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Salem Chapel, v. 1/2

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Title: Salem Chapel, v. 1/2

Author: Mrs. Oliphant


        
Release date: February 4, 2013 [eBook #42013]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SALEM CHAPEL, V. 1/2 ***
                               COLLECTION

                                   OF

                            BRITISH AUTHORS

                           TAUCHNITZ EDITION.

                               VOL. 1091.

                     SALEM CHAPEL BY MRS. OLIPHANT.

                            IN TWO VOLUMES.

                                VOL. I.

                           TAUCHNITZ EDITION.

By the same Author,

THE LAST OF THE MORTIMERS               2 vols.

MARGARET MAITLAND                       1 vol.

AGNES                                   2 vols.

MADONNA MARY                            2 vols.

THE MINISTER'S WIFE                     2 vols.

THE RECTOR AND THE DOCTOR'S FAMILY      1 vol.





                       Chronicles of Carlingford

                              SALEM CHAPEL

                                   BY

                             MRS. OLIPHANT.

                          _COPYRIGHT EDITION._

                            IN TWO VOLUMES.

                                VOL. I.

                                LEIPZIG

                           BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ

                                 1870.

               _The Right of Translation is reserved._




                            SALEM CHAPEL.




CHAPTER I.


Towards the west end of Grove Street, in Carlingford, on the shabby side
of the street, stood a red brick building, presenting a pinched gable
terminated by a curious little belfry, not intended for any bell, and
looking not unlike a handle to lift up the edifice by to the public
observation. This was Salem Chapel, the only Dissenting place of worship
in Carlingford. It stood in a narrow strip of ground, just as the little
houses which flanked it on either side stood in their gardens, except
that the enclosure of the chapel was flowerless and sombre, and showed
at the farther end a few sparsely-scattered tombstones--unmeaning slabs,
such as the English mourner loves to inscribe his sorrow on. On either
side of this little tabernacle were the humble houses--little detached
boxes, each two storeys high, each fronted by a little flower-plot--clean,
respectable, meagre, little habitations, which contributed most largely
to the ranks of the congregation in the Chapel. The big houses opposite,
which turned their backs and staircase windows to the street, took
little notice of the humble Dissenting community. Twice in the winter,
perhaps, the Miss Hemmings, mild evangelical women, on whom the late
rector--the Low-Church rector, who reigned before the brief and
exceptional incumbency of the Rev. Mr. Proctor--had bestowed much of his
confidence, would cross the street, when other profitable occupations
failed them, to hear a special sermon on a Sunday evening. But the Miss
Hemmings were the only representatives of anything which could, by the
utmost stretch, be called Society, who ever patronised the Dissenting
interest in the town of Carlingford. Nobody from Grange Lane had ever
been seen so much as in Grove Street on a Sunday, far less in the
chapel. Greengrocers, dealers in cheese and bacon, milkmen, with some
dressmakers of inferior pretensions, and teachers of day-schools of
similar humble character, formed the _élite_ of the congregation. It is
not to be supposed, however, on this account, that a prevailing aspect
of shabbiness was upon this little community; on the contrary, the grim
pews of Salem Chapel blushed with bright colours, and contained both
dresses and faces on the summer Sundays which the Church itself could
scarcely have surpassed. Nor did those unadorned walls form a centre of
asceticism and gloomy religiousness in the cheerful little town.
Tea-meetings were not uncommon occurrences in Salem--tea-meetings which
made the little tabernacle festive, in which cakes and oranges were
diffused among the pews, and funny speeches made from the little
platform underneath the pulpit, which woke the unconsecrated echoes with
hearty outbreaks of laughter. Then the young people had their
singing-class, at which they practised hymns, and did not despise a
little flirtation; and charitable societies and missionary auxiliaries
diversified the congregational routine, and kept up a brisk succession
of "Chapel business," mightily like the Church business which occupied
Mr. Wentworth and his Sisters of Mercy at St. Roque's. To name the two
communities, however, in the same breath, would have been accounted
little short of sacrilege in Carlingford. The names which figured
highest in the benevolent lists of Salem Chapel, were known to society
only as appearing, in gold letters, upon the backs of those mystic
tradesmen's books, which were deposited every Monday in little heaps at
every house in Grange Lane. The Dissenters, on their part, aspired to no
conquests in the unattainable territory of high life, as it existed in
Carlingford. They were content to keep their privileges among
themselves, and to enjoy their superior preaching and purity with a
compassionate complacence. While Mr. Proctor was rector, indeed, Mr.
Tozer, the butterman, who was senior deacon, found it difficult to
refrain from an audible expression of pity for the "Church folks" who
knew no better; but, as a general rule, the congregation of Salem kept
by itself, gleaning new adherents by times at an "anniversary" or the
coming of a new minister, but knowing and keeping "its own place" in a
manner edifying to behold.

Such was the state of affairs when old Mr. Tufton declined in
popularity, and impressed upon the minds of his hearers those
now-established principles about the unfitness of old men for any
important post, and the urgent necessity and duty incumbent upon old
clergymen, old generals, old admirals, &c.--every aged functionary,
indeed, except old statesmen--to resign in favour of younger men, which
have been, within recent years, so much enforced upon the world. To
communicate this opinion to the old minister was perhaps less difficult
to Mr. Tozer and his brethren than it might have been to men more
refined and less practical; but it was an undeniable relief to the
managers of the chapel when grim Paralysis came mildly in and gave the
intimation in the manner least calculated to wound the sufferer's
feelings. Mild but distinct was that undeniable warning. The poor old
minister retired, accordingly, with a purse and a presentation, and
young Arthur Vincent, fresh from Homerton, in the bloom of hope and
intellectualism, a young man of the newest school, was recognised as
pastor in his stead.

A greater change could not possibly have happened. When the interesting
figure of the young minister went up the homely pulpit-stairs, and
appeared, white-browed, white-handed, in snowy linen and glossy clerical
apparel, where old Mr. Tufton, spiritual but homely, had been wont to
impend over the desk and exhort his beloved brethren, it was natural
that a slight rustle of expectation should run audibly through the
audience. Mr. Tozer looked round him proudly to note the sensation, and
see if the Miss Hemmings, sole representatives of a cold and unfeeling
aristocracy, were there. The fact was, that few of the auditors were
more impressed than the Miss Hemmings, who _were_ there, and who talked
all the evening after about the young minister. What a sermon it was!
not much in it about the beloved brethren; nothing very stimulating,
indeed, to the sentiments and affections, except in the youth and good
looks of the preacher, which naturally made a more distinct impression
upon the female portion of his hearers than on the stronger sex. But
then what eloquence! what an amount of thought! what an honest entrance
into all the difficulties of the subject! Mr. Tozer remarked afterwards
that such preaching was food for _men_. It was too closely reasoned out,
said the excellent butterman, to please women or weak-minded persons:
but he did not doubt, for his part, that soon the young men of
Carlingford, the hope of the country, would find their way to Salem. Under
such prognostications, it was fortunate that the young minister
possessed something else besides close reasoning and Homerton eloquence
to propitiate the women too.

Mr. Vincent arrived at Carlingford in the beginning of winter, when
society in that town was reassembling, or at least reappearing, after
the temporary summer seclusion. The young man knew very little of the
community which he had assumed the spiritual charge of. He was almost as
particular as the Rev. Mr. Wentworth of St. Roque's about the cut of his
coat and the precision of his costume, and decidedly preferred the word
clergyman to the word minister, which latter was universally used by his
flock; but notwithstanding these trifling predilections, Mr. Vincent,
who had been brought up upon the 'Nonconformist' and the 'Eclectic
Review,' was strongly impressed with the idea that the Church
Establishment, though outwardly prosperous, was in reality a profoundly
rotten institution; that the Nonconforming portion of the English public
was the party of progress; that the eyes of the world were turned upon
the Dissenting interest; and that his own youthful eloquence and the
Voluntary principle were quite enough to counterbalance all the
ecclesiastical advantages on the other side, and make for himself a
position of the highest influence in his new sphere. As he walked about
Carlingford making acquaintance with the place, it occurred to the young
man, with a thrill of not ungenerous ambition, that the time might
shortly come when Salem Chapel would be all too insignificant for the
Nonconformists of this hitherto torpid place. He pictured to himself
how, by-and-by, those jealous doors in Grange Lane would fly open at his
touch, and how the dormant minds within would awake under his influence.
It was a blissful dream to the young pastor. Even the fact that Mr.
Tozer was a butterman, and the other managers of the chapel equally
humble in their pretensions, did not disconcert him in that flush of
early confidence. All he wanted--all any man worthy of his post
wanted--was a spot of standing-ground, and an opportunity of making the
Truth--and himself--known. Such, at least, was the teaching of Homerton
and the Dissenting organs. Young Vincent, well educated and enlightened
according to his fashion, was yet so entirely unacquainted with any
world but that contracted one in which he had been brought up, that he
believed all this as devoutly as Mr. Wentworth believed in Anglicanism,
and would have smiled with calm scorn at any sceptic who ventured to
doubt. Thus it will be seen he came to Carlingford with elevated
expectations--by no means prepared to circulate among his flock, and say
grace at Mrs. Tozer's "teas," and get up _soirees_ to amuse the
congregation, as Mr. Tufton had been accustomed to do. These secondary
circumstances of his charge had little share in the new minister's
thoughts. Somehow the tone of public writing has changed of late days.
Scarcely a newspaper writer condescends now to address men who are not
free of "society," and learned in all its ways. The 'Times' and the
Magazines take it for granted that all their readers dine out at
splendid tables, and are used to a solemn attendant behind their chair.
Young Vincent was one of those who accept the flattering implication. It
is true, he saw few enough of such celestial scenes in his college-days.
But now that life was opening upon him, he doubted nothing of the
society that must follow; and with a swell of gratification listened
when the advantages of Carlingford were discussed by some chance
fellow-travellers on the railway; its pleasant parties--its nice
people--Mr. Wodehouse's capital dinners, and the charming
breakfasts--such a delightful novelty!--so easy and agreeable!--of the
pretty Lady Western, the young dowager. In imagination Mr. Vincent saw
himself admitted to all these social pleasures; not that he cared for
capital dinners more than became a young man, or had any special
tendencies towards tuft-hunting, but because fancy and hope, and
ignorance of the real world, made him naturally project himself into
the highest sphere within his reach, in the simple conviction that such
was his natural place.

With these thoughts, to be asked to Mrs. Tozer's to tea at six o'clock,
was the most wonderful cold plunge for the young man. He shrugged his
shoulders, smiled to himself over the note of invitation, which,
however, was very prettily written by Phoebe, Mrs. Tozer's blooming
daughter, on paper as pink as Lady Western's, and consented, as he could
not help himself. He went out from his nice lodgings a little after six,
still smiling, and persuading himself that this would be quite a
pleasant study of manners, and that of course he could not do less than
patronise the good homely people in their own way, whatever that might
be. Mr. Vincent's rooms were in George Street, at what the Grange Lane
people called _the other end_, in an imposing house with a large door,
and iron extinguishers fixed in the railing, which had in their day
quenched the links of the last century. To cross the street in his
evening coat, and walk into the butter-shop, where the two white-aproned
lads behind the counter stared, and a humble member of the congregation
turned sharply round, and held out the hand, which had just clutched a
piece of bacon, for her minister to shake, was a sufficiently trying
introduction to the evening's pleasure; but when the young pastor had
been ushered up-stairs, the first aspect of the company there rather
took away his breath, as he emerged from the dark staircase. Tozer
himself, who awaited the minister at the door, was fully habited in the
overwhelming black suit and white tie, which produced so solemnising an
effect every Sunday at chapel; and the other men of the party were, with
a few varieties, similarly attired. But the brilliancy of the female
portion of the company overpowered Mr. Vincent. Mrs. Tozer herself sat
at the end of her hospitable table, with all her best china tea-service
set out before her, in a gown and cap which Grange Lane could not have
furnished any rivals to. The brilliant hue of the one, and the flowers
and feathers of the other, would require a more elaborate description
than this chronicle has space for. Nor indeed in the particular of dress
did Mrs. Tozer do more than hold her own among the guests who surrounded
her. It was scarcely dark, and the twilight softened down the splendours
of the company, and saved the dazzled eyes of the young pastor. He felt
the grandeur vaguely as he came in with a sense of reproof, seeing that
he had evidently been waited for. He said grace devoutly when the tea
arrived and the gas was lighted, and with dumb amaze gazed round him.
Could these be the veritable womankind of Salem Chapel? Mr. Vincent saw
bare shoulders and flower-wreathed heads bending over the laden
tea-table. He saw pretty faces and figures not inelegant, remarkable
among which was Miss Phoebe's, who had written him that pink note, and
who herself was pink all over--dress, shoulders, elbows, cheeks, and
all. Pink--not red--a softened youthful flush, which was by no means
unbecoming to the plump full figure which had not an angle anywhere. As
for the men, the lawful owners of all this feminine display, they
huddled all together, indisputable cheesemongers as they were, quite
transcended and extinguished by their wives and daughters. The pastor
was young and totally inexperienced. In his heart he asserted his own
claim to an entirely different sphere; but, suddenly cast into this
little crowd, Mr. Vincent's inclination was to join the dark group of
husbands and fathers whom he knew, and who made no false pretences. He
was shy of venturing upon those fine women, who surely never could be
Mrs. Brown of the Devonshire Dairy, and Mrs. Pigeon, the poulterer's
wife; whereas Pigeon and Brown themselves were exactly like what they
always were on Sundays, if not perhaps a trifle graver and more
depressed in their minds.

"Here's a nice place for you, Mr. Vincent--quite the place for you,
where you can hear all the music, and see all the young ladies. For I do
suppose ministers, bein' young, are like other young men," said Mrs.
Tozer, drawing aside her brilliant skirts to make room for him on the
sofa. "I have a son myself as is at college, and feel motherlike to
those as go in the same line. Sit you down comfortable, Mr. Vincent.
There ain't one here, sir, I'm proud to say, as grudges you the best
seat."

"Oh, mamma, how could you think of saying such a thing!" said Phoebe,
under her breath; "to be sure, Mr. Vincent never could think there was
anybody anywhere that would be so wicked--and he the minister."

"Indeed, my dear," said Mrs. Pigeon, who was close by, "not to affront
Mr. Vincent, as is deserving of our best respects, I've seen many and
many's the minister I wouldn't have given up my seat to; and I don't
misdoubt, sir, you've heard of such as well as we. There was Mr. Bailey
at Parson's Green, now. He went and married a poor bit of a governess,
as common a looking creature as you could see, that set herself up above
the people, Mr. Vincent, and was too grand, sir, if you'll believe me,
to visit the deacons' wives. Nobody cares less than me about them vain
shows. What's visiting, if you know the vally of your time? Nothing but
a laying up of judgment. But I wouldn't be put upon neither by a chit
that got her bread out of me and my husband's hard earnins; and so I
told my sister, Mrs. Tozer, as lives at Parson's Green."

"Poor thing!" said the gentler Mrs. Tozer, "it's hard lines on a
minister's wife to please the congregation. Mr. Vincent here, he'll have
to take a lesson. That Mrs. Bailey was pretty-looking, I must allow----"

"Sweetly pretty!" whispered Phoebe, clasping her plump pink hands.

"Pretty-looking! I don't say anything against it," continued her mother;
"but it's hard upon a minister when his wife won't take no pains to
please his flock. To have people turn up their noses at you ain't
pleasant----"

"And them getting their livin' off you all the time," cried Mrs. Pigeon,
clinching the milder speech.

"But it seems to me," said poor Vincent, "that a minister can no more
be said to get his living off you than any other man. He works hard
enough generally for what little he has. And really, Mrs. Tozer, I'd
rather not hear all these unfortunate particulars about one of my
brethren----"

"He ain't one of the brethren now," broke in the poulterer's wife. "He's
been gone out o' Parson's Green this twelvemonths. Them stuck-up ways
may do with the Church folks as can't help themselves, but they'll never
do with us Dissenters. Not that we ain't as glad as can be to see you,
Mr. Vincent, and I hope you'll favour my poor house another night like
you're favouring Mrs. Tozer's. Mr. Tufton always said that was the
beauty of Carlingford in our connection. Cheerful folks and no display.
No display, you know--nothing but a hearty meetin', sorry to part, and
happy to meet again. Them's our ways. And the better you know us, the
better you'll like us, I'll be bound to say. We don't put it all on the
surface, Mr. Vincent," continued Mrs. Pigeon, shaking out her skirts and
expanding herself on her chair, "but it's all real and solid; what we
say we mean--and we don't say no more than we mean--and them's the kind
of folks to trust to wherever you go."

