Salem Chapel. Volume 2/2

It was at this moment that Tozer rose up to make that famous speech which has immortalised him in the connection, and for which the Homerton students, in their enthusiasm, voted a piece of plate to the worthy butterman. The face of the Salem firmament was cloudy when Tozer rose; suggestions of discontent were surging among the audience. Heads of families were stretching over the benches to confide to each other how long it was since they had seen the minister; how he never had visited as he ought; and how desirable “a change” might prove. Spiteful glances of triumph sought poor Phœbe and her mother upon their bench, where the two began to fail in their courage, and laughed no longer. A crisis was approaching. Mrs. Tufton picked up her handkerchief, and sat erect, with a frightened face; she, too, knew the symptoms of the coming storm.

Such were the circumstances under which Tozer rose in the pastor’s defence.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Tozer, – “and Mr. Chairman, as I ought to have said first, if this meeting had been constituted like most other meetings have been in Salem; but, my friends, we haven’t met not in what I would call an honest and straight-forward way, and consequently we ain’t in order, not as a free assembly should be, as has met to know its own mind, and not to be dictated to by nobody. There are them as are ready to dictate in every body of men. I don’t name no names; I don’t make no suggestions; what I’m a-stating of is a general truth as is well known to every one as has studied philosophy. I don’t come here pretending as I’m a learned man, nor one as knows better nor my neighbours. I’m a plain man, as likes everything fair and aboveboard, and is content when I’m well off. What I’ve got to say to you, ladies and gentlemen, ain’t no grumbling nor reflecting upon them as is absent and can’t defend themselves. I’ve got two things to say – first, as I think you haven’t been called together not in an open way; and, second, that I think us Salem folks, as ought to know better, is a-quarrelling with our bread-and-butter, and don’t know when we’re well off!

“Yes, ladies and gentlemen! them’s my sentiments! we don’t know when we’re well off! and if we don’t mind, we’ll find out how matters really is when we’ve been and disgusted the pastor, and drove him to throw it all up. Such a thing ain’t uncommon; many and many’s the one in our connection as has come out for the ministry, meaning nothing but to stick to it, and has been drove by them as is to be found in every flock – them as is always ready to dictate – to throw it all up. My friends, the pastor as is the subject of this meeting” – here Tozer sank his voice and looked round with a certain solemnity – “Mr. Vincent, ladies and gentlemen, as has doubled the seat-holders in Salem in six months’ work, and, I make bold to say, brought one-half of you as is here to be regular at chapel, and take an interest in the connection – Mr. Vincent, I say, as you’re all collected here to knock down in the dark, if so be as you are willing to be dictated to – the same, ladies and gentlemen, as we’re a-discussing of to-night – told us all, it ain’t so very long ago, in the crowdedest meeting as I ever see, in the biggest public hall in Carlingford – as we weren’t keeping up to the standard of the old Nonconformists, nor showing, as we ought, what a voluntary church could do. It ain’t pleasant to hear of, for us as thinks a deal of ourselves; but that is what the pastor said, and there was not a man as could contradict it. Now, I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, what is the reason? It’s all along of this as we’re doing to-night. We’ve got a precious young man, as Mr. Tufton tells you, and a clever young man, as nobody tries for to deny; and there ain’t a single blessed reason on this earth why he shouldn’t go on as he’s been a-doing, till, Salem bein’ crowded out to the doors (as it’s been two Sundays back), we’d have had to build a new chapel, and took a place in our connection as we’ve never yet took in Carlingford!”

Mr. Tozer paused to wipe his heated forehead, and ease his excited bosom with a long breath; his audience paused with him, taking breath with the orator in a slight universal rustle, which is the most genuine applause. The worthy butterman resumed in a lowered and emphatic tone.

