Salem Chapel. Volume 1/2

Mr. Vincent did not pause to think whether he ought to disturb the interview which, no doubt, was going on up-stairs. He left himself no time to consider punctilios, or even to think what was right in the matter. He went up with that swell of excitement somehow winging his feet and making his footsteps light. How sweet that low murmur of conversation within as he reached the door? Another moment, and Mrs. Hilyard herself opened it, looking out with some surprise, her dark thin head, in its black lace kerchief, standing out against the bit of shabby drab-coloured wall visible through the opening of the door. A look of surprise for one moment, then a gleam of something like mirth lighted in the dark eyes, and the thin lines about her mouth moved, though no smile came. “It is you, Mr. Vincent? – come in,” she said. “I should not have admitted any other visitor, but you shall come in, as you are my ghostly adviser. Sit down. My dear, this gentleman is my minister and spiritual guide.”

And She, sitting there in all her splendour, casting extraordinary lights of beauty round her upon the mean apartment, perfuming the air and making it musical with that rustle of woman’s robes which had never been out of poor Vincent’s ears since he saw her first; – She lifted her lovely face, smiled, and bowed her beautiful head to the young man, who could have liked to go down on his knees, not to ask anything, but simply to worship. As he dared not do that, he sat down awkwardly upon the chair Mrs. Hilyard pointed to, and said, with embarrassment, that he feared he had chosen a wrong time for his visit, and would return again – but nevertheless did not move from where he was.

“No, indeed; I am very glad to see you. My visitors are not so many, nowadays, that I can afford to turn one from the door because another chooses to come the same day. My dear, you understand Mr. Vincent has had the goodness to take charge of my spiritual affairs,” said the mistress of the room, sitting down, in her dark poor dress, beside her beautiful visitor, and laying her thin hands, still marked with traces of the coarse blue colour which rubbed off her work, and of the scars of the needle, upon the table where that work lay. “Thank heaven that’s a luxury the poorest of us needs not deny herself. I liked your sermon last Sunday, Mr. Vincent. That about the fashion of treating serious things with levity, was meant for me. Oh, I didn’t dislike it, thank you! One is pleased to think one’s self of so much consequence. There are more ways of keeping up one’s amour propre than your way, my lady. Now, don’t you mean to go? You see I cannot possibly unburden my mind to Mr. Vincent while you are here.”

“Did you ever hear anything so rude?” said the beauty, turning graciously to the young minister. “You call me a great lady, and all sorts of things, Rachel; but I never could be as rude as you are, and as you always were as long as I remember.”

“My dear, the height of good-breeding is to be perfectly ill-bred when one pleases,” said Mrs. Hilyard, taking her work upon her knee and putting on her thimble: “but though you are wonderfully pretty, you never had the makings of a thorough fine lady in you. You can’t help trying to please everybody – which, indeed, if there were no women in the world,” added that sharp observer, with a sudden glance at Vincent, who saw the thin lines again move about her mouth, “you might easily do without giving yourself much trouble. Mr. Vincent, if this lady won’t leave us, might I trouble you to talk? For two strains of thought, carried on at the same moment, now that I’m out of society, are too exhausting for me.”

With which speech she gravely pinned her work to her knee, threaded her needle with a long thread of blue cotton, and began her work with the utmost composure, leaving her two visitors in the awkward tête-à-tête position which the presence of a third person, entirely absorbed in her own employment, with eyes and face abstracted, naturally produces. Never in his life had Vincent been so anxious to appear to advantage – never had he been so totally deprived of the use of his faculties. His eager looks, his changing colour, perhaps interceded for him with the beautiful stranger, who was not ignorant of those signs of subjugation which she saw so often.

“I think it was you that were so good as to clear the way for me the last time I was here,” she said, with the sweetest grace, raising those lovely eyes, which put even Tozer beside himself, to the unfortunate pastor’s face. “I remember fancying you must be a stranger here, as I had not seen you anywhere in society. Those wonderful little wretches never seem to come to any harm. They always appear to me to be scrambling among the horses’ feet. Fancy, Rachel, one of those boys who flourish in the back streets, with such rags – oh, such rags! – you could not possibly make them, if you were to try, with scissors – such perfection must come of itself; – had just pushed in before me, and I don’t know what I should have done, if Mr. – (I beg your pardon) – if you had not cleared the way.”