Poor Vincent made answer by an inarticulate murmur, whether of assent or
dissent it was impossible to say; and, inwardly appalled, turned his
eyes towards his deacons, who, more fortunate than himself, were
standing all in a group together discussing chapel matters, and wisely
leaving general conversation to the fairer portion of the company. The
unlucky minister's secret looks of distress awoke the interest and
sympathy of Phoebe, who sat in an interesting manner on a stool at her
mother's side. "Oh, mamma," said that young lady, too bashful to address
himself directly, "I wonder if Mr. Vincent plays or sings? There are
some such nice singers here. Perhaps we might have some music, if Mr.
Vincent----"

"I don't perform at all," said that victim,--"not in any way; but I am
an exemplary listener. Let me take you to the piano."

The plump Phoebe rose after many hesitations, and, with a simper and a
blush and pretty air of fright, took the minister's arm. After all, even
when the whole company is beneath a man's level, it is easier to play
the victim under the _supplice_ inflicted by a pretty girl than by two
mature matrons. Phoebe understood pretty well about her _h_'s, and did
not use the double negative; and when she rose up rustling from her low
seat, the round, pink creature, with dimples all about her, was not an
unpleasant object of contemplation. Mr. Vincent listened to her song
with decorous interest. Perhaps it was just as well sung as Lucy
Wodehouse, in Grange Lane, would have sung it. When Phoebe had
concluded, the minister was called to the side of Mrs. Brown of the
Devonshire Dairy, who had been fidgeting to secure him from the moment
he approached the piano. She was fat and roundabout, good woman, and had
the aspect of sitting upon the very edge of her chair. She held out to
the distressed pastor a hand covered with a rumpled white glove, which
did not fit, and had never been intended to fit, and beckoned to him
anxiously. With the calmness of despair Mr. Vincent obeyed the call.

"I have been looking so anxious to catch your eye, Mr. Vincent," said
Mrs. Brown; "do sit you down, now there's a chance, and let me talk to
you a minnit. Bless the girl! there's Miss Polly Pigeon going to play,
and everybody can use their freedom in talking. For my part," said Mrs.
Brown, securing the vacant chair of the performer for her captive,
"that's why I like instrumental music best. When a girl sings, why, to
be sure, it's only civil to listen--ain't it now, Mr. Vincent? but
nobody expects it of you, don't you see, when she only plays. Now do you
sit down. What I wanted to speak to you was about that poor creetur in
Back Grove Street--that's the lane right behind the chapel. She do
maunder on so to see the minister. Mr. Tozer he's been to see her, and I
sent Brown, but it wasn't a bit of use. It's you, Mr. Vincent, she's
awanting of. If you'll call in to-morrow, I'll show you the place
myself, as you're a stranger; for if you'll excuse me saying it, I am as
curious as can be to hear what she's got to say."

"If she has got anything to say, she might prefer that it was not
heard," said Vincent, with an attempt at a smile. "Is she ill--and who
is she? I have never heard of her before."

"Well, you see, sir, she doesn't belong rightly to Salem. She's a
stranger here, and not a joined member; and she ain't ill either, as I
can see--only something on her mind. You ministers," said Mrs. Brown,
with a look of awe, "must have a deal of secrets confided to you. Folks
may stand out against religion as long as things go on straight with
them, but they're sure to want the minister as soon as they've got
something on their mind; and a deal better to have it out, and get a
little comfort, than to bottle it all up till their latter end, like old
Mrs. Thompson, and let it out in their will, to drive them as was
expecting different distracted. It's a year or two since that happened.
I don't suppose you've heerd tell of it yet. But that's what makes old
Mrs. Christian--I dare to say you've seen her at chapel--so
uncomfortable in her feelins. She's never got over it, sir, and never
will to her dying day."

"Some disappointment about money?" said Mr. Vincent.

"Poor old folks! their daughter did very well for herself--and very well
for them too," said Mrs. Brown; "but it don't make no difference in Mrs.
Christian's feelins: they're living, like, on Mr. Brown the solicitor's
charity, you see, sir, instead of their own fortin, which makes a deal
o' difference. It would have been a fine thing for Salem too," added
Mrs. Brown, reflectively, "if they had had the old lady's money; for
Mrs. Christian was always one that liked to be first, and stanch to her
chapel, and would never have been wanting when the collecting-books went
round. But it wasn't to be, Mr. Vincent--that's the short and the long
of it; and we never have had nobody in our connection worth speaking of
in Carlingford but's been in trade. And a very good thing too, as I tell
Brown. For if there's one thing I can't abear in a chapel, it's one set
setting up above the rest. But bein' all in the way of business, except
just the poor folks, as is all very well in their place, and never
interferes with nothing, and don't count, there's nothing but brotherly
love here, which is a deal more than most ministers can say for their
flocks. I've asked a few friends to tea, Mr. Vincent, on next Thursday,
at six. As I haven't got no daughters just out of a boarding-school to
write notes for me, will you take us in a friendly way, and just come
without another invitation? All our own folks, sir, and a comfortable
evening; and prayers, if you'll _be_ so good, at the end. I don't like
the new fashion," said Mrs. Brown, with a significant glance towards
Mrs. Tozer, "of separatin' like heathens, when all's of one connection.
We might never meet again, Mr. Vincent. In the midst of life, you know,
sir. You'll not forget Thursday, at six."

"But, my dear Mrs. Brown, I am very sorry: Thursday is one of the days I
have specially devoted to study," stammered forth the unhappy pastor.
"What with the Wednesday meeting and the Friday committee----"

Mrs. Brown drew herself up as well as the peculiarities of her form
permitted, and her roseate countenance assumed a deeper glow. "We've
been in the chapel longer than Tozer," said the offended deaconess.
"We've never been backward, in takin' trouble, nor spendin' our
substance, nor puttin' our hands to every good work; and as for makin' a
difference between one member and another, it's what we ain't been
accustomed to, Mr. Vincent. I'm a plain woman, and speak my mind. Old
Mr. Tufton was very particular to show no preference. He always said, it
never answered in a flock to show more friendship to one nor another;
and if it had been put to me, I wouldn't have said, I assure you, sir,
that it was us as was to be made the first example of. If I haven't a
daughter fresh out of a boarding-school, I've been a member of Salem
five-and-twenty year, and had ministers in my house many's the day, and
as friendly as if I were a duchess; and for charities and such things,
we've never been known to fail, though I say it; and as for trouble----"

"But I spoke of my study," said the poor minister, as she paused, her
indignation growing too eloquent for words: "you want me to preach on
Sunday, don't you? and I must have some time, you know, to do my work."

"Sir," said Mrs. Brown, severely, "I know it for a fact that Mr.
Wentworth of St. Roque's dines out five days in the week, and it don't
do _his_ sermons no injury; and when you go out to dinner, it stands to
reason it's a different thing from a friendly tea."

"Ah, yes, most likely!" said Mr. Vincent, with a heavy sigh. "I'll come,
since you wish it so much; but," added the unlucky young man, with a
melancholy attempt at a smile, "you must not be too kind to me. Too much
of this kind of thing, you know, might have an effect----" Here he
paused, inclined to laugh at his own powers of sarcasm. As chance would
have it, as he pointed generally to the scene before them, the little
wave of his hand seemed to Mrs. Brown to indicate the group round the
piano, foremost in which was Phoebe, plump and pink, and full of
dimples. The good mistress of the Devonshire Dairy gave her head a
little toss.

"Ah!" said Mrs. Brown, with a sigh, "you don't know, you young men, the
half of the tricks of them girls that look so innocent. But I don't deny
it's a pleasant party," added the deaconess, looking round on the
company in general with some complacency. "But just you come along our
way on Thursday, at six, and judge for yourself if mine ain't quite as
good; though I have not got no daughters, Mr. Vincent," she concluded,
with severe irony, elevating her double chin and nodding her flowery
head.

The subdued minister made no reply; only deeper and deeper humiliation
seemed in store for him. Was it he, the first prize-man of Homerton, who
was supposed to be already smitten by the pink charms of Phoebe Tozer?
The unfortunate young man groaned in spirit, and, seizing a sudden
opportunity, plunged into the black group of deacons, and tried to
immerse himself in chapel business. But vain was the attempt. He was
recaptured and led back in triumph to Mrs. Tozer's sofa. He had to
listen to more singing, and accept another invitation to tea. When he
got off at last, it was with a sensation of dreadful dwindlement that
poor Vincent crossed the street again to his lonely abode. He knocked
quite humbly at the big door, and, with a sensation of unclerical rage,
wondered to himself whether the policeman who met him knew he had been
out to tea. Ah, blessed Mr. Wentworth of St. Roque's! The young
Nonconformist sighed as he put on his slippers, and kicked his boots
into a corner of his sitting-room. Somehow he had come down in the world
all at once, and without expecting it. Such was Salem Chapel and its
requirements: and such was Mr. Vincent's first experience of social life
in Carlingford.




CHAPTER II.


It was with a somewhat clouded aspect that the young pastor rose from
his solitary breakfast-table next morning to devote himself to the
needful work of visiting his flock. The minister's breakfast, though
lonely, had not been without alleviations. He had the "Carlingford
Gazette" at his elbow, if that was any comfort, and he had two letters
which were more interesting; one was from his mother, a minister's
widow, humbly enough off, but who had brought up her son in painful
gentility, and had done much to give him that taste for good society
which was to come to so little fruition in Carlingford. Mr. Vincent
smiled sardonically as he read his good mother's questions about his
"dear people," and her anxious inquiry whether he had found a "pleasant
circle" in Salem. Remembering the dainty little household which it took
her so much pains and pinching to maintain, the contrast made present
affairs still more and more distasteful to her son. He could fancy her
trim little figure in that traditionary black silk gown which never wore
out, and the whitest of caps, gazing aghast at Mrs. Brown and Mrs.
Tozer. But, nevertheless, Mrs. Vincent understood all about Mrs. Brown
and Mrs. Tozer, and had been very civil to such, and found them very
serviceable in her day, though her son, who knew her only in that
widowed cottage where she had her own way, could not have realised it.
The other letter was from a Homerton chum, a young intellectual and
ambitious Nonconformist like himself, whose epistle was full of
confidence and hope, triumph in the cause, and its perpetual advance.
"We are the priests of the poor," said the Homerton enthusiast,
encouraging his friend to the sacrifices and struggles which he presumed
to be already surrounding him. Mr. Vincent bundled up this letter with a
sigh. Alas! there were no grand struggles or sacrifices in Carlingford.
"The poor" were mostly church-goers, as he had already discovered. It
was a tolerably comfortable class of the community, that dreadful
"connection" of Browns, Pigeons, and Tozers. Amid their rude luxuries
and commonplace plenty, life could have no heroic circumstances. The
young man sighed, and did not feel so sure as he once did of the grand
generalities in which his friend was still confident. If Dissenters led
the van of progress generally, there was certainly an exception to be
made in respect to Carlingford. And the previous evening's entertainment
had depressed the young minister's expectations even of what he himself
could do--a sad blow to a young man. He was less convinced that
opportunity of utterance was all that was necessary to give him
influence in the general community. He was not half so sure of success
in opening the closed doors and sealed hearts of Grange Lane. On the
whole, matters looked somewhat discouraging that particular morning,
which was a morning in October, not otherwise depressing or
disagreeable. He took his hat and went down-stairs with a kind of
despairing determination to do his duty. There an encounter occurred
which did not raise his spirits. The door was open, and his landlady,
who was a member of Salem Chapel, stood there in full relief against the
daylight outside, taking from the hands of Miss Phoebe Tozer a little
basket, the destination of which she was volubly indicating. Mr. Vincent
appearing before Phoebe had half concluded her speech, that young lady
grew blushingly embarrassed, and made haste to relinquish her hold of
the basket. Her conscious looks filled the unwitting minister with
ignorant amaze.

"Oh, to think Mr. Vincent should catch me here! What ever will he think?
and what ever will Ma say?" cried Miss Phoebe. "Oh, Mr. Vincent, Ma
thought, please, you might perhaps like some jelly, and I said I would
run over with it myself, as it's so near, and the servant might have
made a mistake, and Ma hopes you'll enjoy it, and that you liked the
party last night!"

"Mrs. Tozer is very kind," said the minister, with cloudy looks. "Some
what, did you say, Miss Phoebe?"

"La! only some jelly--nothing worth mentioning--only a shape that was
over supper last night, and Ma thought you wouldn't mind," cried the
messenger, half alarmed by the unusual reception of her offering. Mr.
Vincent turned very red, and looked at the basket as if he would like
nothing better than to pitch it into the street; but prudence for once
restrained the young man. He bit his lips, and bowed, and went upon his
way, without waiting, as she intended he should, to escort Miss Phoebe
back again to her paternal shop. Carrying his head higher than usual,
and thrilling with offence and indignation, the young pastor made his
way along George Street. It was a very trifling circumstance, certainly;
but just when an enthusiastic companion writes to you about the advance
of the glorious cause, and your own high vocation as a soldier of the
Cross, and the undoubted fact that the hope of England is in you, to
have a shape of jelly, left over from last night's tea-party, sent
across the street with complacent kindness, for your refreshment----! It
_was_ trying. To old Mrs. Tufton, indeed, who had an invalid daughter,
it might have seemed a Christian bounty; but to Arthur Vincent,
five-and-twenty, a scholar and a gentleman--ah me! If he had been a
Christchurch man, or even a Fellow of Trinity, the chances are he would
have taken it much more graciously; for then he would have had the
internal consciousness of his own dignity to support him; whereas the
sting of it all was, that poor young Vincent had no special right to his
own pretensions, but had come to them he could not tell how; and, in
reality, had his mind been on a level with his fortunes, ought to have
found the Tozers and Pigeons sufficiently congenial company. He went
along George Street with troubled haste, pondering his sorrows--those
sorrows which he could confide to nobody. Was he actually to live among
these people for years--to have no other society--to circulate among
their tea-parties, and grow accustomed to their finery, and perhaps "pay
attention" to Phoebe Tozer; or, at least, suffer that young lady's
attentions to him? And what would become of him at the end? To drop into
a shuffling old gossip, like good old Mr. Tufton, seemed the best thing
he could hope for; and who could wonder at the mild stupor of
paralysis--disease not tragical, only drivelling--which was the last
chapter of all?

The poor young man accordingly marched along George Street deeply
disconsolate. When he met the perpetual curate of St. Roque's at the
door of Masters's bookshop--where, to be sure, at that hour in the
morning, it was natural to encounter Mr. Wentworth--the young
Nonconformist gazed at him with a certain wistfulness. They looked at
each other, in fact, being much of an age, and not unsimilar in worldly
means just at the present moment. There were various points of
resemblance between them. Mr. Vincent, too, wore an Anglican coat, and
assumed a high clerical aspect--sumptuary laws forbidding such
presumption being clearly impracticable in England; and the Dissenter
was as fully endowed with natural good looks as the young priest. How
was it, then, that so vast a world of difference and separation lay
between them? For one compensating moment Mr. Vincent decided that it
was because of his more enlightened faith, and felt himself persecuted.
But even that pretence did not serve the purpose. He began to divine
faintly, and with a certain soreness, that external circumstances do
stand for something, if not in the great realities of a man's career, at
least in the comforts of his life. A poor widow's son, educated at
Homerton, and an English squire's son, public school and university
bred, cannot begin on the same level. To compensate that disadvantage
requires something more than a talent for preaching. Perhaps genius
would scarcely do it without the aid of time and labour. The conviction
fell sadly upon poor Arthur Vincent as he went down the principal street
of Carlingford in the October sunshine. He was rapidly becoming
disenchanted, and neither the 'Nonconformist' nor the 'Patriot,' nor
Exeter Hall itself, could set him up again.

With these feelings the young pastor pursued his way to see the poor
woman who, according to Mrs. Brown's account, was so anxious to see the
minister. He found this person, whose desire was at present shared by
most of the female members of Salem without the intervention of the
Devonshire Dairy, in a mean little house in the close lane dignified by
the name of Back Grove Street. She was a thin, dark, vivacious-looking
woman, with a face from which some forty years of energetic living had
withdrawn all the colour and fulness which might once have rendered it
agreeable, but which was, nevertheless, a remarkable face, not to be
lightly passed over. Extreme thinness of outline and sharpness of line
made the contrast between this educated countenance and the faces which
had lately surrounded the young minister still more remarkable. It was
not a profound or elevated kind of education, perhaps, but it was very
different from the thin superficial lacker with which Miss Phoebe was
coated. Eager dark eyes, with dark lines under them--thin eloquent
lips, the upper jaw projecting slightly, the mouth closing fast and
firm--a well-shaped small head, with a light black lace handkerchief
fastened under the chin--no complexion or softening of tint--a dark,
sallow, colourless face, thrilling with expression, energy, and thought,
was that on which the young man suddenly lighted as he went in, somewhat
indifferent, it must be confessed, and expecting to find nothing that
could interest him. She was seated in a shabby room, only half-carpeted,
up two pair of stairs, which looked out upon no more lively view than
the back of Salem Chapel itself, with its few dismal scattered
graves--and was working busily at men's clothing of the coarsest kind,
blue stuff which had transferred its colour to her thin fingers. Meagre
as were her surroundings, however, Mr. Vincent, stumbling listlessly up
the narrow bare stair of the poor lodging-house, suddenly came to
himself as he stood within this humble apartment. If this was to be his
penitent, the story she had to tell might be not unworthy of serious
listening. He stammered forth a half apology and explanation of his
errand, as he gazed surprised at so unexpected a figure, wondering
within himself what intense strain and wear of life could have worn to
so thin a tissue the outer garment of this keen and sharp-edged soul.