“But it ain’t to be,” said Tozer, looking round him with a tragic frown, and shaking his head slowly. “Them as is always a-finding fault, and always a-setting up to dictate, has set their faces again’ all that. It’s the way of some folks in our connection, ladies and gentlemen; a minister ain’t to be allowed to go on building up a chapel, and making hisself useful in the world. He ain’t to be left alone to do his dooty as his best friends approve. He’s to be took down out of his pulpit, and took to pieces behind his back, and made a talk and a scandal of to the whole connection! It’s not his preaching as he’s judged by, nor his dooty to the sick and dyin’, nor any of them things as he was called to be pastor for; but it’s if he’s seen going to one house more nor another, or if he calls often enough on this one or t’other, and goes to all the tea-drinkings. My opinion is,” said Tozer, suddenly breaking off into jocularity, “as a young man as may-be isn’t a marrying man, and anyhow can’t marry more nor one, ain’t in the safest place at Salem tea-drinkings; but that’s neither here nor there. If the ladies haven’t no pity, us men can’t do nothing in that matter; but what I say is this,” continued the butterman, once more becoming solemn; “to go for to judge the pastor of a flock, not by the dooty he does to his flock, but by the times he calls at one house or another, and the way he makes hisself agreeable at one place or another, ain’t a thing to be done by them as prides themselves on being Christians and Dissenters. It’s not like Christians – and if it’s like Dissenters the more’s the pity. It’s mean, that’s what it is,” cried Tozer, with fine scorn; “it’s like a parcel of old women, if the ladies won’t mind me saying so. It’s beneath us as has liberty of conscience to fight for, and has to set an example before the Church folks as don’t know no better. But it’s what is done in our connection,” added the good deacon with pathos, shaking his forefinger mournfully at the crowd. “When there’s a young man as is clever and talented, and fills a chapel, and gives the connection a chance of standing up in the world as it ought, here’s some one as jumps up and says, ‘The pastor don’t come to see me,’ says he – ‘the pastor don’t do his duty – he ain’t the man for Salem.’ And them as is always in every flock ready to do a mischief, takes it up; and there’s talk of a change, and meetings is called, and – here we are! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, here we are! We’ve called a meeting, all in the dark, and give him no chance of defending himself; and them as is at the head of this movement is calling upon us to dismiss Mr. Vincent. But let me tell you,” continued Tozer, lowering his voice with a dramatic intuition, and shaking his forefinger still more emphatically in the face of the startled audience, “that this ain’t no question of dismissing Mr. Vincent; it’s a matter of disgusting Mr. Vincent, that’s what it is – it’s a matter of turning another promising young man away from the connection, and driving him to throw it all up. You mark what I say. It’s what we’re doing most places, us Dissenters; them as is talented and promising and can get a better living working for the world than working for the chapel, and won’t give in to be worried about calling here and calling there – we’re a-driving of them out of the connection, that’s what we’re doing! I could reckon up as many as six or seven as has been drove off already, and I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, what’s the good of subscribing and keeping up of colleges and so forth, if that’s how you’re a-going to serve every clever young man as trusts hisself to be your pastor? I’m a man as don’t feel no shame to say that the minister, being took up with his family affairs and his studies, has been for weeks as he hasn’t crossed my door; but am I that poor-spirited as I would drive away a young man as is one of the best preachers in the connection, because he don’t come, not every day, to see me? No, my friends! them as would ever suspect such a thing of me don’t know who they’re a-dealing with; and I tell you, ladies and gentlemen, as this is a question as must come home to every one of your bosoms. Them as is so set upon their own way that they can’t hear reason – or them as is led away by folks as like to dictate – may give their voice again’ the minister, if so be as they think fit; but as for me, and them as stands by me, I ain’t a-going to give in to no such tyranny! It shall never be said in our connection as a clever young man was drove away from Carlingford, and I had part in it. There’s the credit o’ the denomination to keep up among the Church folks – and there’s the chapel to fill, as never had half the sittings let before – and there’s Mr. Vincent, as is the cleverest young man I ever see in our pulpit, to be kep’ in the connection; and there ain’t no man living as shall dictate to me or them as stands by me! Them as is content to lose the best preaching within a hundred miles, because the minister don’t call on two or three families in Salem, not as often as they would like to see him,” said Tozer, with trenchant sarcasm, “can put down their names again’ Mr. Vincent; but for me, and them as stands by me, we ain’t a-going to give in to no such dictation: we ain’t a-going to set up ourselves against the spread of the Gospel, and the credit o’ the connection, and toleration and freedom of conscience, as we’re bound to fight for! If the pastor don’t make hisself agreeable, I can put up with that – I can; but I ain’t a-going to see a clever young man drove away from Salem, and the sittings vacant, and the chapel falling to ruin, and the Church folks a-laughing and a-jeering at us, not for all the deacons in the connection, nor any man in Carlingford. And this I say for myself and for all as stands by me!”