“Mr. Vincent,” said Mrs. Hilyard breaking in upon Vincent’s deprecation. “I am glad to hear you had somebody to help you in such a delicate distress. We poor women can’t afford to be so squeamish. What! are you going away? My dear, be sure you say down-stairs that you brought that poor creature some tea and sugar, and how grateful she was. That explains everything, you know, and does my lady credit at the same time. Good-bye. Well, I’ll kiss you if you insist upon it; but what can Mr. Vincent think to see such an operation performed between us? There! my love, you can make the men do what you like, but you know of old you never could conquer me.”

“Then you will refuse over and over again – and you don’t mind what I say – and you know he’s in Lonsdale, and why he’s there, and all about him – ”

“Hush,” said the dark woman, looking all the darker as she stood in that bright creature’s shadow. “I know, and always will know, wherever he goes, and that he is after evil wherever he goes; and I refuse, and always will refuse – and my darling pretty Alice,” she cried, suddenly going up with rapid vehemence to the beautiful young woman beside her, and kissing once more the delicate rose-cheek to which her own made so great a contrast, “I don’t mind in the least what you say.”

“Ah, Rachel, I don’t understand you,” said Lady Western, looking at her wistfully.

“You never did, my dear; but don’t forget to mention about the tea and sugar as you go down-stairs,” said Mrs. Hilyard, subsiding immediately, not without the usual gleam in her eyes and movement of her mouth, “else it might be supposed you came to have your fortune told, or something like that; and I wish your ladyship bon voyage, and no encounter with ragged boys in your way. Mr. Vincent,” she continued, with great gravity, standing in the middle of the room, when Vincent, trembling with excitement, afraid, with the embarrassing timidity of inferior position, to offer his services, yet chafing in his heart to be obliged to stay, reluctantly closed the door, which he had opened for Lady Western’s exit, “tell me why a young man of your spirit loses such an opportunity of conducting the greatest beauty in Carlingford to her carriage? Suppose she should come across another ragged boy, and faint on the stairs?”

“I should have been only too happy; but as I am not so fortunate as to know Lady Western,” said the young minister, hesitating, “I feared to presume – ”

With an entirely changed aspect his strange companion interrupted him. “Lady Western could not think that any man whom she met in my house presumed in offering her a common civility,” said Mrs. Hilyard, with the air of a duchess, and an imperious gleam out of her dark eyes. Then she recollected herself, gave her startled visitor a comical look, and dropped into her chair, before which that coarsest of poor needlewoman’s work was lying. “My house! it does look like a place to inspire respect, to be sure,” she continued, with a hearty perception of the ludicrous, which Vincent was much too preoccupied to notice. “What fools we all are! but, my dear Mr. Vincent, you are too modest. My Lady Western could not frown upon anybody who honoured her with such a rapt observation. Don’t fall in love with her, I beg of you. If she were merely a flirt, I shouldn’t mind, but out of her very goodness she’s dangerous. She can’t bear to give pain to anybody, which of course implies that she gives double and treble pain when the time comes. There! I’ve warned you; for of course you’ll meet again.”

“Small chance of that,” said Vincent, who had been compelling himself to remain quiet, and restraining his impulse, now that the vision had departed, to rush away out of the impoverished place. “Small chance of that,” he repeated, drawing a long breath, as he listened with intent ears to the roll of the carriage which carried Her away; “society in Carlingford has no room for a poor Dissenting minister.”

“All the better for him,” said Mrs. Hilyard, regarding him with curious looks, and discerning with female acuteness the haze of excitement and incipient passion which surrounded him. “Society’s all very well for people who have been brought up in it; but for a young recluse like you, that don’t know the world, it’s murder. Don’t look affronted. The reason is, you expect too much – twenty times more than anybody ever finds. But you don’t attend to my philosophy. Thinking of your sermon, Mr. Vincent? And how is our friend the butterman? I trust life begins to look more cheerful to you under his advice.”