"Come in," said the stranger, "I am glad to see you. I know you, Mr.
Vincent, though I can't suppose you've observed me. Take a seat. I have
heard you preach ever since you came--so, knowing in a manner how your
thoughts run, I've a kind of acquaintance with you: which, to be sure,
isn't the same on your side. I daresay the woman at the Dairy sent you
to me?"

"I understood--from Mrs. Brown certainly--that you wanted to see me,"
said the puzzled pastor.

"Yes, it was quite true. I have resources in myself, to be sure, as much
as most people," said his new acquaintance, whom he had been directed to
ask for as Mrs. Hilyard, "but still human relations are necessary; and
as I don't know anybody here, I thought I'd join the Chapel. Queer set
of people, rather, don't you think?" she continued, glancing up from her
rapid stitching to catch Vincent's conscious eye; "they thought I was in
spiritual distress, I suppose, and sent me the butterman. Lord bless us!
if I had been, what could he have done for me, does anybody imagine? and
when he didn't succeed, there came the Dairy person, who, I daresay,
would have understood what I wanted had I been a cow. Now I can make out
what I'm doing when I have you, Mr. Vincent. I know your line a little
from your sermons. That was wonderfully clever on Sunday morning about
confirmation. I belong to the Church myself by rights, and was
confirmed, of course, at the proper time, like other people, but I am a
person of impartial mind. That was a famous downright blow. I liked you
there."

"I am glad to have your approbation," said the young minister, rather
stiffly; "but excuse me--I was quite in earnest in my argument."

"Yes, yes; that was the beauty of it," said his eager interlocutor, who
went on without ever raising her eyes, intent upon the rough work which
he could not help observing sometimes made her scarred fingers bleed as
it passed rapidly through them. "No argument is ever worth listening to
if it isn't used in earnest. I've led a wandering life, and heard an
infinity of sermons of late years. When there are any brains in them at
all, you know, they are about the only kind of mental stimulant a poor
woman in my position can come by, for I've no time for reading lately.
Down here, in these regions, where the butterman comes to inquire after
your spiritual interests, and is a superior being," added this singular
new adherent of Salem, looking full for a single moment in her visitor's
eyes, with a slight movement of the muscles of her thin face, and making
a significant pause, "the air's a trifle heavy. It isn't pure oxygen we
breathe in Back Grove Street, by any means."

"I assure you it surprises me more than I can explain, to find," said
Vincent, hesitating for a proper expression, "to find----"

"Such a person as I am in Back Grove Street," interrupted his companion,
quickly; "yes--and thereby hangs a tale. But I did not send for you to
tell it. I sent for you for no particular reason, but a kind of yearning
to talk to somebody. I beg your pardon sincerely--but you know," she
said, once more with a direct sudden glance and that half-visible
movement in her face which meant mischief, "you are a minister, and are
bound to have no inclinations of your own, but to give yourself up to
the comfort of the poor."

"Without any irony, that is the aim I propose to myself," said Vincent;
"but I fear you are disposed to take rather a satirical view of such
matters. It is fashionable to talk lightly on those subjects; but I find
life and its affairs sufficiently serious, I assure you----"

Here she stopped her work suddenly, and looked up at him, her dark sharp
eyes lighting up her thin sallow face with an expression which it was
beyond his power to fathom. The black eyelashes widened, the dark
eyebrows rose, with a full gaze of the profoundest tragic sadness, on
the surface of which a certain gleam of amusement seemed to hover. The
worn woman looked over the dark world of her own experience, of which
she was conscious in every nerve, but of which he knew nothing, and
smiled at his youth out of the abysses of her own life, where volcanoes
had been, and earthquakes. He perceived it dimly, without understanding
how, and faltered and blushed, yet grew angry with all the
self-assertion of youth.

"I don't doubt you know that as well as I do--perhaps better; but
notwithstanding, I find my life leaves little room for laughter," said
the young pastor, not without a slight touch of heroics.

"Mr. Vincent," said Mrs. Hilyard, with a gleam of mirth in her eye, "in
inferring that I perhaps know better, you infer also that I am older
than you, which is uncivil to a lady. But for my part, I don't object to
laughter. Generally it's better than crying, which in a great many cases
I find the only alternative. I doubt, however, much whether life, from
the butterman's point of view, wears the same aspect. I should be
inclined to say not; and I daresay your views will brighten with your
company," added the aggravating woman, again resuming, with eyes fixed
upon it, her laborious work.

"I perceive you see already what is likely to be my great trial in
Carlingford," said young Vincent. "I confess that the society of my
office-bearers, which I suppose I must always consider myself bound
to----"

"That was a very sad sigh," said the rapid observer beside him; "but
don't confide in me, lest I should be tempted to tell somebody. I can
speak my mind without prejudice to anybody; and if you agree with me, it
may be a partial relief to your feelings. I shall be glad to see you
when you can spare me half an hour. I can't look at you while I talk,
for that would lose me so much time, but at my age it doesn't matter.
Come and see me. It's your business to do me good--and it's possible I
might even do some good to you."

"Thank you. I shall certainly come," said the minister, rising with the
feeling that he had received his dismissal for to-day. She rose, too,
quickly, and but for a moment, and held out her hand to him.

"Be sure you don't betray to the dairywoman what I had on my mind, and
wanted to tell you, though she is dying to know," said his singular new
acquaintance, without a smile, but with again a momentary movement in
her thin cheeks. When she had shaken hands with him, she seated herself
again immediately, and without a moment's pause proceeded with her work,
apparently concentrating all her faculties upon it, and neither hearing
nor seeing more of her visitor, though he still stood within two steps
of her, overshadowing the table. The young man turned and left the room
with involuntary quietness, as if he had been dismissed from the
presence of a princess. He went straight down-stairs without ever
pausing, and hastened through the narrow back-street with still the
impulse communicated by that dismissal upon him. When he drew breath, it
was with a curious mixture of feelings. Who she was or what she was--how
she came there, working at those "slops" till the colour came off upon
her hands, and her poor thin fingers bled--she so strangely superior to
her surroundings, yet not despising or quarrelling with them, or even
complaining of them, so far as he could make out--infinitely perplexed
the inexperienced minister. He came away excited and bewildered from the
interview, which had turned out so different from his expectations.
Whether she had done him good, was extremely doubtful; but she had
changed the current of his thoughts, which was in its way an immediate
benefit. Marvelling over such a mysterious apparition, and not so sure
as in the morning that nothing out of the most vulgar routine ever could
occur in Carlingford, Mr. Vincent turned with meditative steps towards
the little house at the extreme end of Grove Street, where his
predecessor still lingered. A visit to old Mr. Tufton was a periodical
once a-week duty, to be performed with the utmost regularity. Tozer and
Pigeon had agreed that it would be the making of the young minister to
draw thus from the experience of the old one. Whether Mr. Vincent agreed
with them, may be apprehended from the scene which follows.




CHAPTER III.


Mr. Tufton's house was at the extremity of Grove Street--at the
extremity, consequently, in that direction, of Carlingford, lying
parallel with the end of Grange Lane, and within distant view of St.
Roque's. It was a little old-fashioned house, with a small garden in
front and a large garden behind, in which the family cabbages, much less
prosperous since the old minister became unable to tend them,
flourished. The room into which Mr. Vincent, as an intimate of the
house, was shown, was a low parlour with two small windows, overshadowed
outside by ivy, and inside by two large geraniums, expanded upon a
Jacob's ladder of props, which were the pride of Mrs. Tufton's heart,
and made it almost impossible to see anything clearly within, even at
the height of day. Some prints, of which one represented Mr. Tufton
himself, and the rest other ministers of "the connection," in mahogany
frames, hung upon the green walls. The furniture, though it was not
unduly abundant, filled up the tiny apartment, so that quite a
dislocation and rearrangement of everything was necessary before a chair
could be got for the visitor, and he got into it. Though it was rather
warm for October out of doors, a fire, large for the size of the room,
was burning in the fireplace, on either side of which was an easy-chair
and an invalid. The one fronting the light, and consequently fronting
the visitor, was Adelaide Tufton, the old minister's daughter, who had
been confined to that chair longer than Phoebe Tozer could remember;
and who, during that long seclusion, had knitted, as all Salem Chapel
believed, without intermission, nobody having ever yet succeeded in
discovering where the mysterious results of her labour went to. She was
knitting now, reclining back in the cushioned chair which had been made
for her, and was her shell and habitation. A very pale, emaciated,
eager-looking woman, not much above thirty, but looking, after half a
lifetime spent in that chair, any age that imagination might suggest; a
creature altogether separated from the world--separated from life, it
would be more proper to say--for nobody more interested in the world and
other people's share of it than Adelaide Tufton existed in Carlingford.
She had light-blue eyes, rather prominent, which lightened without
giving much expression to her perfectly colourless face. Her very hair
was pale, and lay in braids of a clayey yellow, too listless and dull to
be called brown, upon the thin temples, over which the thin white skin
seemed to be strained like an over-tight bandage. Somehow, however,
people who were used to seeing her, were not so sorry as they might have
been for Adelaide Tufton. No one could exactly say why; but she somehow
appeared, in the opinion of Salem Chapel, to indemnify herself for her
privations, and was treated, if without much sympathy, at least without
that ostentatious pity which is so galling to the helpless. Few people
could afford to be sorry for so quick-sighted and all-remembering an
observer; and the consequence was, that Adelaide, almost without knowing
it, had managed to neutralise her own disabilities, and to be
acknowledged as an equal in the general conflict, which she could enter
only with her sharp tongue and her quick eye.

It was Mr. Tufton himself who sat opposite--his large expanse of face,
with the white hair which had been apostrophised as venerable at so many
Salem tea-parties, and which Vincent himself had offered homage to,
looming dimly through the green shade of the geraniums, as he sat with
his back to the window. He had a green shade over his eyes besides, and
his head moved with a slight palsied tremor, which was now the only
remnant of that "visitation" which had saved his feelings, and dismissed
more benignly than Tozer and his brother deacons the old pastor from his
old pulpit. He sat very contentedly doing nothing, with his large feet
in large loose slippers, and his elbows supported on the arms of his
chair. By the evidence of Mrs. Tufton's spectacles, and the newspaper
lying on the table, it was apparent that she had been reading the
'Carlingford Gazette' to her helpless companions; and that humble
journal, which young Vincent had kicked to the other end of his room
before coming out, had made the morning pass very pleasantly to the
three secluded inmates of Siloam Cottage, which was the name of the old
minister's humble home. Mr. Tufton said "'umble 'ome," and so did his
wife. They came from storied Islington, both of them, and were of
highly respectable connections, not to say that Mrs. Tufton had a little
property as well; and, acting in laudable opposition to the general
practice of poor ministers' wives, had brought many dividends and few
children to the limited but comfortable fireside. Mr. Vincent could not
deny that it was comfortable in its way, and quite satisfied its owners,
as he sat down in the shade of the geraniums in front of the fire,
between Adelaide Tufton and her father; but, oh heavens! to think of
such a home as all that, after Homerton and high Nonconformist hopes,
could come to himself! The idea, however, was one which did not occur to
the young minister. He sat down compassionately, seeing no analogy
whatever between his own position and theirs; scarcely even seeing the
superficial contrast, which might have struck anybody, between his
active youth and their helplessness and suffering. He was neither
hard-hearted nor unsympathetic, but somehow the easy moral of that
contrast never occurred to him. Adelaide Tufton's bloodless countenance
conveyed an idea of age to Arthur Vincent; her father was really old.
The young man saw no grounds on which to form any comparison. It was
natural enough for the old man and ailing woman to be as they were, just
as it was natural for him, in the height of his early manhood, to
rejoice in his strength and youth.

"So there was a party at Mr. Tozer's last night--and you were there, Mr.
Vincent," said old Mrs. Tufton, a cheerful active old lady, with pink
ribbons in her cap, which asserted their superiority over the doubtful
light and the green shade of the geraniums. "Who did you have? The
Browns and the Pigeons, and--everybody else, of course. Now tell me, did
Mrs. Tozer make tea herself, or did she leave it to Phoebe?"

"As well as I can remember, she did it herself," said the young pastor.

"Exactly what I told you, mamma," said Adelaide, from her chair. "Mrs.
Tozer doesn't mean Phoebe to make tea this many a year. I daresay she
wants her to marry somebody, the little flirting thing. I suppose she
wore her pink, Mr. Vincent--and Mrs. Brown that dreadful red-and-green
silk of hers; and didn't they send you over a shape of jelly this
morning? Ha, ha! I told you so, mamma; that was why it never came to
me."

"Pray let me send it to you," cried Vincent, eagerly.

The offer was not rejected, though coquetted with for a few minutes.
Then Mr. Tufton broke in, in solemn bass.

"Adelaide, we shouldn't talk, my dear, of pinks and green silks.
Providence has laid you aside, my love, from temptations; and you
remember how often I used to say in early days, No doubt it was a
blessing, Jemima, coming when it did, to wean our girl from the world;
she might have been as fond of dress as other girls, and brought us to
ruin, but for her misfortune. Everything is for the best."

"Oh, bother!" said Adelaide, sharply--"I don't complain, and never did;
but everybody else finds my misfortune, as they call it, very easy to be
borne, Mr. Vincent--even papa, you see. There is a reason for
everything, to be sure; but how things that are hard and disagreeable
are always to be called for the best, I can't conceive. However, let us
return to Phoebe Tozer's pink dress. Weren't you rather stunned with
all their grandeur? You did not think we could do as much in Salem, did
you? Now tell me, who has Mrs. Brown taken in hand to do good to now? I
am sure she sent you to somebody; and you've been to see somebody this
morning," added the quick-witted invalid, "who has turned out different
from your expectations. Tell me all about it, please."

"Dear Adelaide does love to hear what's going on. It is almost the only
pleasure she has--and we oughtn't to grudge it, ought we?" said
Adelaide's mother.

"Stuff!" muttered Adelaide, in a perfectly audible aside. "Now I think
of it, I'll tell you who you've been to see. That woman in Back Grove
Street--there! What do you think of that for a production of Salem, Mr.
Vincent? But she does not really belong to Carlingford. She married
somebody who turned out badly, and now she's in hiding that he mayn't
find her; though most likely, if all be true, he does not want to find
her. That's her history. I never pretend to tell more than I know. Who
she was to begin with, or who he is, or whether Hilyard may be her real
name, or why she lives there and comes to Salem Chapel, I can't tell;
but that's the bones of her story, you know. If I were a clever romancer
like some people, I could have made it all perfect for you, but I prefer
the truth. Clever and queer, isn't she? So I have guessed by what
people say."

"Indeed, you seem to know a great deal more about her than I do," said
the astonished pastor.

"I daresay," assented Adelaide, calmly. "I have never seen her, however,
though I can form an idea of what she must be like, all the same. I put
things together, you see; and it is astonishing the number of scraps of
news I get. I shake them well down, and then the broken pieces come
together; and I never forget anything, Mr. Vincent," she continued,
pausing for a moment to give him a distinct look out of the pale-blue
eyes, which for the moment seemed to take a vindictive feline gleam.
"She's rather above the Browns and the Tozers, you understand. Somehow
or other, she's mixed up with Lady Western, whom they call the Young
Dowager, you know. I have not made that out yet, though I partly guess.
My lady goes to see her up two pairs of stairs in Back Grove Street. I
hope it does her ladyship good to see how the rest of the world manage
to live and get on."