The last sentence was lost in thunders of applause. The “Salem folks” stamped with their feet, knocked the floor with their umbrellas, clapped their hands in a furore of enthusiasm and sympathy. Their pride was appealed to; nobody could bear the imputation of being numbered among the two or three to whom the minister had not paid sufficient attention. All the adherents of the Pigeon party deserted that luck-less family sitting prominent upon their bench, with old Mrs. Tufton at the corner joining as heartily as her over-shoes would permit in the general commotion. There they sat, a pale line of faces, separated, by their looks of dismay and irresponsive silence, from the applauding crowd, cruelly identified as “them as is always ready to dictate.” The occasion was indeed a grand one, had the leader of the opposition been equal to it; but Mrs. Pigeon only sat and stared at the new turn of affairs with a hysterical smile of spite and disappointment fixed on her face. Before the cheers died away, a young man – one of the Young Men’s Christian Association connected with Salem – jumped up on a bench in the midst of the assembly, and clinched the speech of Tozer. He told the admiring meeting that he had been brought up in the connection, but had strayed away into carelessness and neglect – and when he went anywhere at all on Sundays, went to church like one of the common multitude, till Mr. Vincent’s lectures on Church and State opened his eyes, and brought him to better knowledge. Then came another, and another. Mrs. Vincent, sitting on the back seat with her veil over her face, did not hear what they said. The heroic little soul had broken down, and was lost in silent tears, and utterances in her heart of thanksgiving, deeper than words. No comic aspect of the scene appeared to her; she was not moved by its vulgarity or oddity. It was deliverance and safety to the minister’s mother. Her son’s honour and his living were alike safe, and his people had stood by Arthur. She sat for some time longer, lost in that haze of comfort and relief, afraid to move lest perhaps something untoward might still occur to change this happy state of affairs – keen to detect any evil symptom, if such should occur, but unable to follow with any exactness the course of those addresses which still continued to be made in her hearing. She was not quite sure, indeed, whether anybody had spoken after Tozer, when, with a step much less firm than on her entrance, she went forth, wiping the tears that blinded her from under her veil, into the darkness and quiet of the street outside. But she knew that “resolutions” of support and sympathy had been carried by acclamation, and that somebody was deputed from the flock to assure the minister of its approval, and to offer him the new lease of popularity thus won for him in Salem. Mrs. Vincent waited to hear no more. She got up softly and went forth on noiseless, weary feet, which faltered, now that her anxiety was over, with fatigue and agitation. Thankful to the bottom of her heart, yet at the same time doubly worn out with that deliverance, confused with the lights, the noises, and the excitement of the scene, and beginning already to take up her other burden, and to wonder by times, waking up with sharp touches of renewed anguish, how she might find Susan, and whether “any change” had appeared in her other child. It was thus that the great Salem congregational meeting, so renowned in the connection, ended for the minister’s mother. She left them still making speeches when she emerged into Grove Street. The political effect of Tozer’s address, or the influence which his new doctrine might have on the denomination, did not occur to Mrs. Vincent. She was thinking only of Arthur. Not even the darker human misery by her side had power to break through her preoccupation. How the gentle little woman had shaken off that anxious hand which grasped her old black dress, she never knew herself, nor could any one tell; somehow she had done it: alone, as she entered, she went away again – secret, but not clandestine, under that veil of her widowhood. She put it up from her face when she got into the street, and wiped her tears off with a trembling, joyful hand. She could not see her way clearly for those tears of joy. When they were dried, and the crape shadow put back from her face, Mrs. Vincent looked up Grove Street, where her road lay in the darkness, broken by those flickering lamps. It was a windy night, and Dr. Rider’s drag went up past her rapidly, carrying the doctor home from some late visit, and recalling her thoughts to her own patient whom she had left so long. She quickened her tremulous steps as Dr. Rider disappeared in the darkness; but almost before she had got beyond the last echoes of the Salem meeting, that shadow of darker woe and misery than any the poor mother wist of, was again by Mrs. Vincent’s side.