“Life?” said the preoccupied minister, who was gazing at the spot where that lovely apparition had been; “I find it change its aspects perpetually. You spoke of Lonsdale just now, did you not? Is it possible that you know that little place? My mother and sister live there.”

“I am much interested to know that you have a mother and sister,” said the poor needlewoman before him, looking up with calm, fine-lady impertinence in his face. “But you did not hear me speak of Lonsdale; it was her ladyship who mentioned it. As for me, I interest myself in what is going on close by, Mr. Vincent. I am quite absorbed in the chapel; I want to know how you get on, and all about it. I took that you said on Sunday about levity deeply to heart. I entertain a fond hope that you will see me improve under your ministrations, even though I may never come up to the butterman’s standard. Some people have too high an ideal. If you are as much of an optimist as your respected deacon, I fear it will be ages before I can manage to make you approve of me.”

Vincent’s wandering thoughts were recalled a little by this attack. “I hope,” he said, rousing himself, “that you don’t think me so inexperienced as not to know that you are laughing at me? But indeed I should be glad to believe that the services at the chapel might sometimes perhaps be some comfort to you,” added the young pastor, assuming the dignity of his office. He met his penitent’s eyes at the moment, and faltered, moon-struck as he was, wondering if she saw through and through him, and knew that he was neither thinking of consolation nor of clerical duties, but only of those lingering echoes which, to any ears but his own, were out of hearing. There was little reason to doubt the acute perceptions of that half-amused, half-malicious glance.

“Comfort!” she cried; “what a very strange suggestion to make! Why, all the old churches in all the old ages have offered comfort. I thought you new people had something better to give us; enlightenment,” she said, with a gleam of secret mockery, throwing the word like a stone – “religious freedom, private judgment. Depend upon it, that is the rôle expected from you by the butterman. Comfort! one has that in Rome.”

“You never can have that but in conjunction with truth, and truth is not to be found in Rome,” said Vincent, pricking up his ears at so familiar a challenge.

“We’ll not argue, though you do commit yourself by an assertion,” said Mrs. Hilyard; “but oh, you innocent young man, where is the comfort to come from? Comfort will not let your seats and fill your chapel, even granting that you knew how to communicate it. I prefer to be instructed, for my part. You are just at the age, and in the circumstances, to do that.”

“I fear you still speak in jest,” said the minister, with some doubt, yet a little gratification; “but I shall be only too happy to have been the means of throwing any light to you upon the doctrines of our faith.”

For a moment the dark eyes gleamed with something like laughter. But there was nothing ill-natured in the amusement with which his strange new friend contemplated the young pastor in the depressions and confidences of his youth. She answered with a mock gravity which, at that moment, he was by no means clear-sighted enough to see through.

“Yes,” she said, demurely, “be sure you take advantage of your opportunities, and instruct us as long as you have any faith in instruction. Leave consolation to another time: but you don’t attend to me, Mr. Vincent; come another day: come on Monday, when I shall be able to criticise your sermons, and we shall have no Lady Western to put us out. These beauties are confusing, don’t you think? Only, I entreat you, whatever you do, don’t fall in love with her; and now, since I know you wish it, you may go away.”

Vincent stammered a faint protest as he accepted his dismissal, but rose promptly, glad to be released. Another thought, however, seemed to strike Mrs. Hilyard as she shook hands with him.

“Do your mother and sister in Lonsdale keep a school?” she said. “Nay, pray don’t look affronted. Clergymen’s widows and daughters very often do in the Church. I meant no impertinence in this case. They don’t? well, that is all I wanted to know. I daresay they are not likely to be in the way of dangerous strangers. Good-bye; and you must come again on Monday, when I shall be alone.”

“But – dangerous strangers – may I ask you to explain?” said Vincent, with a little alarm, instinctively recurring to his threatened brother-in-law, and the news which had disturbed his composure that morning before he came out.

“I can’t explain; and you would not be any the wiser,” said Mrs. Hilyard, peremptorily. “Now, good morning. I am glad they don’t keep a school; because, you know,” she added, looking full into his eyes, as if defying him to make any meaning out of her words, “it is very tiresome, tedious work, and wears poor ladies out. There! – good-bye; next day you come I shall be very glad to see you, and we’ll have no fine ladies to put us out.”