"I am afraid, Adelaide, my dear," said Mr. Tufton, in his bass tones,
"that my young brother will not think this very improving conversation.
Dear Tozer was speaking to me yesterday about the sermon to the
children. I always preached them a sermon to themselves about this time
of the year. My plan has been to take the congregation in classes; the
young men--ah, and they're specially important, are the young men! Dear
Tozer suggested that some popular lectures now would not come amiss.
After a long pastorate like mine," said the good man, blandly,
unconscious that dear Tozer had already begun to suggest a severance of
that tie before gentle sickness did it for him, "a congregation may be
supposed to be a little unsettled,--without any offence to you, my dear
brother. If I could appear myself and show my respect to your ministry,
it would have a good effect, no doubt; but I am laid aside, laid aside,
brother Vincent! I can only help you with my prayers."

"But dear, dear Mr. Tufton!" cried his wife, "bless you, the chapel is
twice as full as it was six months ago--and natural too, with a nice
young man."

"My dear!" said the old minister in reproof. "Yes, quite
natural--curiosity about a stranger; but my young brother must not be
elated; nor discouraged when they drop off. A young pastor's start in
life is attended by many trials. There is always a little excitement at
first, and an appearance of seats letting and the ladies very polite to
you. Take it easily, my dear brother! Don't expect too much. In a year
or two--by-and-by, when things settle down--then you can see how it's
going to be."

"But don't you think it possible that things may never settle down, but
continue rising up instead?" said Mr. Vincent, making a little venture
in the inspiration of the moment.

Mr. Tufton shook his head and raised his large hands slowly, with a
deprecating regretful motion, to hold them over the fire. "Alas! he's
got the fever already," said the old minister. "My dear young brother,
you shall have my experience to refer to always. You're always welcome
to my advice. Dear Tozer said to me just yesterday, 'You point out the
pitfalls to him, Mr. Tufton, and give him your advice, and I'll take
care that he shan't go wrong outside,' says dear Tozer. Ah, an
invaluable man!"

"But a little disposed to interfere, I think," said Vincent, with an
irrestrainable inclination to show his profound disrelish of all the
advice which was about to be given him.

Mr. Tufton raised his heavy forefinger and shook it slowly. "No--no. Be
careful, my dear brother. You must keep well with your deacons. You must
not take up prejudices against them. Dear Tozer is a man of a
thousand--a man of a thousand! Dear Tozer, if you listen to him, will
keep you out of trouble. The trouble he takes and the money he spends
for Salem Chapel is, mark my words, unknown--and," added the old pastor,
awfully syllabling the long word in his solemn bass, "in-con-ceiv-able."

"He is a bore and an ass for all that," said the daring invalid
opposite, with perfect equanimity, as if uttering the most patent and
apparent of truths. "Don't you give in to him, Mr. Vincent. A pretty
business you will have with them all," she continued, dropping her
knitting-needles and lifting her pale-blue eyes, with their sudden green
gleam, to the face of the new-comer with a rapid perception of his
character, which, having no sympathy in it, but rather a certain
mischievous and pleased satisfaction in his probable discomfiture, gave
anything but comfort to the object of her observation. "You are
something new for them to pet and badger. I wonder how long they'll be
of killing Mr. Vincent. Papa's tough; but you remember, mamma, they
finished off the other man before us in two years."

"Oh, hush, Adelaide, hush! you'll frighten Mr. Vincent," cried the kind
little mother, with uneasy looks: "when he comes to see us and cheer us
up--as I am sure is very kind of him--it is a shame to put all sorts of
things in his head, as papa and you do. Never mind Adelaide, Mr.
Vincent, dear. Do your duty, and never fear anybody; that's always been
my maxim, and I've always found it answer. Not going away, are you?
Dear, dear! and we've had no wise talk at all, and never once asked for
your poor dear mother--quite well, I hope?--and Miss Susan? You should
have them come and see you, and cheer you up. Well, good morning, if you
must go; don't be long before you come again."

"And, my dear young brother, don't take up any prejudices," interposed
Mr. Tufton, in tremulous bass, as he pressed Vincent's half-reluctant
fingers in that large soft flabby ministerial hand. Adelaide added
nothing to these valedictions; but when she too had received his
leave-taking, and he had emerged from the shadow of the geraniums, the
observer paused once more in her knitting. "This one will not hold out
two years," said Adelaide, calmly, to herself, no one else paying any
attention; and she returned to her work with the zest of a spectator at
the commencement of an exciting drama. She did double work all the
afternoon under the influence of this refreshing stimulant. It was
quite a new interest in her life.

Meanwhile young Vincent left the green gates of Siloam Cottage with no
very comfortable feelings--with feelings, indeed, the reverse of
comfortable, yet conscious of a certain swell and elevation in his mind
at the same moment. It was for him to show the entire community of
Carlingford the difference between his reign and the old _regime_. It
was for him to change the face of affairs--to reduce Tozer into his due
place of subordination, and to bring in an influx of new life,
intelligence, and enlightenment over the prostrate butterman. The very
sordidness and contraction of the little world into which he had just
received so distinct a view, promoted the revulsion of feeling which now
cheered him. The aspiring young man could as soon have consented to lose
his individuality altogether as to acknowledge the most distant
possibility of accepting Tozer as his guide, philosopher, and friend. He
went back again through Grove Street, heated and hastened on his way by
those impatient thoughts. When he came as far as Salem, he could not but
pause to look at it with its pinched gable and mean little belfry,
innocent of a bell. The day was overclouded, and no clearness of
atmosphere relieved the aspect of the shabby chapel, with its black
railing, and locked gates, and dank flowerless grass inside. To see
anything venerable or sacred in the aspect of such a place, required an
amount of illusion and glamour which the young minister could not summon
into his eyes. It was not the centre of light in a dark place, the
simple tribune from which the people's preacher should proclaim, to the
awe and conviction of the multitude, that Gospel once preached to the
poor, of which he flattered himself he should be the truest messenger in
Carlingford. Such had been the young man's dreams in Homerton--dreams
mingled, it is true, with personal ambition, but full notwithstanding of
generous enthusiasm. No--nothing of the kind. Only Salem Chapel, with so
many pews let, and so many still to be disposed of, and Tozer a guardian
angel at the door. Mr. Vincent was so far left to himself as to give
vent to an impatient exclamation as he turned away. But still matters
were not hopeless. He himself was a very different man from Mr. Tufton.
Kindred spirits there must surely be in Carlingford to answer to the
call of his. Another day might dawn for the Nonconformists, who were not
aware of their own dignity. With this thought he retraced his steps a
little, and, with an impulse which he did not explain to himself,
threaded his way up a narrow lane and emerged into Back Grove Street,
about the spot where he had lately paid his pastoral visit, and made so
unexpected an acquaintance. This woman--or should he not say lady?--was
a kind of first-fruits of his mission. The young man looked up with a
certain wistful interest at the house in which she lived. She was
neither young nor fair, it is true, but she interested the youthful
Nonconformist, who was not too old for impulses of chivalry, and who
could not forget her poor fingers scarred with her rough work. He had no
other motive for passing the house but that of sympathy and compassion
for the forlorn brave creature who was so unlike her surroundings; and
no throbbing pulse or trembling nerve forewarned Arthur Vincent of the
approach of fate.

At that moment, however, fate was approaching in the shape of a handsome
carriage, which made quite an exaggeration of echo in this narrow
back-street, which rang back every jingle of the harness and dint of the
hoofs from every court and opening. It drew up before Mrs. Hilyard's
door--at the door of the house, at least, in which Mrs. Hilyard was a
humble lodger; and while Vincent slowly approached, a brilliant vision
suddenly appeared before him, rustling forth upon the crowded pavement,
where the dirty children stood still to gape at her. A woman--a lady--a
beautiful dazzling creature, resplendent in the sweetest English roses,
the most delicate bewildering bloom. Though it was but for a moment, the
bewildered young minister had time to note the dainty foot, the daintier
hand, the smiling sunshiny eyes, the air of conscious supremacy, which
was half command and half entreaty--an ineffable combination. That
vision descended out of the heavenly chariot upon the mean pavement just
as Mr. Vincent came up; and at the same moment a ragged boy, struck
speechless, like the young minister, by the apparition, planted himself
full in her way with open mouth and staring eyes, too much overpowered
by sudden admiration to perceive that he stopped the path. Scarcely
aware what he was doing, as much beauty-struck as his victim, Vincent,
with a certain unconscious fury, seized the boy by the collar, and
swung him impatiently off the pavement, with a feeling of positive
resentment against the imp, whose rags were actually touching those
sacred splendid draperies. The lady made a momentary pause, turned half
round, smiled with a gracious inclination of her head, and entered at
the open door, leaving the young pastor in an incomprehensible ecstasy,
with his hat off, and all his pulses beating loud in his ears, riveted,
as the romancers say, to the pavement. When the door shut he came to
himself, stared wildly into the face of the next passenger who came
along the narrow street, and then, becoming aware that he still stood
uncovered, grew violently red, put on his hat, and went off at a great
pace. But what was the use of going off? The deed was done. The world on
the other side of these prancing horses was a different world from that
on this side. Those other matters, of which he had been thinking so
hotly, had suddenly faded into a background and accessories to the one
triumphant figure which occupied all the scene. He scarcely asked
himself who was that beautiful vision? The fact of her existence was at
the moment too overpowering for any secondary inquiries. He had seen
her--and lo! the universe was changed. The air tingled softly with the
sound of prancing horses and rolling wheels, the air breathed an
irresistible soft perfume, which could nevermore die out of it, the air
rustled with the silken thrill of those womanly robes. There she had
enthroned herself--not in his startled heart, but in the palpitating
world, which formed in a moment's time into one great background and
framework for that beatific form.

What the poor young man had done to be suddenly assailed and carried off
his feet by this wonderful and unexpected apparition, we are unable to
say. He seemed to have done nothing to provoke it: approaching quietly
as any man might do, pondering grave thoughts of Salem Chapel, and how
he was to make his post tenable, to be transfixed all at once and
unawares by that fairy lance, was a spite of fortune which nobody could
have predicted. But the thing was done. He went home to hide his
stricken head, as was natural; tried to read, tried to think of a
popular series of lectures, tried to lay plans for his campaign and
heroic desperate attempts to resuscitate the shopkeeping Dissenterism of
Carlingford into a lofty Nonconformist ideal. But vain were the efforts.
Wherever he lifted his eyes, was not She there, all-conquering and
glorious? when he did not lift his eyes, was not she everywhere Lady
Paramount of the conscious world? Womankind in general, which had never,
so to speak, entered his thoughts before, had produced much trouble to
poor Arthur Vincent since his arrival in Carlingford. But Phoebe
Tozer, pink and blooming--Mrs. Hilyard, sharp and strange--Adelaide
Tufton, pale spectator of a life with which she had nothing to do--died
off like shadows, and left no sign of their presence. Who was She?




CHAPTER IV.


After the remarkable encounter which had thus happened to the young
minister, life went on with him in the dullest routine for some days.
Thursday came, and he had to go to Mrs. Brown's tea-party, where, in the
drawing-room up-stairs, over the Devonshire Dairy, after tea, and music,
and the diversions of the evening, he conducted prayers to the great
secret satisfaction of the hostess, who felt that the superior piety of
her entertainment entirely made up for any little advantage in point of
gentility which Mrs. Tozer, with a grown-up daughter fresh from a
boarding-school, might have over her. On Friday evening there was the
singing-class at the chapel, which Mr. Vincent was expected to look in
upon, and from which he had the privilege of walking home with Miss
Tozer. When he arrived with his blooming charge at the private door, the
existence of which he had not hitherto been aware of, Tozer himself
appeared, to invite the young pastor to enter. This time it was the
butterman's unadorned domestic hearth to which Mr. Vincent was
introduced. This happy privacy was in a little parlour, which, being on
the same floor with the butter-shop, naturally was not without a
reminiscence of the near vicinity of all those hams and cheeses--a room
nearly blocked up by the large family-table, at which, to the disgust
of Phoebe, the apprentices sat at meal-times along with the family.
One little boy, distinguished out of doors by a red worsted comforter,
was, besides Phoebe, the only member of the family itself now at home;
the others being two sons, one in Australia, and the other studying for
a minister, as Mrs. Tozer had already informed her pastor, with motherly
pride. Mrs. Tozer sat in an easy-chair by the fire darning stockings on
this October night; her husband, opposite to her, had been looking over
his greasy books, one of which lay open upon a little writing-desk,
where a bundle of smaller ones in red leather, with "Tozer,
Cheesemonger," stamped on them in gilt letters, lay waiting Phoebe's
arrival to be made up. The Benjamin of the house sat half-way down the
long table with his slate working at his lessons. The margin of space
round this long table scarcely counted in the aspect of the room. There
was space enough for chairs to be set round it, and that was all: the
table with its red-and-blue cover and the faces appearing above it,
constituted the entire scene. Mr. Vincent stood uneasily at a corner
when he was brought into the apartment, and distinctly placed himself at
table, as if at a meal, when he sat down.

"Do you now take off your greatcoat, and make yourself comfortable,"
said Mrs. Tozer; "there's a bit of supper coming presently. This is just
what I like, is this. A party is very well in its way, Mr. Vincent, sir;
but when a gen'leman comes in familiar, and takes us just as we are,
that's what I like. We never can be took wrong of an evening, Tozer and
me; there's always a bit of something comfortable for supper; and after
the shop's shut in them long evenings, time's free. Phoebe, make haste
and take off your things. What a colour you've got, to be sure, with the
night air! I declare, Pa, somebody must have been saying something to
her, or she'd never look so bright."

"I daresay there's more things than music gets talked of at the
singing," said Tozer, thus appealed to. "But she'd do a deal better if
she'd try to improve her mind than take notice what the young fellows
says."

"Oh, Pa, the idea! and before Mr. Vincent too," cried Phoebe--"to think
I should ever dream of listening to anything that _anybody_ might choose
to say!"

Vincent, to whom the eyes of the whole family turned, grinned a feeble
smile, but, groaning in his mind, was totally unequal to the effort of
saying anything. After a moment's pause of half-disappointed
expectation, Phoebe disappeared to take off her bonnet; and Mrs.
Tozer, bestirring herself, cleared away the desk and books, and went
into the kitchen to inquire into the supper. The minister and the deacon
were accordingly left alone.

"Three more pews applied for this week--fifteen sittings in all," said
Mr. Tozer; "that's what I call satisfactory, that is. We mustn't let the
steam go down--not on no account. You keep well at them of Sundays, Mr.
Vincent, and trust to the managers, sir, to keep 'em up to their dooty.
Me and Mr. Tufton was consulting the other day. He says as we oughtn't
to spare you, and you oughtn't to spare yourself. There hasn't been such
a opening not in our connection for fifteen year. We all look to you to
go into it, Mr. Vincent. If all goes as I expect, and you keep up as
you're doing, I see no reason why we shouldn't be able to put another
fifty to the salary next year."

"Oh!" said poor Vincent, with a miserable face. He had been rather
pleased to hear about the "opening," but this matter-of-fact
encouragement and stimulus threw him back into dismay and disgust.

"Yes," said the deacon, "though I wouldn't advise you, as a young man
settin' out in life, to calculate upon it, yet we all think it more than
likely; but if you was to ask my advice, I'd say to give it 'em a little
more plain--meaning the Church folks. It's expected of a new man. I'd
touch 'em up in the State-Church line, Mr. Vincent, if I was you. Give
us a coorse upon the anomalies, and that sort of thing--the bishops in
their palaces, and the fisherman as was the start of it all; there's a
deal to be done in that way. It always tells; and my opinion is as you
might secure the most part of the young men and thinkers, and them as
can see what's what, if you lay it on pretty strong. Not," added the
deacon, remembering in time to add that necessary salve to the
conscience--"not as I would have you neglect what's more important; but,
after all, what is more important, Mr. Vincent, than freedom of opinion
and choosing your own religious teacher? You can't put gospel truth in a
man's mind till you've freed him out of them bonds. It stands to
reason--as long as he believes just what he's told, and has it all made
out for him the very words he's to pray, there may be feelin', sir, but
there can't be no spiritual understandin' in that man."

"Well, one can't deny that there have been enlightened men in the Church
of England," said the young Nonconformist, with lofty candour. "The
inconsistencies of the human mind are wonderful; and it is coming to be
pretty clearly understood in the intellectual world, that a man may show
the most penetrating genius, and even the widest liberality, and yet be
led a willing slave in the bonds of religious rite and ceremony. One
cannot understand it, it is true; but in our clearer atmosphere we are
bound to exercise Christian charity. Great as the advantages are on our
side of the question, I would not willingly hurt the feelings of a
sincere Churchman, who, for anything I know, may be the best of men."