CHAPTER XVII

“YOU are not able to walk so fast,” said Mrs. Hilyard, coming up to the widow as she crossed over to the darker side of Grove Street, just where the house of the Miss Hemmings turned its lighted staircase-window to the street; “and it will not harm you to let me speak to you. Once you offered me your hand, and would have gone with me. It is a long long time ago – ages since – but I remember it. I do not come after you for nothing. Let me speak. You said you were a – a minister’s wife, and knew human nature,” she continued, with a certain pause of reverence, and at the same time a gleam of amusement, varying for a moment the blank and breathless voice in which she had spoken. “I want your advice.”

Mrs. Vincent, who had paused with an uncomfortable sensation of being pursued, recovered herself a little during this address. The minister’s mother had no heart to linger and talk to any one at that moment, after all the excitement of the evening, with her fatigued frame and occupied mind; but still she was the minister’s mother, as ready and prepared as Arthur himself ought to have been, to hear anything that any of the flock might have to say to her, and to give all the benefit of her experience to anybody connected with Salem, who might be in trouble. “I beg your pardon,” said Mrs. Vincent; “my daughter is ill – that is why I was making so much haste; but I am sure, if I can be of any use to any member of – I mean to any of my son’s friends” – she concluded rather abruptly. She did not remember much about this woman, who was strangely unlike the other people in Salem. When was that time in which they had met before? The widow’s mind had been so swept by the whirlwind of events and emotions, that she remembered only dimly how and where it was she had formerly seen her strange companion.

“Your daughter is ill?” said Mrs. Hilyard; “that is how trouble happens to you. You are a good woman; you don’t interfere in God’s business; and this is how your trouble comes. You can nurse her and be about her bed; and when she wakes up, it is to see you and be grateful to you. But my child,” she said, touching the widow’s arm suddenly with her hand, and suppressing painfully a shrill tone of anguish in her voice which would break through, “does not know me. She opens her blue eyes – they are not even my eyes – they are Alice’s eyes, who has no right to my child – and looks at me as if I were a stranger; and for all this time, since I parted with her, I have not heard – I do not know where she is. Hush, hush, hush!” she went on, speaking to herself, “to think that this is me, and that I should break down so at last. A woman has not soul enough to subdue her nerves for ever. But this is not what I wanted to say to you. I gave Miss Smith your son’s address – ”

Having said this, she paused, and looked anxiously at the widow, who looked at her also in the windy gleams of lamplight with more and more perplexity. “Who is Miss Smith?” asked poor Mrs. Vincent. “Who are – you? Indeed, I am very sorry to seem rude; but my mind has been so much occupied. Arthur, of course, would know if he were here, but Susan’s illness has taken up all my thoughts; and – I beg your pardon – she may want me even now,” she continued, quickening her steps. Even the courtesy due to one of the flock had a limit; and the minister’s mother knew it was necessary not to yield too completely to all the demands that her son’s people might make upon her. Was this even one of her son’s people? Such persons were unusual in the connection. Mrs. Vincent, all fatigued, excited, and anxious as she was, felt at her wits’ end.

“Yes, your son would know if he were here; he has taken my parole and trusted me,” said the strange woman; “but a woman’s parole should not be taken. I try to keep it; but unless they come, or I have news – Who am I? I am a woman that was once young and had friends. They married me to a man, who was not a man, but a fine organisation capable of pleasures and cruelties. Don’t speak. You are very good; you are a minister’s wife. You don’t know what it is, when one is young and happy, to find out all at once that life means only so much torture and misery, and so many lies, either done by you or borne by you – what does it matter which? My baby came into the world with a haze on her sweet soul because of that discovery. If it had been but her body!” said Mrs. Vincent’s strange companion, with bitterness. “A dwarfed creature, or deformed, or – But she was beautiful – she is beautiful, as pretty as Alice; and if she lives, she will be rich. Hush, hush! you don’t know what my fears were,” continued Mrs. Hilyard, with a strange humility, once more putting her hand on the widow’s arm. “If he could have got possession of her, how could I tell what he might have done? – killed her – but that would have been dangerous; poisoned what little mind she had left – made her like her mother. I stole her away. Long ago, when I thought she might have been safe with you, I meant to have told you. I stole her out of his power. For a little while she was with me, and he traced us – then I sent the child away. I have not seen her but in glimpses, lest he should find her. It has cost me all I had, and I have lived and worked with my hands,” said the needlewoman of Back Grove Street, lifting her thin fingers to the light and looking at them, pathetic vouchers to the truth of her story. “When he drove me desperate,” she went on, labouring in vain to conceal the panting, long-drawn breath which impeded her utterance, “you know? I don’t talk of that. The child put her arms round that old woman after her mother had saved her. She had not a word, not a word for me, who had done – But it was all for her sake. This is what I have had to suffer. She looked in my face and waved me away from her and said, ‘Susan, Susan!’ Susan meant your daughter – a new friend, a creature whom she had not seen a week before – and no word, no look, no recognition for me!”