Vincent had no resource but to let himself out of the shabby little room which this strange woman inhabited as if it had been a palace. The momentary alarm roused by her last words, and the state of half offence, half interest, into which, notwithstanding his pre-occupation, she had managed to rouse him, died away, however, as he re-entered the poor little street, which was now a road in Fairyland instead of a lane in Carlingford, to his rapt eyes. Golden traces of those celestial wheels surely lingered still upon the way, they still went rolling and echoing over the poor young minister’s heart, which he voluntarily threw down before that heavenly car of Juggernaut. Every other impression faded out of his mind, and the infatuated young man made no effort of resistance, but hugged the enchanted chain. He had seen Her – spoken with Her – henceforward was of her acquaintance. He cast reason to the winds, and probability, and every convention of life. Did anybody suppose that all the world leagued against him could prevent him from seeing her again? He went home with an unspeakable elation, longing, and excitement, and at the same time with a vain floating idea in his mind that, thus inspired, no height of eloquence was impossible to him, and that triumph of every kind was inevitable. He went home, and got his writing-desk, and plunged into his lecture, nothing doubting that he could transfer to his work that glorious tumult of his thoughts; and, with his paper before him, wrote three words, and sat three hours staring into the roseate air, and dreaming dreams as wild as any Arabian tale. Such was the first effort of that chance encounter, in which the personages were not Lady Western and the poor Dissenting minister, but Beauty and Love, perennial hero and heroine of the romance that never ends.

CHAPTER VI

IT was only two days after this eventful meeting that Vincent, idling and meditative as was natural in such a condition of mind, strayed into Masters’s shop to buy some books. It would have been difficult for him to have explained why he went there, except, perhaps, because it was the last place in the world which his masters at the chapel would have advised him to enter. For there was another bookseller in the town, an evangelical man, patronised by Mr. Bury, the whilom rector, where all the Tract Society’s publications were to be had, not to speak of a general range of literature quite wide enough for the minister of Salem. Masters’s was a branch of the London Master's, and, as might be supposed, was equally amazed and indignant at the intrusion of a Dissenter among its consecrated book-shelves. He was allowed to turn over all the varieties of the ‘Christian Year’ on a side-table before any of the attendants condescended to notice his presence; and it proved so difficult to find the books he wanted, and so much more difficult to find anybody who would take the trouble of looking for them, that the young Nonconformist, who was sufficiently ready to take offence, began to get hot and impatient, and had all but strode out of the shop, with a new mortification to record to the disadvantage of Carlingford. But just as he began to get very angry, the door swung softly open, and a voice became audible, lingering, talking to somebody before entering. Vincent stopped speaking, and stared in the shopman’s astonished face when these tones came to his ear. He fell back instantly upon the side-table and the ‘Christian Year,’ forgetting his own business, and what he had been saying – forgetting everything except that She was there, and that in another moment they would stand again within the same walls. He bent over the much-multiplied volume with a beating heart, poising in one hand a tiny miniature copy just made to slip within the pocket of an Anglican waistcoat, and in the other the big red-leaved and morocco-bound edition, as if weighing their respective merits – put beside himself, in fact, if the truth must be told, oblivious of his errand, his position – of everything but the fact that She was at the door. She came in with a sweet flutter and rustle of sound, a perfumed air entering with her, as the unsuspected enthusiast thought, and began to lavish smiles, for which he would have given half his life, upon the people of the place, who flew to serve her. She had her tablets in her hand, with a list of what she wanted, and held up a dainty forefinger as she stood reading the items. As one thing after another was mentioned, Masters and his men darted off in search of it. There were fortunately enough to give each of them a separate errand, and the principal ranged his shining wares upon the counter before her, and bathed in her smiles, while all his satellites kept close at hand, listening with all their ears for another commission. Blessed Masters! happy shopmen! that one who looked so blank when Vincent stopped short at the sound of her voice and stared at him, had forgotten all about Vincent. She was there; and if a little impromptu litany would have pleased her ladyship, it is probable that it could have been got up on the spot after the best models, and that even the Nonconformist would have waived his objections to liturgical worship and led the responses. But Masters’s establishment offered practical homage – only the poor Dissenting minister, divided between eagerness and fear, stood silent, flushed with excitement, turning wistful looks upon her, waiting till perhaps she might turn round and see him, and letting fall out of his trembling fingers those unregarded editions of the Anglican lyre.