Mr. Tozer paused with a "humph!" of uncertainty; rather dazzled with the
fine language, but doubtful of the sentiment. At length light seemed to
dawn upon the excellent butterman. "Bless my soul! that's a new view,"
said Tozer; "that's taking the superior line over them! My impression is
as that would tell beautiful. Eh! it's famous, that is! I've heard a
many gentlemen attacking the Church, like, from down below, and giving
it her about her money and her greatness, and all that; but our clearer
atmosphere--there's the point! I always knew as you was a clever young
man, Mr. Vincent, and expected a deal from you; but that's a new view,
that is!"

"Oh, Pa, dear! don't be always talking about chapel business," said Miss
Phoebe, coming in. "I am sure Mr. Vincent is sick to death of Salem. I
am sure his heart is in some other place now; and if you bore him always
about the chapel, he'll never, _never_ take to Carlingford. Oh, Mr.
Vincent, I am sure you know it is quite true!"

"Indeed," said the young minister, with a sudden recollection, "I can
vouch for my heart being in Carlingford, and nowhere else;" and as he
spoke his colour rose. Phoebe clapped her hands with a little
semblance of confusion.

"Oh, la!" cried that young lady, "that is _quite_ as good as a
confession that you have lost it, Mr. Vincent. Oh, I _am_ so interested!
I wonder who it can be!"

"Hush, child; I daresay we shall know before long," said Mrs. Tozer, who
had also rejoined the domestic party; "and don't you colour up or look
ashamed, Mr. Vincent. Take my word, it's the very best a young minister
can do. To be sure, where there's a quantity of young ladies in a
congregation, it sometimes makes a little dispeace; but there ain't to
say many to choose from in Salem."

"La, mamma, how _can_ you think it's a lady in Salem?" cried Phoebe,
in a flutter of consciousness.

"Oh, you curious thing!" cried Mrs. Tozer: "she'll never rest, Mr.
Vincent, till she's found it all out. She always was, from a child, a
dreadful one for finding out a secret. But don't you trouble yourself;
it's the very best thing a young minister can do."

Poor Vincent made a hasty effort to exculpate himself from the soft
impeachment, but with no effect. Smiles, innuendoes, a succession of
questions asked by Phoebe, who retired, whenever she had made her
remark, with conscious looks and pink blushes, perpetually renewed this
delightful subject. The unlucky young man retired upon Tozer. In
desperation he laid himself open to the less troublesome infliction of
the butterman's advice. In the mean time the table was spread, and
supper appeared in most substantial and savoury shape; the only drawback
being, that whenever the door was opened, the odours of bacon and cheese
from the shop came in like a musty shadow of the boiled ham and hot
sausages within.

"I am very partial to your style, Mr. Vincent," said the deacon;
"there's just one thing I'd like to observe, sir, if you'll excuse _me_.
I'd give 'em a coorse; there's nothing takes like a coorse in our
connection. Whether it's on a chapter or a book of Scripture, or on a
perticklar doctrine, I'd make a pint of giving 'em a coorse if it was
me. There was Mr. Bailey, of Parson's Green, as was so popular before he
married--he had a historical coorse in the evenings, and a coorse upon
the eighth of Romans in the morning; and it was astonishing to see how
they took. I walked over many and many's the summer evening myself, he
kep' up the interest so. There ain't a cleverer man in our body, nor
wasn't a better liked as he was then."

"And now I understand he's gone away--what was the reason?" asked Mr.
Vincent.

Tozer shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. "All along of the
women: they didn't like his wife; and my own opinion is, he fell off
dreadful. Last time I heard him, I made up my mind I'd never go back
again--me that was such an admirer of his; and the managers found the
chapel was falling off, and a deputation waited on him; and, to be sure,
he saw it his duty to go."

"And, oh, she was so sweetly pretty!" cried Miss Phoebe: "but pray,
pray, Mr. Vincent, don't look so pale. If you marry a pretty lady, we'll
all be so kind to her! We shan't grudge her our minister; we shall----"

Here Miss Phoebe paused, overcome by her emotions.

"I do declare there never was such a child," said Mrs. Tozer: "it's none
of your business, Phoebe. She's a great deal too feelin', Mr. Vincent.
But I don't approve, for my part, of a minister marrying a lady as is
too grand for her place, whatever Phoebe may say. It's her that should
teach suchlike as us humility and simple ways; and a fine lady isn't no
way suitable. Not to discourage you, Mr. Vincent, I haven't a doubt, for
my part, that you'll make a nice choice."

"I have not the least intention of trying the experiment," said poor
Vincent, with a faint smile; then, turning to his deacon, he plunged
into the first subject that occurred to him. "Do you know a Mrs. Hilyard
in Back Grove Street?" asked the young minister. "I went to see her the
other day. Who is she, or where does she belong to, can you tell
me?--and which of your great ladies in Carlingford is it," he added,
with a little catching of his breath after a momentary pause, "who
visits that poor lady? I saw a carriage at her door."

"Meaning the poor woman at the back of the chapel?" said Tozer--"I don't
know nothing of her, except that I visited there, sir, as you might do,
in the way of dooty. Ah! I fear she's in the gall of bitterness, Mr.
Vincent; she didn't take my 'umble advice, sir, not as a Christian
ought. But she comes to the chapel regular enough; and you may be the
means of putting better thoughts into her mind; and as for our great
ladies in Carlingford," continued Mr. Tozer, with the air of an
authority, "never a one of them, I give you my word, would go out of her
way a-visiting to one of the chapel folks. They're a deal too bigoted
for that, especially them at St. Roque's."

"Oh, Pa, how can you say so," cried Phoebe, "when it's very well known
the ladies go everywhere, where the people are very, very poor? but then
Mr. Vincent said a poor _lady_. Was it a nice carriage? The Miss
Wodehouses always walk, and so does Mrs. Glen, and all the Strangeways.
Oh, I know, it was the young Dowager--that pretty, pretty lady, you
know, mamma, that gives the grand parties, and lives in Grange Lane. I
saw her carriage going up the lane by the chapel once. Oh, Mr. Vincent,
wasn't she very, _very_ pretty, with blue eyes and brown hair?"

"I could not tell you what kind of eyes and hair they were," said Mr.
Vincent, trying hard to speak indifferently, and quite succeeding so far
as Phoebe Tozer was concerned; for who could venture to associate the
minister of Salem, even as a victim, with the bright eyes of Lady
Western? "I thought it strange to see her there, whoever she was."

"Oh, how insensible you are!" murmured Phoebe, across the table.
Perhaps, considering all things, it was not strange that Phoebe should
imagine her own pink bloom to have dimmed the young pastor's
appreciation of other beauty.

"But it was Mrs. Hilyard I inquired about, and not this Lady--Lady what,
Miss Phoebe?" asked the reverend hypocrite; "I don't profess to be
learned in titles, but hers is surely a strange one. I thought dowager
was another word for an old woman."

"She's a beautiful young creature," broke in the butterman. "I mayn't
approve of such goings-on, but I can't shut my eyes. She deals with me
regular, and I can tell you the shop looks like a different place when
them eyes of hers are in it. She's out of our line, and she's out of
your line, Mr. Vincent," added Tozer, apologetically, coming down from
his sudden enthusiasm, "or I mightn't say as much as I do say, for she's
gay, and always a-giving parties, and spending her life in company, as I
don't approve of; but to look in her face, you couldn't say a word
against her--nor I couldn't. She might lead a man out of his wits, and I
wouldn't not to say blame him. If the angels are nicer to look at, it's
a wonder to me!" Having reached to this pitch of admiration, the
alarmed butterman came to a sudden pause, looked round him somewhat
dismayed, wiped his forehead, rubbed his hands, and evidently felt that
he had committed himself, and was at the mercy of his audience. Little
did the guilty Tozer imagine that never before--not when giving counsel
upon chapel business in the height of wisdom, or complimenting the
sermon as only a chapel-manager, feeling in his heart that the seats
were letting, could--had he spoken so much to the purpose in young
Vincent's hearing, or won so much sympathy from the minister. As for the
female part of the company, they were at first too much amazed for
speech. "Upon my word, Papa!" burst from the lips of the half-laughing,
half-angry Phoebe. Mrs. Tozer, who had been cutting bread with a large
knife, hewed at her great loaf in silence, and not till that occupation
was over divulged her sentiments.

"Some bread, Mr. Vincent?" said at last that injured woman: "that's how
it is with all you men. Niver a one, however you may have been brought
up, nor whatever pious ways you may have been used to, can stand out
against a pretty face. Thank goodness, _we_ know better. Beauty's but
skin-deep, Mr. Vincent; and, for my part, I can't see the difference
between one pair o' eyes and another. I daresay I see as well out of
mine as Lady Western does out o' hers, though Tozer goes on about 'em.
It's a mercy for the world, women ain't carried away so; and to hear a
man as is the father of a family, and ought to set an example, a-talking
like this in his own house! What is the minister to think, Tozer? and
Phoebe, a girl as is as likely to take up notions about her looks as
most? It's what I didn't expect from you."

"La, mamma! as if there was any likeness between Lady Western and me!"
cried Phoebe, lifting a not-unexpectant face across the table. But Mr.
Vincent was not equal to the occasion. In that _locale_, and under these
circumstances, a tolerable breadth of compliment would not have shocked
anybody's feelings; but the pastor neglected his opportunities. He sat
silent, and made no reply to Phoebe's look. He even at this moment, if
truth must be told, devoted himself to the well-filled plate which Mrs.
Tozer's hospitality had set before him. He would fain have made a
diversion in poor Tozer's favour had anything occurred to him in the
thrill of sudden excitement which Tozer's declaration had surprised him
into. As it was, tingling with anxiety to hear more of that unknown
enchantress, whose presence made sunshine even in the butterman's shop,
no indifferent words would find their way to Vincent's lips. So he
bestowed his attentions instead upon the comfortable supper to which
everybody around him, quite unexcited by this little interlude, was
doing full justice, and, not venturing to ask, listened with a
palpitating heart.

"You see, Mr. Vincent," resumed Mrs. Tozer, "that title of 'the young
Dowager' has been given to Lady Western by them as is her chief friends
in Carlingford. Such little things comes to our knowledge as they
mightn't come to other folks in our situation, by us serving the best
families. There's but two families in Grange Lane as don't deal with
Tozer, and one of them's a new-comer as knows no better, and the other a
stingy old bachelor, as we wouldn't go across the road to get his
custom. A well-kept house must have its butter, and its cheese, and its
ham regular; but when there's but a man and a maid, and them nigh as
bilious as the master, and picking bits of cheese as one never heard the
name of, and as has to be sent to town for, or to the Italian shop, it
stands to reason neither me nor Tozer cares for a customer like that."

"Oh, Ma, what _does_ Mr. Vincent care about the customers?" cried
Phoebe, in despair.

"He might, then, before all's done," said the deaconess. "We couldn't be
as good friends to the chapel, nor as serviceable, nor as well thought
on in our connection, if it wasn't for the customers. So you see, sir,
Lady Western, she's a young lady not a deal older than my Phoebe, but
by reason of having married an old man, she has a step-son twice as old
as herself, and he's married; and so this gay pretty creature here,
she's the Dowager Lady Western. I've seen her with _young_ Lady Western,
her step-daughter-in-law, and young Lady Western was a deal older, and
more serious-looking, and knew twenty times more of life than the
Dowager--and you may be sure she don't lose the opportunity to laugh at
it neither--and so that's how the name arose."

"Thank you for the explanation; and I suppose, of course, she lives in
Grange Lane," said the pastor, still bending with devotion over his
plate.

"Dear, dear, you don't eat nothink, Mr. Vincent," cried his benevolent
hostess; "that comes of study, as I'm always a-telling Tozer. A deal
better, says I, to root the minister out, and get him to move about for
the good of his health, than to put him up to sermons and coorses, when
we're all as pleased as Punch to start with. She lives in Grange Lane,
to be sure, as they most all do as is anything in Carlingford. Fashion's
all--but I like a bit of stir and life myself, and couldn't a-bear them
close walls. But it would be news in Salem that we was spending our
precious time a-talking over a lady like Lady Western; and as for the
woman at the back of the chapel, don't you be led away to go to
everybody as Mrs. Brown sends you to, Mr. Vincent. She's a good soul,
but she's always a-picking up somebody. Tozer's been called up at twelve
o'clock, when we were all a-bed, to see somebody as was dying; and there
was no dying about it, but only Mrs. Brown's way. My son, being at his
eddication for a minister, makes me feel mother-like to a young pastor,
Mr. Vincent. I'd be grateful to anybody as would give my boy warning
when it comes to be his time."

"I almost wonder," said Vincent, with a little natural impatience, "that
you did not struggle on with Mr. Tufton for a little longer, till your
son's education was finished."

Mrs. Tozer held up her head with gratified pride. "He'll be two years
before he's ready, and there's never no telling what may happen in that
time," said the pleased mother, forgetting how little favourable to her
guest was any anticipated contingency. The words were very innocently
spoken, but they had their effect upon Vincent. He made haste to
extricate himself from the urgent hospitality which surrounded him. He
was deafer than ever to Miss Phoebe's remarks, and listened with a
little impatience to Tozer's wisdom. As soon as he could manage it, he
left them, with abundant material for his thoughts. "There's never no
telling what may happen in that time," rang in his ears as he crossed
George Street to his lodging, and the young minister could scarcely
check the disgust and impatience which were rising in his mind. In all
the pride of his young intellect, to be advised by Tozer--to have
warning stories told him of that unfortunate brother in Parson's Green,
whose pretty wife made herself obnoxious to the deacons' wives--to have
the support afforded by the butterman to the chapel thrown in his face
with such an undisguised claim upon his gratitude--oh heaven, was this
what Homerton was to come to? Perhaps he had been brought here, in all
the young flush of his hopes, only to have the life crushed out of him
by those remorseless chapel-managers, and room made over his tarnished
fame and mortified expectations--over his body, as the young man said to
himself in unconscious heroics--for young Tozer's triumphant entrance.
On the whole, it was not to be supposed that to see himself at the mercy
of such a limited and jealous coterie--people proud of their liberality
to the chapel, and altogether unable to comprehend the feelings of a
sensitive and cultivated mind--could be an agreeable prospect to the
young man. Their very approbation chafed him; and if he went beyond
their level, or exceeded their narrow limit, what mercy was he to
expect, what justice, what measure of comprehension? He went home with a
bitterness of disgust in his mind far more intense and tragical than
appeared to be at all necessary in the circumstances, and which only the
fact that this was his first beginning in real life, and that his
imagination had never contemplated the prominent position of the
butter-shop and the Devonshire Dairy, in what he fondly called his new
sphere, could have justified. Perhaps no new sphere ever came up to the
expectations of the neophyte; but to come, if not with too much gospel,
yet with an intellectual Christian mission, an evangelist of refined
nonconformity, an apostle of thought and religious opinion, and to sink
suddenly into "coorses" of sermons and statistics of seat-letting in
Salem--into tea-parties of deacons' wives, and singing-classes--into the
complacent society of those good people who were conscious of doing so
much for the chapel and supporting the minister--that was a downfall not
to be lightly thought of. Salem itself, and the new pulpit, which had a
short time ago represented to poor Vincent that tribune from which he
was to influence the world, that point of vantage which was all a true
man needed for the making of his career, dwindled into a miserable scene
of trade before his disenchanted eyes--a preaching shop, where his
success was to be measured by the seat-letting, and his soul decanted
out into periodical issue under the seal of Tozer & Co. Such, alas! were
the indignant thoughts with which, the old Adam rising bitter and
strong within him, the young Nonconformist hastened home.

And She was Lady Western--the gayest and brightest and highest luminary
in all the society of Carlingford. As well love the moon, who no longer
descends to Endymion, as lift presumptuous eyes to that sweeter planet
which was as much out of reach of the Dissenting minister. Poor fellow!
his room did not receive a very cheerful inmate when he shut the door
upon the world and sat down with his thoughts.




CHAPTER V.