“Oh, I am very sorry, very sorry!” said Mrs. Vincent, in her turn taking the poor thin hand with an instinct of consolation. Susan’s name, thus introduced, went to the mother’s heart. She could have wept over the other mother thus complaining, moaning out her troubles in her compassionate ear.

“I left them in a safe place. I came home to fall into your son’s hands. He might have been sure, had it come to that, that no one should have suffered for me” said Mrs. Hilyard, with again a tone of bitterness. “What was my life worth, could any man suppose? And since then I have not heard a word – not a word – whether the child is still where I left her, or whether some of his people have found her – or whether she is ill – or whether – I know nothing, nothing! Have a little pity upon me, you innocent woman! I never asked pity, never sought sympathy before; but a woman can never tell what she may be brought to. I am brought down to the lowest depths. I cannot stand upright any longer,” she cried, with a wailing sigh. “I want somebody – somebody at least to give me a little comfort. Comfort! I remember,” she said, with one of those sudden changes of tone which bewildered Mrs. Vincent, “your son once spoke to me of getting comfort from those innocent young sermons of his. He knows a little better now; he does not sail over the surface now as he used to do in triumph. Life has gone hard with him, as with me and all of us. Tell him, if I get no news I will break my parole. I cannot help myself – a woman’s honour is not her word. I told him so. Say to your son – ”

“My son? what have you to do with my son?” said Mrs. Vincent, with a sudden pang. The poor mother was but a woman too. She did not understand what this connection was. A worn creature, not much younger than herself, what possible tie could bind her to Arthur? The widow, like other women, could believe in any “infatuation” of men; but could not understand any other bond subsisting between these two. The thought went to her heart. Young men had been known before now to be mysteriously attracted by women old, unbeautiful, unlike themselves. Could this be Arthur’s fate? Perhaps it was a danger more dismal than that which he had just escaped in Salem. Mrs. Vincent grew sick at heart. She repeated, with an asperity of which her soft voice might have been thought incapable, “What have you to do with my son?”

Mrs. Hilyard made no answer – perhaps she did not hear the question. Her eyes, always restlessly turning from one object to another, had found out, in the lighted street to which they had now come, a belated postman delivering his last letters. She followed him with devouring looks; he went to Vincent’s door as they approached, delivered something, and passed on into the darkness with a careless whistle. While Mrs. Vincent watched her companion with doubtful and suspicious looks through the veil which, once more among the lights of Grange Street, the minister’s mother had drawn over her face, the unconscious object of her suspicion grasped her arm, and turned to her with beseeching eyes. “It may be news of my child?” she said, with a supplication beyond words. She drew the widow on with the desperation of her anxiety. The little maid had still the letter in her hand when she opened the door. It was not even for Mr. Vincent. It was for the mistress of the house, who had not yet returned from the meeting at Salem. Mrs. Vincent paused upon the threshold, compassionate but determined. She looked at the unhappy woman who stood upon the steps in the light of the lamp, gazing eagerly in at the door, and resolved that she should penetrate no farther; but even in the height of her determination the widow’s heart smote her when she looked at that face, so haggard and worn with passion and anxiety, with its furtive gleaming eyes, and all the dark lines of endurance which were so apparent now, when the tide of emotion had grown too strong to be concealed. “Have you – no – friends in Carlingford?” said the widow, with hesitation and involuntary pity. She could not ask her to enter where, perhaps, her presence might be baleful to Arthur; but the little woman’s tender heart ached, even in the midst of her severity, for the suffering in that face.