“And two copies of the ‘Christian Year,’” said Lady Western, suddenly. “Oh, thank you so much! but I know they are all on the side-table, and I shall go and look at them. Not the very smallest copy, Mr. Masters, and not that solemn one with the red edges; something pretty, with a little ornament and gilding: they are for two little protegées of mine. Oh, here is exactly what I want! another one like this, please. How very obliging all your people are,” said her ladyship, benignly, as the nearest man dashed off headlong to bring what she wanted – “but I think it is universal in Carlingford; and indeed the manners of our country people in general have improved very much of late. Don’t you think so? oh, there can’t be a question about it!”

“I beg your ladyship’s pardon, I am sure; but perhaps, my lady, it is not safe to judge the general question from your ladyship’s point of view,” said the polite bookseller, with a bow.

“Oh, pray don’t say so; I should be wretched if I thought you took more trouble for me than for other people,” said the young Dowager, with a sweetness which filled Vincent’s heart with jealous pangs. She was close by his side – so close that those sacred robes rustled in his very ear, and her shawl brushed his sleeve. The poor young man took off his hat in a kind of ecstasy. If she did not notice him, what did it matter? – silent adoration, speechless homage, could not affront a queen.

And it was happily very far from affronting Lady Western. She turned round with a little curiosity, and looked up in his face. “Oh, Mr. – Mr. Vincent,” cried the beautiful creature, brightening in recognition. “How do you do? I suppose you are a resident in Carlingford now, are not you? Pardon me, that I did not see you when I came in. How very, very good it is of you to go and see my – my friend! Did you ever see anything so dreadful as the place where she lives? and isn’t she an extraordinary creature? Thank you, Mr. Masters; that’s exactly what I want. I do believe she might have been Lord Chancellor, or something, if she had not been a woman,” said the enchantress, once more lifting her lovely eyes with an expression of awe to Vincent’s face.

“She seems a very remarkable person,” said Vincent. “To see her where she is, makes one feel how insignificant are the circumstances of life.”

“Really! now, how do you make out that?” said Lady Western; “for, to tell the truth, I think, when I see her, oh, how important they are! and that I’d a great deal rather die than live so. But you clever people take such strange views of things. Now tell me how you make that out?”

“Nay,” said Vincent, lowering his voice with a delicious sense of having a subject to be confidential upon, “you know what conditions of existence all her surroundings imply; yet the most ignorant could not doubt for a moment her perfect superiority to them – a superiority so perfect,” he added, with a sudden insight which puzzled even himself, “that it is not necessary to assert it.”

“Oh, to be sure,” said Lady Western, colouring a little, and with a momentary hauteur, “of course a Russell – I mean a gentlewoman – must always look the same to a certain extent; but, alas! I am only a very commonplace little woman,” continued the beauty, brightening into those smiles which perhaps might be distributed too liberally, but which intoxicated for the moment every man on whom they fell. “I think those circumstances which you speak of so disrespectfully are everything! I have not a great soul to triumph over them. I should break down, or they would overcome me – oh, you need not shake your head! I know I am right so far as I myself am concerned.”

“Indeed I cannot think so,” said the intoxicated young man; “you would make any circumstances – ”

“What?”

But the bewildered youth made no direct reply. He only gazed at her, grew very red, and said, suddenly, “I beg your pardon,” stepping back in confusion, like the guilty man he was. The lady blushed, too, as her inquiring eyes met that unexpected response. Used as she was to adoration, she felt the silent force of the compliment withheld – it was a thousand times sweeter in its delicate suggestiveness and reserve of incense than any effusion of words. They were both a little confused for the moment, poor Vincent’s momentary betrayal of himself having somehow suddenly dissipated the array of circumstances which surrounded and separated two persons so far apart from each other in every conventional aspect. The first to regain her place and composure was of course Lady Western, who made him a pretty playful curtsy, and broke into a low, sweet ring of laughter.