It was about this time, when Mr. Vincent was deeply cast down about his
prospects, and saw little comfort before or around him, and when,
consequently, an interest apart from himself, and which could detach his
thoughts from Salem and its leading members, was of importance, that his
mother's letters began to grow specially interesting. Vincent could not
quite explain how it was, but unquestionably those female epistles had
expanded all at once; and instead of the limited household atmosphere
hitherto breathing in them--an atmosphere confined by the strait cottage
walls, shutting in the little picture which the absent son knew so well,
and in which usually no figure appeared but those of his pretty sister
Susan, and their little servant, and a feminine neighbour or
two--instead of those strict household limits, the world, as we have
said, had expanded round the widow's pen; the cottage walls or windows
seemed to have opened out to disclose the universe beyond: life itself,
and words the symbols of life, seemed quickened and running in a fuller
current; and the only apparent reason for all this revolution was that
one new acquaintance had interrupted Mrs. Vincent's seclusion,--one only
visitor, who, from an unexpected call, recorded with some wonderment a
month or two before, had gained possession of the house apparently, and
was perpetually referred to--by Susan, in her gradually shortening
letters, with a certain timidity and reluctance to pronounce his name;
by the mother with growing frequency and confidence. Vincent, a little
jealous of this new influence, had out of the depths of his own
depression written with some impatience to ask who this Mr. Fordham was,
and how he had managed to establish himself so confidentially in the
cottage, when his mother's letter astounded him with the following piece
of news:--

"MY DEAREST BOY,--Mr. Fordham is, or at least will be--or, if I must be
cautious, as your poor dear papa always warned me I should--wishes very
much, and I hope will succeed in being--your brother, my own Arthur.
This is sudden news, but you know, and I have often told you, that a
crisis always does seem to arrive suddenly; however much you may have
been looking for it, or making up your mind to it, it does come like a
blow at the time; and no doubt there is something in human nature to
account for it, if I was a philosopher, like your dear papa and you.
Yes, my dear boy, that is how it is. Of course, I have known for some
time past that he must have had a motive--no mother could long remain
ignorant of that; and I can't say but what, liking Mr. Fordham so much,
and seeing him _every way so unexceptionable_, except, perhaps, in the
way of means, which we know nothing about, and which I have always
thought a secondary consideration to character, as I always brought up
my children to think, I was very much pleased. For you know, my dear
boy, life is uncertain with the strongest; and I am becoming an old
woman, and you will marry no doubt, and what is to become of Susan
unless she does the same? So I confess I was pleased to see Mr.
Fordham's inclinations showing themselves. And now, dear Arthur, I've
given them my blessing, and they are as happy as ever they can be, and
nothing is wanting to Susan's joy but your sympathy. I need not suggest
to my dear boy to write a few words to his sister to make her feel that
he shares our happiness; for Providence has blessed me in affectionate
children, and I can trust the instincts of my Arthur's heart; and oh! my
dear son, how thankful I ought to be, and how deeply I ought to feel
God's blessings! He has been a father to the fatherless, and the
strength of the widow. To think that before old age comes upon me, and
while I am still able to enjoy the sight of your prosperity, I should
have the happiness of seeing you comfortably settled, and in the way to
do your Master's work, and make yourself a good position, and Susan so
happily provided for, and instead of losing her, a new son to
love--indeed, I am overpowered, and can scarcely hold up my head under
my blessings.

"Write immediately, my dearest boy, that we may have the comfort of your
concurrence and sympathy, and I am always, with much love,

"My Arthur's loving mother,

"E. S. VINCENT.

"_P. S._--Mr. Fordham's account of his circumstances seems quite
satisfactory. He is not in any profession, but has enough, he says, to
live on very comfortably, and is to give me more particulars afterwards;
which, indeed, I am ashamed to think he could imagine necessary, as it
looks like want of trust, and as if Susan's happiness was not the first
thing with us--but indeed I must learn to be prudent and
_self-interested_ for your sakes."

       *       *       *       *       *

It was with no such joyful feelings as his mother's that Vincent read
this letter. Perhaps it was the jealousy with which he had heard of this
unknown Mr. Fordham suddenly jumping into the friendship of the cottage,
which made him contemplate with a most glum and suspicious aspect the
stranger's promotion into the love of Susan, and the motherly regard of
Mrs. Vincent. Hang the fellow! who was he? the young minister murmured
over his spoiled breakfast: and there appeared to him in a halo of sweet
memories, as he had never seen them in reality, the simple graces of his
pretty sister, who was as much above the region of the Phoebe Tozers
as that ineffable beauty herself who had seized with a glance the vacant
throne of poor Arthur Vincent's heart. There was nothing ineffable about
Susan--but her brother had seen no man even in Homerton whom he would
willingly see master of her affections; and he was equally startled,
dissatisfied, and alarmed by this information. Perhaps his mother's
unworldliness was excessive. He imagined that _he_ would have exacted
more positive information about the fortunes of a stranger who had
suddenly appeared without any special business there, who had no
profession, and who might disappear lightly as he came, breaking poor
Susan's heart. Mr. Vincent forgot entirely the natural process by which,
doubtless, his mother's affections had been wooed and won as well as
Susan's. To him it was a stranger who had crept into the house, and
gained ascendancy there. Half in concern for Susan, half in jealousy for
Susan's brother eclipsed, but believing himself to be entirely actuated
by the former sentiment, the young minister wrote his mother a hurried,
anxious, not too good-tempered note, begging her to think how important
a matter this was, and not to come to too rapid a conclusion; and after
he had thus relieved his feelings, went out to his day's work in a more
than usually uncomfortable frame of mind. Mrs. Vincent congratulated
herself upon her son's happy settlement, as well as upon her daughter's
engagement. What if Mr. Fordham should turn out as unsatisfactory as
Salem Chapel? His day's work was a round of visits, which were not very
particularly to Mr. Vincent's mind. It was the day for his weekly call
upon Mr. Tufton and various other members of the congregation not more
attractive; and at Siloam Cottage he was reminded of Mrs. Hilyard, whom
he had not seen again. Here at least was something to be found different
from the ordinary level. He went up to Back Grove Street, not without a
vague expectation in his mind, wondering if that singular stranger would
look as unlike the rest of his flock to-day as she had done on the
former occasion. But when Vincent emerged into the narrow street, what
was that unexpected object which threw the young man into such sudden
agitation? His step quickened unconsciously into the rapid silent stride
of excitement. He was at the shabby door before any of the onlookers had
so much as perceived him in the street. For once more the narrow
pavement owned a little tattered crowd gazing at the pawing horses, the
big footman, the heavenly chariot; and doubtless the celestial visitor
must be within.

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.

"Now I shall never know whether you meant to be complimentary or
contemptuous," cried the young Dowager, "which is hard upon a creature
with such a love of approbation as our friend says I have. However, I
forgive you, if you meant to be very cutting, for her sake. It is so
very kind of you to go to see her, and I am sure she enjoys your visits.
Thank you, Mr. Masters, that is all. Have you got the two copies of the
'Christian Year'? Put them into the carriage, please. Mr. Vincent, I am
going to have the last of my summer-parties next Thursday--twelve
o'clock; will you come?--only a cup of coffee, you know, or tea if you
prefer it, and talk _au discretion_. I shall be happy to see you, and I
have some nice friends, and one or two good pictures; so there you have
an account of all the attractions my house can boast of. Do come: it
will be my last party this season, and I rather want it to be a great
success," said the syren, looking up with her sweet eyes.

Vincent could not tell what answer he made in his rapture; but the next
thing he was properly conscious of was the light touch of her hand upon
his arm as he led her to her carriage, some sudden courageous impulse
having prompted him to secure for himself that momentary blessedness. He
walked forth in a dream, conducting that heavenly vision: and there,
outside, stood the celestial chariot with those pawing horses, and the
children standing round with open mouth to watch the lovely lady's
progress. It was he who put her in with such pride and humbleness as
perhaps only a generous but inexperienced young man, suddenly surprised
into passion, could be capable of--ready to kiss the hem of her garment,
or do any other preposterous act of homage--and just as apt to blaze up
into violent self-assertion should any man attempt to humble him who had
been thus honoured. While he stood watching the carriage out of sight,
Masters himself came out to tell the young Nonconformist, whose presence
that dignified tradesman had been loftily unconscious of a few minutes
before, that they had found the book he wanted; and Vincent, thrilling
in every pulse with the unlooked-for blessedness which had befallen
him, was not sorry, when he dropped out of the clouds at the
bookseller's accost, to re-enter that place where this enchantment still
hovered, by way of calming himself down ere he returned to those prose
regions which were his own lawful habitation. He saw vaguely the books
that were placed on the counter before him--heard vaguely the polite
purling of Masters's voice, all-solicitous to make up for the momentary
incivility with which he had treated a friend of Lady Western's--and was
conscious of taking out his purse and paying something for the volume,
which he carried away with him. But the book might have been Sanscrit
for anything Mr. Vincent cared--and he would have paid any fabulous
price for it with the meekest resignation. His attempt to appear
moderately interested, and to conduct this common transaction as if he
had all his wits about him, was sufficient occupation just at this
moment. His head was turned. There should have been roses blossoming all
along the bare pavement of George Street to account for the sweet gleams
of light which warmed the entire atmosphere as he traversed that
commonplace way. Not only the interview just passed, but the meeting to
come, bewildered him with an intoxicating delight. Here, then, was the
society he had dreamed of, opening its perfumed doors to receive him.
From Mrs. Tozer's supper-table to the bowery gates of Grange Lane was a
jump which, ten days ago, would of itself have made the young minister
giddy with satisfaction and pleasure. Now these calm emotions had ceased
to move him; for not society, but a sweeter syren, had thrown chains of
gold round the unsuspecting Nonconformist. With Her, Back Grove Street
was Paradise. Where her habitation was, or what he should see there, was
indifferent to Vincent. He was again to meet Herself.




CHAPTER VII.


The days which intervened between this meeting and Lady Western's party
were spent in a way which the managers of Salem would have been far from
approving of. Mr. Vincent, indeed, was rapt out of himself, out of his
work, out of all the ordinary regions of life and thought. When he sat
down to his sermons, his pen hung idly in his hand, and his mind,
wilfully cheating itself by that semblance of study, went off into long
delicious reveries, indescribable, intangible--a secret sweet
intoxication which forbade labour, yet nourished thought. Though he
sometimes did not write a word in an hour, so deep was the aspect of
studiousness displayed by the young pastor at his writing-desk, and so
entire the silence he maintained in his room, shut up in that world of
dreams which nobody knew anything of, that his landlady, who was one of
his hearers, communicated the fact to Tozer, and expatiated everywhere
upon the extreme devotion to study displayed by the new minister. Old
Mr. Tufton, who had been in the habit of putting together the disjointed
palaver which he called a sermon on the Saturday morning, shook his head
over the information, and doubted that his young brother was resorting
more to carnal than to spiritual means of filling his chapel; but the
members of Salem generally heard the rumour with pride, and felt a
certain distinction accrue to themselves from the possibility that their
pastor might ruin his health by over-study. It was a new sensation in
Salem; and the news, as it was whispered about, certainly came to the
ears of a few of those young men and thinkers, principally poor lawyers'
clerks and drapers' assistants, whom Tozer was so anxious to reach, and
drew two or three doubtful, genteel hearers to the chapel, where Mr.
Vincent's sermon, though no better than usual, and in reality dashed off
at the last moment in sheer desperation, when necessity momentarily
thrust the dreams away, was listened to with a certain awe and devout
attention, solely due to the toil it was reported to have cost. The
young minister himself came out of the pulpit remorseful and ashamed,
feeling that he had neglected his duty, and thoroughly disgusted with
the superficial production, just lighted up with a few fiery sentences
of that eloquence which belongs to excitement and passion, which he had
just delivered. But Tozer and all the deacons buzzed approbation. They
were penetrated with the conviction that he had worked hard at his
sermon, and given them his best, and were not to be undeceived by the
quality of the work itself, which was a secondary matter. More deeply
disgusted and contemptuous than ever was the young pastor at the end of
that Sunday--disgusted with himself to have done his work so
poorly--contemptuous of those who were pleased with it--his heart
swelling with mortified pride to think that what he thought so unworthy
of him was more appreciated than his best efforts. For he did not know
the report that had gone abroad; he did not know that, while brooding
over his own rising passion, and absorbed in dreams with which Salem had
nothing to do, the little world around him was complacently giving him
credit for a purpose of wearing himself out in its behalf. The sermons
so hastily written, thrust into a corner by the overpowering enchantment
of those reveries, were not the only sin he had to charge against
himself. He could not bring himself to bear the irksome society that
surrounded him, in the state of elevation and excitement he was in.
Tozer was unendurable, and Phoebe to be avoided at all costs. He did
not even pay his promised visit to Mrs. Hilyard, nor go to Siloam
Cottage as usual. In short, he spent the days in a kind of dream,
avoiding all his duties, paying no visits, doing no pastoral work,
neglecting the very sermon over which his landlady saw him hanging so
many silent hours, without knowing that all the vacant atmosphere
between him and that blank sheet of paper, in which she saw nothing, was
peopled with fairy visitants and unreal scenes to the dreamy eyes of her
lodger. Such were the first effects of Circe's cup upon the young
minister. He indulged himself consciously, with apologetic
self-remonstrances, as Thursday approached. After that day, life was to
go on as usual. No--not as usual--with a loftier aim and a higher
inspiration; but the season of dreams was to be over when he had real
admittance into that Eden garden, where the woman of all women wandered
among her flowers. He thought what he was to say to her on that
eventful day--how he should charm her into interest in his difficulties,
and beautify his office, and the barren spot in which he exercised it,
with her sympathy. He imagined himself possessed of her ear, certain of
a place by her side, a special guest of her own election. He was not
vain, nor deeply persuaded of his own importance; yet all this seemed
only natural to his excited imagination. He saw himself by her side in
that garden of beatitudes, disclosing to her all that was in his heart;
instinctively he recalled all that the poets have said of woman the
consoler--woman the inspirer. When he had gained that priceless
sympathy, what glorious amends he should make for the few days'
indolence to which he now gave way! Thus in his inexperience he went on,
preparing for himself, as any one a little wiser could have seen at a
glance, one of the bitterest disappointments of early life.

Thursday came, a day of days--such a day as people reckon by, months
after; a soft and bright autumnal morning, breathing like spring. As
Vincent issued from his own door and took his way along George Street to
Grange Lane, he saw the curate of St. Roque's walking before him in the
same direction; but Mr. Wentworth himself was not more orthodoxly
clerical in every detail of his costume than was the young
Nonconformist, who was going, not to Lady Western's breakfast-party, but
into the Bower of Bliss, the fool's paradise of his youth. Mr.
Wentworth, it is true, was to see Lucy Wodehouse there, and was a true
lover; but he walked without excitement to the green gate which
concealed from him no enchanted world of delights, but only a familiar
garden, with every turn of which he was perfectly acquainted, and which,
even when Lucy was by his side, contained nothing ineffable or ecstatic.
It was, to tell the truth, an autumnal garden, bright enough still with
scarlet gleams of geranium and verbena, with a lawn of velvet
smoothness, and no great diminution as yet in the shade of the acacias
and lime-trees, and everything in the most perfect order in the trim
shrubberies, through the skilful mazes of which some bright groups were
already wandering, when Vincent passed through to the sunny open door.
At the open windows within he could see other figures in a pleasant
flutter of gay colour and light drapery, as he advanced breathless to
take his own place in that unknown world. He heard his own name
announced, and went in, with a chill of momentary doubt upon his high
expectations, into the airy sunshiny room, with its gay, brilliant,
rustling crowd, the ladies all bright and fresh in their pretty
morning-dresses, and the din of talk and laughter confusing his
unaccustomed ears. For a moment the stranger stood embarrassed, looking
round him, eagerly investigating the crowd for that one face, which was
not only the sole face of woman in the world so far as he was concerned,
but in reality the only face he knew in the gay party, where everybody
except himself knew everybody else. Then he saw her, and his doubts were
over. When she perceived him, she made a few steps forward to meet him
and held out her hand.

"I am so glad to see you--how kind of you to come!" said Lady Western;
"and such a beautiful day--just what I wanted for my last fête. Have you
seen my friend again since I saw you, Mr. Vincent--quite well, I hope?
Now, do have some coffee.--How do you do, Mr. Wentworth? You have been
here full five minutes, and you have never paid your respects to me.
Even under the circumstances, you know, one cannot overlook such
neglect."

"I am too deeply flattered that your ladyship should have observed my
entrance to be able to make any defence," said the curate of St.
Roque's, who could speak to her as to any ordinary woman; "but as for
circumstances----"

"Oh dear, yes, we all know," cried Lady Western, with her sweet laugh.
"Was it you, Mr. Vincent, who were saying that circumstances were
everything in life?--oh, no, I beg your pardon, quite the reverse. I
remember it struck me as odd and clever. Now, I daresay, you two could
quite settle that question. I am such an ignoramus. So kind of you to
come!"

