fearing yet daring everything. When she found Mrs. Vincent out, she fixed her suspicious desperate gaze upon the crape veil which hid the widow’s face. The deacons of Salem were to Mrs. Hilyard but so many wretched masquers playing a rude game among the dreadful wastes of life, of which these poor fools were ignorant. Sometimes she watched them with a reflection of her old amusement – oftener, pursued by her own tyrannical fancy and the wild restlessness which had brought her here, forgot altogether where she was. But Mrs. Vincent’s sigh, which breathed unutterable things – the steady fixed composure of that little figure while the old minister maundered on with his condolences, his regrets, his self-glorification over the interest he had taken in his dear young brother, and the advice he had given him – could not miss the universal scrutiny of this strange woman’s eyes. She divined, with a sudden awakening of the keen intelligence which was half crazed by this time, yet vivid as ever, the state of mind in which the widow was. With a half-audible cry the Back Grove Street needlewoman gazed at the minister’s mother; in poignant trouble, anxiety, indignant distress – clasping her tender hands together yet again to control the impatience, the resentment, the aching mortification and injury with which she heard all this maudlin pity overflowing the name of her boy – yet, ah! what a world apart from the guilty and desperate spirit which sat there gazing like Dives at Lazarus. Mrs. Hilyard slid out of her seat with a rapid stealthy movement, and placed herself unseen by the widow’s side. The miserable woman put forth her furtive hand and took hold of the black gown – the old black silk gown, so well worn and long preserved. Mrs. Vincent started a little, looked at her, gave her a slight half-spasmodic nod of recognition, and returned to her own absorbing interest. The interruption made her raise her head a little higher under the veil, that not even this stranger might imagine Arthur’s mother to be affected by what was going on. For everything else, Mrs. Hilyard had disappeared out of the widow’s memory. She was thinking only of her son.

As for the other minister’s wife, poor Mrs. Tufton’s handkerchief dropped a great many times during her husband’s speech. Oh, if these blundering men, who mismanage matters so, could but be made to hold their peace! Tears of vexation and distress came into the eyes of the good little woman. Mr. Tufton meant to do exactly what was right; she knew he did; but to sit still and hear him making such a muddle of it all! Such penalties have to be borne by dutiful wives. She had to smile feebly, when he concluded, to somebody who turned round to congratulate her upon the minister’s beautiful speech. The beautiful speech had done poor Vincent a great deal more harm than Pigeon’s oration. Salem folks, being appealed to on this side, found out that they had, after all, made great allowances for their minister, and that he had not on his part shown a due sense of their indulgence. Somebody else immediately after went on in the same strain: a little commotion began to rise in the quiet meeting. “Mr. Tufton’s ’it it,” said a malcontent near Mrs. Vincent; “we’ve been a deal too generous, that’s what we’ve been; and he’s turned on us.” “He was always too high for my fancy,” said another. “It ain’t the thing for a pastor to be high-minded; and them lectures and things was never nothing but vanity; and so I always said.” Mrs. Vincent smiled a wan smile to herself under her veil. She refused to let the long breath escape from her breast in the form of a sigh. She sat fast, upright, holding her hands clasped. Things were going against Arthur. Unseen among all his foes, with an answer, and more than an answer, to everything they said, burning in dumb restrained eloquence in her breast, his mother held up his banner. One at least was there who knew Arthur, and lifted up a dumb protest on his behalf to earth and heaven. She felt with an uneasy half-consciousness that some haunting shadow was by her side, and was even vaguely aware of the hold upon her dress, but had no leisure in her mind for anything but the progress of this contest, and the gradual overthrow, accomplishing before her eyes, of Arthur’s cause.