Vincent was about to protest his delight in coming, and to deprecate the
imputation of kindness, but ere he had spoken three words, he suddenly
came to a stop, perceiving that not only Lady Western's attention but
her ear was lost, and that already another candidate for her favour had
possession of the field. He stepped back into the gay assembly,
disturbing one group, the members of which all turned to look at him
with well-bred curiosity. He stood quite alone and silent for some time,
waiting if, perhaps, he could catch the eye of Lady Western. But she
was surrounded, swept away, carried off even from his neighbourhood,
while he stood gazing. And here was he left, out of the sunshine of her
presence in the midst of Carlingford society, knowing nobody, while
every face smiled and every tongue was busy but his own: talk _au
discretion!_ such there certainly was--but Vincent had never in his life
felt so preposterously alone, so dismally silent, so shut up in himself.
If he had come to woo society, doubtless he could have plucked up a
spirit, and made a little effort for his object. But he had come to see
Her, flattering himself with vain dreams of securing her to himself--of
wandering by her side through those garden-paths, of keeping near her
whenever she moved--and the dream had intoxicated him more deeply than
even he himself was aware of. Now he woke to his sober wits with a chill
of mortification and disappointment not to be expressed. He stood
silent, following her with his eyes as she glided about from one corner
to the other of the crowded room. He had neither eyes nor ears for
anything else. Beautiful as she had always been, she was lovelier than
ever to-day, with her fair head uncovered and unadorned, her beautiful
hair glancing in the gleams of sunshine, her tiny hands ungloved. Poor
Vincent drew near a window, when it dawned upon his troubled perception
that he was standing amidst all those chattering, laughing people, a
silent statue of disappointment and dismay, and from that little refuge
watched her as she made her progress. And, alas! Lady Western assured
everybody that they were "_so_ kind" to come--she distributed her
smiles, her kind words, everywhere. She beamed upon the old men and the
young, the handsome and the stupid, with equal sweetness. After a while,
as he stood watching, Vincent began to melt in his heart. She was
hostess--she had the party's pleasure to think of, not her own. If he
could but help her, bring himself to her notice again in some other way!
Vincent made another step out of his window, and looked out eagerly with
shy scrutiny. Nobody wanted his help. They stared at him, and whispered
questions who he was. When he at length nerved himself to speak to his
next neighbour, he met with a courteous response and no more. Society
was not cruel, or repulsive, or severely exclusive, but simply did not
know him, could not make out who he was, and was busy talking that
conversation of a limited sphere full of personal allusions into which
no stranger could enter. Instead of the ineffable hour he expected, an
embarrassing, unbearable tedium was the lot of the poor Dissenting
minister by himself among the beauty, wit, and fashion of Carlingford.
He would have stolen away but for the forlorn hope that things might
mend--that Lady Western might return, and that the sunshine he had
dreamed of would yet fall upon him. But no such happiness came to the
unfortunate young minister. After a while, a perfectly undistinguished
middle-aged individual charitably engaged Mr. Vincent in conversation;
and as they talked, and while the young man's eager wistful eyes
followed into every new combination of the little crowd that one fair
figure which had bewitched him, it became apparent that the company was
flowing forth into the garden. At last Vincent stopped short in the
languid answer he was making to his respectable interlocutor with a
sudden start and access of impatience. The brilliant room had suddenly
clouded over. She had joined her guests outside. With bitterness, and a
sharp pang at his heart, Vincent looked round and wondered to find
himself in the house, in the company, from which she had gone. What
business had he there? No link of connection existed between him and
this little world of unknown people except herself. She had brought him
here; she alone knew even so much of him as his name. He had not an inch
of ground to stand on in the little alien assembly when she was not
there. He broke off his conversation with his unknown sympathiser
abruptly, and rushed out, meaning to leave the place. But somehow,
fascinated still, in a hundred different moods a minute, when he got
outside, he too lingered about the paths, where he continually met with
groups and stray couples who stared at him, and wondered again,
sometimes not inaudibly, who he was. He met her at last under the shadow
of the lime-trees with a train of girls about her, and a following of
eager male attendants. When he came forward lonely to make his farewell,
with a look in which he meant to unite a certain indignation and
reproach with still chivalrous devotion, the unconscious beauty met him
with unabated sweetness, held out her hand as before, and smiled the
most radiant of smiles.

"Are you going to leave us already?" she said, in a tone which half
persuaded the unlucky youth to stay till the last moment, and swallow
all his mortifications. "So sorry you must go away so soon! and I wanted
to show you my pictures too. Another time, I hope, we may have better
fortune. When you come to me again, you must really be at leisure, and
have no other engagements. Good-bye! It was _so_ kind of you to come,
and I am so sorry you can't stay!"

In another minute the green door had opened and closed, the fairy vision
was gone, and poor Vincent stood in Grange Lane between the two blank
lines of garden-wall, come back to the common daylight after a week's
vain wandering in the enchanted grounds, half stupefied, half maddened
by the disappointment and downfall. He made a momentary pause at the
door, gulped down the big indignant sigh that rose in his throat, and,
with a quickened step and a heightened colour, retraced his steps along
a road which no longer gleamed with any rosy reflections, but was
harder, more real, more matter-of-fact than ever it had looked before.
What a fool he had been, to be led into such a false position!--to be
cheated of his peace, and seduced from his duty, and intoxicated into
such absurdities of hope, all by the gleam of a bright eye, and the
sound of a sweet voice! He who had never known the weakness before, to
cover himself with ridicule, and compromise his dignity so entirely for
the sake of the first beautiful woman who smiled upon him! Poor Vincent!
He hurried to his rooms thrilling with projects, schemes, and sudden
vindictive ambition. That fair creature should learn that the young
Nonconformist was worthy of her notice. Those self-engrossed simperers
should yet be startled out of their follies by the new fame rising up
amongst them. Who was he, did they ask? One day they should know.

That the young man should despise himself for this outbreak of injured
feeling, as soon as he had cooled down, was inevitable; but it took some
considerable time to cool down; and in the mean time his resolution rose
and swelled into that heroic region which youth always attains so
easily. He thought himself disenchanted for ever. That night, in bitter
earnest, he burned the midnight oil--that night his pen flew over the
paper with outbreaks, sometimes indignant, sometimes pathetic, on
subjects as remote as possible from Lady Western's breakfast-party; and
with a sudden revulsion he bethought himself of Salem and its oligarchy,
which just now prophesied so much good of their new minister. He
accepted Salem with all the heat of passion at that moment. His be the
task to raise it and its pastor into a common fame!




CHAPTER VIII.


The events above narrated were all prefatory of the great success
accomplished by Mr. Vincent in Carlingford. Indeed, the date of the
young minister's fame--fame which, as everybody acquainted with that
town must be aware, was widely diffused beyond Carlingford itself, and
even reached the metropolis, and gladdened his _Alma Mater_ at
Homerton--might almost be fixed by a reference to Lady Western's
housekeeping book, if she kept any, and the date of her last
summer-party. That event threw the young Nonconformist into just the
state of mind which was wanted to quicken all the prejudices of his
education, and give individual force to all the hereditary limits of
thought in which he had been born. An attempt on the part of the
Government to repeal the Toleration Act, or reinstate the Test, could
scarcely have produced a more permanent and rapid effect than Lady
Western's neglect, and the total ignorance of Mr. Vincent displayed by
polite society in Carlingford. No shame to him. It was precisely the
same thing in private life which the other would have been in public.
Repeal of the Toleration Act, or re-enactment of the Test, are things
totally impossible; and when persecution is not to be apprehended or
hoped for, where but in the wrongs of a privileged class can the true
zest of dissidence be found? Mr. Vincent, who had received his
dissenting principles as matters of doctrine, took up the familiar
instruments now with a rush of private feeling. He was not conscious of
the power of that sentiment of injury and indignation which possessed
him. He believed in his heart that he was but returning, after a
temporary hallucination, to the true duties of his post; but the fact
was, that this wound in the tenderest point--this general slight and
indifference--pricked him forward in all that force of personal
complaint which gives warmth and piquancy to a public grievance. The
young man said nothing of Lady Western even to his dearest friend--tried
not to think of her except by way of imagining how she should one day
hear of him, and know his name when it possessed a distinction which
neither the perpetual curate of St. Roque's, nor any other figure in
that local world, dared hope for. But with fiery zeal he flew to the
question of Church and State, and set forth the wrongs which
Christianity sustained from endowment, and the heinous evils of rich
livings, episcopal palaces, and spiritual lords. It was no mean or
ungenerous argument which the young Nonconformist pursued in his fervour
of youth and wounded self-regard. It was the natural cry of a man who
had entered life at disadvantage, and chafed, without knowing it, at all
the phalanx of orders and classes above him, standing close in order to
prevent his entrance. With eloquent fervour he expatiated upon the
kingdom that was not of this world. If these words were true, what had
the Church to do with worldly possessions, rank, dignities, power? Was
his Grace of Lambeth more like Paul the tentmaker than his Holiness of
Rome? Mr. Vincent went into the whole matter with genuine conviction,
and confidence in his own statements. He believed and had been trained
in it. In his heart he was persuaded that he himself, oft disgusted and
much misunderstood in his elected place at Salem Chapel, ministered the
gospel more closely to his Master's appointment than the rector of
Carlingford, who was nominated by a college; or the curate of St.
Roque's, who had his forty pounds a-year from a tiny ancient endowment,
and was spending his own little fortune on his church and district.
These men had joined God and mammon--they were in the pay of the State.
Mr. Vincent thundered forth the lofty censures of an evangelist whom the
State did not recognise, and with whom mammon had little enough to do.
He brought forth all the weapons out of the Homerton armoury, new,
bright, and dazzling; and he did not know any more than his audience
that he never would have wielded them so heartily--perhaps would
scarcely have taken them off the wall--but for the sudden sting with
which his own inferior place, and the existence of a privileged class
doubly shut against his entrance, had quickened his personal
consciousness. Such, however, was the stimulus which woke the minister
of Salem Chapel into action, and produced that series of lectures on
Church and State which, as everybody knows, shook society in Carlingford
to its very foundation.

"Now we've got a young man as is a credit to us," said Tozer; "and now
he's warming to his work, as I was a little afraid of at first; for
somehow I can't say as I could see to my satisfaction, when he first
come, that his heart was in it,--I say, now as we've got a pastor as
does us credit, I am not the man to consider a bit of expense. My
opinion is as we should take the Music Hall for them lectures. There's
folks might go to the Music Hall as would never come to Salem, and we're
responsible for our advantages. A clever young man like Mr. Vincent
ain't to be named along with Mr. Tufton; we're the teachers of the
community, that's what we are. I am for being public-spirited--I always
was; and I don't mind standing my share. My opinion is as we should take
the Music Hall."

"If we was charging sixpence a-head or so----" said prudent Pigeon, the
poulterer.

"That's what I'll never give my consent to--never!" said Tozer. "If we
was amusin' the people, we might charge sixpence a-head; but mark my
words," continued the butterman, "there ain't twenty men in Carlingford,
nor in no other place, as would give sixpence to have their minds
enlightened. No, sir, we're conferring of a boon; and let's do it
handsomely, I say--let's do it handsomely; and here's my name down for
five pound to clear expenses: and if every man in Salem does as well,
there ain't no reason for hesitating. I'm a plain man, but I don't make
no account of a little bit of money when a principle's at stake."

This statement was conclusive. When it came to the sacrifice of a little
bit of money, neither Mrs. Pigeon nor Mrs. Brown could have endured
life had their husbands yielded the palm to Tozer. And the Music Hall
was accordingly taken; and there, every Wednesday for six weeks, the
young Nonconformist mounted his _cheval de bataille_, and broke his
impetuous spear against the Church. Perhaps Carlingford was in want of a
sensation at the moment; and the town was virgin soil, and had never yet
been invaded by sight or sound of heresy. Anyhow, the fact was, that
this fresh new voice attracted the ear of the public. That personal
impetuosity and sense of wrong which gave fire to the discourse, roused
the interest of the entire community. Mr. Vincent's lectures became the
fashion in Carlingford, where nobody in the higher levels of society had
ever heard before of the amazing evils of a Church Establishment. Some
of the weaker or more candid minds among the audience were even upset by
the young minister's arguments. Two or three young people of both sexes
declared themselves converted, and were persecuted to their hearts'
desire when they intimated their intention of henceforward joining the
congregation of Salem. The two Miss Hemmings were thrown into a state of
great distress and perplexity, and wrung their hands, and looked at each
other, as each new enormity was brought forth. A very animated
interested audience filled the benches in the Music Hall for the three
last lectures. It was Mr. Tozer's conviction, whispered in confidence to
all the functionaries at Salem, that the rector himself, in a muffler
and blue spectacles, listened in a corner to the voice of rebellion; but
no proof of this monstrous supposition ever came before the public.
Notwithstanding, the excitement was evident. Miss Wodehouse took
tremulous notes, her fingers quivering with anger, with the intention of
calling upon Mr. Wentworth to answer and deny these assertions. Dr.
Marjoribanks, the old Scotchman, who in his heart enjoyed a hit at the
Episcopate, cried "Hear, hear," with his sturdy northern _r_ rattling
through the hall, and clapped his large brown hands, with a broad grin
at his daughter, who was "high," and one of Mr. Wentworth's sisters of
mercy. But poor little Rose Lake, the drawing-master's daughter, who was
going up for confirmation next time the bishop came to Carlingford,
turned very pale under Mr. Vincent's teaching. All the different phases
of conviction appeared in her eager little face--first indignation, then
doubt, lastly horror and intense determination to flee out from Babylon.
Her father laughed, and told her to attend to her needlework, when Rose
confided to him her troubles. Her needlework! She who had just heard
that the Church was rotten, and tottering on its foundations; that it
was choked with filthy lucre and State support; that Church to which she
had been about to give in her personal adhesion. Rose put away her
catechism and confirmation good-books, and crossed to the other side of
the street that she might not pass Masters's, that emporium of evil. She
looked wistfully after the young Nonconformist as he passed her on the
streets, wondering what high martyr-thoughts must be in the apostolic
mind which entertained so high a contempt for all the honours and
distinctions of this world. Meanwhile Mr. Vincent pursued his own way,
entirely convinced, as was natural for a young man, that he was "doing a
great work" in Carlingford. He was still in that stage of life when
people imagine that you have only to state the truth clearly to have it
believed, and that to convince a man of what is right is all that is
necessary to his immediate reformation. But it was not with any very
distinct hopes or wishes of emptying the church in Carlingford, and
crowding Salem Chapel, that the young man proceeded. Such expectations,
high visions of a day to come when not a sitting could be had in Salem
for love or money, did indeed glance into the souls of Tozer and his
brother deacons; but the minister did not stand up and deliver his blow
at the world--his outcry against things in general--his warm youthful
assertion that he too had a right to all the joys and privileges of
humanity,--as, by means of sermons, lectures, poems, or what not, youth
and poverty, wherever they have a chance, do proclaim their protest
against the world.

On the last night of the lectures, just as Vincent had taken his place
upon his platform, a rustle, as of some one of importance entering,
thrilled the audience. Looking over the sea of heads before him, the
breath almost left the young minister's lips when he saw the young
Dowager, in all the glory of full-dress, threading her way through the
crowd, which opened to let her pass. Mr. Vincent stood watching her
progress, unaware that it was time for him to begin, and that his
hearers, less absorbed than he, were asking each other what it was which
had so suddenly paled his face and checked his utterance. He watched
Lady Western and her companion come slowly forward; he saw Tozer, in a
delighted bustle, leading the way to one of the raised seats of the
orchestra close to the platform. When they were seated, and not till
then, the lecturer, drawing a long gasping breath, turned to his
audience. But the crowd was hazy to his eyes. He began, half
mechanically, to speak--then made a sudden pause, his mind occupied with
other things. On the very skirts of the crowd, far back at the door,
stood his friend of Back Grove Street. In that momentary pause, he saw
her standing alone, with the air of a person who had risen up
unconsciously in sudden surprise and consternation. Her pale dark face
looked not less confused and startled than Vincent himself was conscious
of looking, and her eyes were turned in the same direction as his had
been the previous moment. The crowd of Carlingford hearers died off from
the scene for the instant, so far as the young Nonconformist was
concerned. He knew but of that fair creature in all her sweet bloom and
blush of beauty--the man who accompanied her--Mrs. Hilyard, a thin,
dark, eager shadow in the distance--and himself standing, as it were,
between them, connecting all together. What could that visionary link be
which distinguished and separated these four, so unlike each other, from
all the rest of the world? But Mr. Vincent had no leisure to follow out
the question, even had his mind been sufficiently clear to do it. He saw
the pale woman at the end of the hall suddenly drop into her seat, and
draw a thick black veil over her face; and the confused murmur of
impatience in the crowd before him roused the young man to his own
position. He opened the eyes which had been hazing over with clouds of
imagination and excitement. He delivered his lecture. Though he never
was himself aware what he had said, it was received with just as much
attention and applause as usual. He got through it somehow; and, sitting
down at last, with parched lips and a helpless feeling of excitement,
watched the audience dispersing, as if they were so many enemies from
whom he had escaped. Who was this man with Her? Why did She come to
bewilder him in the midst of his work? It did not occur to the poor
young fellow that Lady Western came to his lecture simply as to a
"distraction." He thought she had a purpose in it. He pretended not to
look as she descended daintily from her seat in the orchestra, drawing
her white cloak with a pretty shiver over her white shoulders. He
pretended to start when her voice sounded in his expectant ear.

"Oh, Mr. Vincent, how very clever and wicked of you!" cried Lady
Western. "I am so horrified, and charmed. To think of you attacking the
poor dear old Church, that we all ought to support through everything!
And I am such a stanch churchwoman, and so shocked to hear all this; but
you won't do it any more."

Saying this, Lady Western leaned her beautiful hand upon Mr. Vincent's
table, and looked in his face with a beseeching insinuating smile. The
poor minister did all he could to preserve his virtue. He looked aside
at Lady Western's companion to fortify himself, and escape the
enervating influence of that smile.

"I cannot pretend to yield the matter to your ladyship," said Vincent,
"for it had been previously arranged that this was to be the last of my
lectures at present. I am sorry it did not please you."

"But it did please me," said the young Dowager; "only that it was so
very wicked and wrong. Where did you learn such dreadful sentiments? I
am so sorry I shan't hear you again, and so glad you are finished. You
never came to see me after my little fête. I am afraid you thought us
stupid. Good-night: but you really must come to me, and I shall convert
you. I am sure you never can have looked at the Church in the right way:
why, what would become of us if we were all Dissenters? What a frightful
idea! Thank you for such a charming evening. Good-night."

And Lady Western held out that "treasured splendour, her hand," to the
bewildered Nonconformist, who only dared touch it, and let it fall,
drawing back from the smile with which the syren beguiled him back again
into her toils. But Mr. Vincent turned round hastily as he heard a
muttered exclamation, "By Jove!" behind him, and fixed the gaze of angry
and instinctive repugnance upon the tall figure which brushed past.
"Make haste, Alice--do you mean to stay here all night?" said this
wrathful individual, fixing his eyes with a defiant stare upon the
minister; and he drew the beauty's arm almost roughly into his own, and
hurried her away, evidently remonstrating in the freest and boldest
manner upon her civility. "By Jove! the fellow will think you are in
love with him," Vincent, with his quickened and suspicious ears, could
hear the stranger say, with that delightful indifference to being
overheard which characterises some Englishmen of the exalted classes;
and the strain of reproof evidently continued as they made their way to
the door. Vincent, for his part, when he had watched them out of sight,
dropped into his chair, and sat there in the empty hall, looking over
the vacant benches with the strangest mixture of feelings. Was it
possible that his eager fervour and revolutionary warmth were diminished
by these few words and that smile?--that the wrongs of Church and State
looked less grievous all at once, and that it was an effort to return to
the lofty state of feeling with which he had entered the place two hours
ago? As he sat there in his reverie of discomfiture, he could see Tozer,
a single black figure, come slowly up the hall, an emissary from the
group at the door of "chapel people," who had been enjoying the defeat
of the enemy, and were now waiting for the conqueror. "Mr. Vincent,"
shouted Tozer, "shall we turn off the gas, and leave you to think it all
over till the morning, sir? They're all as pleased as Punch and as
curious as women down below here, and my Phoebe will have it you're
tired. I must say as it is peculiar to see you a-sitting up there all by
yourself, and the lights going out, and not another soul in the place,"
added the butterman, looking round with a sober grin; and in reality the
lights diminished every moment as Mr. Vincent rose and stumbled down
from his platform into the great empty hall with its skeleton benches.
If they _had_ left him there till the morning, it would have been a
blessed exchange from that walk home with the party, that invitation to
supper, and all the applauses and inquiries that followed. They had the
Pigeons to supper that night at the butter-shop, and the whole matter
was discussed in all its bearings--the flutter of the "Church folks,"
the new sittings let during the week, the triumphant conviction of the
two deacons that Salem would soon be overflowing.

    "Oh, why were 'deacons' made so coarse,
      Or parsons made so fine?"

Mr. Vincent did not bethink himself of that touching ditty. He could not
see the serio-comic lights in which the whole business abounded. It was
all the saddest earnest to the young pastor, who found so little
encouragement or support even in the enthusiasm of his flock.

"And, oh, Mr. Vincent," said the engaging Phoebe, in a half-whisper
aside, "how _did_ you come to be so friendly with Lady Western? How she
did listen, to be sure! and smiled at you _so_ sweetly. Ah, I don't
wonder now that you can't see anything in the Carlingford young ladies;
but do tell us, please, how you came to know her so well?"

Insensibly to himself, a gleam of gratification lighted up Mr. Vincent's
face. He was gracious to Phoebe. "I can't pretend to know her _well_,"
he said, with a little mock humility; whereupon the matrons of the party
took up their weapons immediately.

"And all the better, Mr. Vincent--all the better!" cried Mrs. Tozer;
"she didn't come there for no good, you may be sure. Them great ladies,
when they're pretty-looking, as I don't deny she's pretty-looking----"

"Oh, mamma, beautiful!" exclaimed Phoebe.

"When they're pretty-looking, as I say," continued Mrs. Tozer, "they're
no better nor evil spirits--that's what I tell you, Phoebe. They'll go
out o' their way, they will, for to lay hold on a poor silly young man
(which was not meaning you, Mr. Vincent, that knows better, being a
minister), and when they've got him fast, they'll laugh at him--that's
their sport. A minister of our connection as was well acquainted among
them sort of folks would be out o' nature. My boy shall never make no
such acquaintances as long as I'm here."

"I saw her a-speaking to the minister," said Mrs Pigeon, "and the
thought crossed my mind as it wasn't just what I expected of Mr.
Vincent. Painted ladies, that come out of a night with low necks and
flowers in their hair, to have all Carlingford a-staring at them, ain't
fit company for a good pastor. _Them's_ not the lambs of the flock--not
so far as I understand; they're not friends as Salem folks would approve
of, Mr. Vincent. I'm always known for a plain speaker, and I don't
deceive you. It's a deal better to draw back in time."

"I have not the least reason to believe that Lady Western means to
honour me with her friendship," said Vincent, haughtily--"so it is
premature to discuss the matter. As I feel rather tired, perhaps you'll
excuse me to-night. Come over to my rooms, Mr. Tozer, to-morrow, if you
can spare a little time and we will discuss our business there. I hope
Mrs. Tozer will pardon me withdrawing so early, but I am not very
well--rather tired--out of sorts a little to-night."

So saying, the young pastor extricated himself from the table, shook
hands, regardless of all remonstrances, and made his way out with some
difficulty from the little room, which was choke-full, and scarcely
permitted egress. When he was gone, the three ladies looked at each
other in dumb amazement. Phoebe, who felt herself aggrieved, was the
first to break silence.

"Ma and Mrs. Pigeon," cried the aggravated girl, "you've been and hurt
his feelings. I knew you would. He's gone home angry and disappointed;
he thinks none of us understand him; he thinks we're trying to humble
him and keep him down, when, to tell the truth----"

Here Phoebe burst into tears.

"Upon _my_ word," said Mrs. Pigeon, "dear, deary me! It's just what I
said whenever I knew you had made up your minds to a _young_ minister.
He'll come a-dangling after our girls, says I, and a-trifling with their
affections. Bless my heart, Phoebe! if it had been my Maria now that's
always a-crying about something--but you! Don't take on,
dear--fretting's no good--it'll spoil your colour and take away your
appetite, and that ain't the way to mend matters: and to think of his
lifting his eyes to my Lady Dowager! Upon _my_ word! but there ain't no
accounting for young men's ways no more than for girls--and being a
minister don't make a bit of difference, so far as I can see."

"Why, what's the matter?" cried Tozer: "the pastor's gone off in a huff,
and Phoebe crying. What's wrong? You've been saying somethin'--you
women with your sharp tongues."

"It's Phoebe and Mr. Vincent have had some words. Be quiet,
Tozer--don't you see the child's hurt in her feelings?" said his wife.

Mr. and Mrs. Pigeon exchanged looks. "I'll tell you what it is," said
the latter lady, solemnly. "It's turned his head. I never approved of
the Music Hall myself. It's a deal of money to throw away, and it's not
like as if it was mercy to poor souls. And such a crush, and the
cheering, and my Lady Western to shake hands with him, has turned the
minister's head. Now, just you mark my words. He hasn't been here three
month yet, and he's a-getting high already. You men'll have your own
adoes with him. Afore a year's over our heads, he'll be a deal too high
for Salem. His head's turned--that's what it is."

"Oh, Mrs. Pigeon, how unkind of you!" cried Phoebe, "when he's as good
as good--and not a bit proud, nor ever was--and always such a
gentleman!--and never neglects the very poorest whenever he's sent
for--oh, it's _so_ unkind of you."

"I can't see as his head isn't straight enough on his shoulders," said
Tozer himself, with authority. "He's tired, that's what it is--and
excited a bit, I shouldn't wonder: a man can't study like he does, and
make hisself agreeable at the same time--no, no--by a year's time he'll
be settling down, and we'll know where we are; and as for Salem and our
connection, they never had a chance, I can tell you, like what they're
a-going to have now."

But Mrs. Pigeon shook her head. It was the first cloud that had risen on
the firmament of Salem Chapel, so far as Mr. Vincent was concerned.




CHAPTER IX.


It was a January night on which Vincent emerged abruptly from Tozer's
door, the evening of that lecture--a winter night, not very cold, but
very dark, the skies looking not blue, but black overhead, and the light
of the lamps gleaming dismally on the pavement, which had received a
certain squalid power of reflection from the recent rain; for a sharp,
sudden shower had fallen while Vincent had been seated at the hospitable
table of the butterman, which had chased everybody from the darkling
streets. All the shops were closed, a policeman marched along with heavy
tread, and the wet pavement glimmered round his solitary figure. Nothing
more uncomfortable could be supposed after the warmth and light of a
snug interior, however humble; and the minister turned his face hastily
in the direction of his lodging. But the next moment he turned back
again, and looked wistfully in the other direction. It was not to gaze
along the dark length of street to where the garden-walls of Grange
Lane, undiscernible in the darkness, added a far-withdrawing perspective
of gentility and aristocratic seclusion to the vulgar pretensions of
George Street; it was to look at a female figure which came slowly up,
dimming out the reflection on the wet stones as it crossed one streak of
lamplight after another. Vincent was excited and curious, and had
enough in his own mind to make him wistful for sympathy, if it were to
be had from any understanding heart. He recognised Mrs. Hilyard
instinctively as she came forward, not conscious of him, walking,
strange woman as she was, with the air of a person walking by choice at
that melancholy hour in that dismal night. She was evidently not going
anywhere: her step was firm and distinct, like the step of a person
thoroughly self-possessed and afraid of nothing--but it lingered with a
certain meditative sound in the steady firm footfall. Vincent felt a
kind of conviction that she had come out here to think over some problem
of that mysterious life into which he could not penetrate, and he
connected this strange walk involuntarily with the appearance of Lady
Western and her careless companion. To his roused fancy, some
incomprehensible link existed between himself and the equally
incomprehensible woman before him. He turned back almost in spite of
himself, and went to meet her. Mrs. Hilyard looked up when she heard his
step. She recognised him also on the spot. They approached each other
much as if they had arranged a meeting at eleven o'clock of that wet
January night in the gleaming, deserted streets.

"It is you, Mr. Vincent!" she said. "I wonder why I happen to meet you,
of all persons in the world, to-night. It is very odd. What, I wonder,
can have brought us both together at such an hour and in such a place?
You never came to see me that Monday--nor any Monday. You went to see
my beauty instead, and you were so lucky as to be affronted with the
syren at the first glance. Had you been less fortunate, I think I might
have partly taken you into my confidence to-night."

"Perhaps I _am_ less fortunate, if that is all that hinders," said
Vincent; "but it is strange to see you out here so late in such a dismal
night. Let me go with you, and see you safe home."

"Thank you. I am perfectly safe--nobody can possibly be safer than such
a woman as I am, in poverty and middle age," said his strange
acquaintance. "It is an immunity that women don't often prize, Mr.
Vincent, but it is very valuable in its way. If anybody saw you talking
to an equivocal female figure at eleven o'clock in George Street, think
what the butterman would say; but a single glimpse of my face would
explain matters better than a volume. I am going down towards Grange
Lane, principally because I am restless to-night, and don't know what to
do with myself. I shall tell you what I thought of your lecture if you
will walk with me to the end of the street."

"Ah, my lecture?--never mind," said the hapless young minister; "I
forget all about that. What is it that brings you here, and me to your
side?--what is there in that dark-veiled house yonder that draws your
steps and mine to it? It is not accidental, our meeting here."

"You are talking romance and nonsense, quite inconceivable in a man who
has just come from the society of deacons," said Mrs. Hilyard, glancing
up at him with that habitual gleam of her eyes. "We have met, my dear
Mr. Vincent, because, after refreshing my mind with your lecture, I
thought of refreshing my body by a walk this fresh night. One saves
candles, you know, when one does one's exercise at night: whereas
walking by day one wastes everything--time, tissue, daylight, invaluable
treasures: the only light that hurts nobody's eyes, and costs nobody
money, is the light of day. That illustration of yours about the clouds
and the sun was very pretty. I assure you I thought the whole
exceedingly effective. I should not wonder if it made a revolution in
Carlingford."

"Why do you speak to me so? I know you did not go to listen to my
lecture," said the young minister, to whom sundry gleams of
enlightenment had come since his last interview with the poor
needle-woman of Back Grove Street.

"Ah! how can you tell that?" she said, sharply, looking at him in the
streak of lamplight. "But to tell the truth," she continued, "I did
actually go to hear you, and to look at other people's faces, just to
see whether the world at large--so far as that exists in
Carlingford--was like what it used to be; and if I confess I saw
something there more interesting than the lecture, I say no more than
the lecturer could agree in, Mr. Vincent. You, too, saw something that
made you forget the vexed question of Church and State."

"Tell me," said Vincent, with an earnestness he was himself surprised
at, "who was that man?"

His companion started as if she had received a blow, turned round upon
him with a glance in her dark eyes such as he had never seen there
before, and in a sudden momentary passion drew her breath hard, and
stopped short on the way. But the spark of intense and passionate
emotion was as shortlived as it was vivid. "I do not suppose he is
anything to interest you," she answered the next moment, with a movement
of her thin mouth, letting the hands that she had clasped together drop
to her side. "Nay, make yourself quite easy; he is not a lover of my
lady's. He is only a near relation:--and," she continued, lingering on
the words with a force of subdued scorn and rage, which Vincent dimly
apprehended, but could not understand, "a very fascinating fine
gentleman--a man who can twist a woman round his fingers when he likes,
and break all her heartstrings--if she has any--so daintily afterwards,
that it would be a pleasure to see him do it. Ah, a wonderful man!"

"You know him then? I saw you knew him," said the young man, surprised
and disturbed, thrusting the first commonplace words he could think of
into the silence, which seemed to tingle with the restrained meaning of
this brief speech.

"I don't think we are lucky in choosing our subjects to-night," said the
strange woman. "How about the ladies in Lonsdale, Mr. Vincent? They
don't keep a school? I am glad they don't keep a school. Teaching, you
know, unless when one has a vocation for it, as you had a few weeks ago,
is uphill work. I am sorry to see you are not so sure about your work as
you were then. Your sister is pretty, I suppose? and does your mother
take great care of her and keep her out of harm's way? Lambs have a
silly faculty of running directly in the wolf's road. Why don't you take
a holiday and go to see them, or have them here to live with you?"

"You know something about them," said Vincent, alarmed. "What has
happened?--tell me. It will be the greatest kindness to say it out at
once."

"Hush," said Mrs. Hilyard; "now you are absurd. I speak out of my own
thoughts, as most persons do, and you, like all young people, make
personal applications. How can I possibly know about them? I am not a
fanciful woman, but there are some things that wake one's imagination.
In such a dark night as this, with such wet gleams about the streets,
when I think of people at a distance, I always think of something
uncomfortable happening. Misfortune seems to lie in wait about those
black corners. I think of women wandering along dismal solitary roads
with babies in their shameful arms--and of dreadful messengers of evil
approaching unconscious houses, and looking in at peaceful windows upon
the comfort they are about to destroy; and I think," she continued,
crossing the road so rapidly (they were now opposite Lady Western's
house) that Vincent, who had not anticipated the movement, had to
quicken his pace suddenly to keep up with her, "of evil creatures
pondering in the dark vile schemes against the innocent----" Here she
broke off all at once, and, looking up in Vincent's face with that gleam
of secret mockery in her eyes and movement of her mouth to which he was
accustomed, added, suddenly changing her tone, "Or of fine gentlemen,
Mr. Vincent, profoundly bored with their own society, promenading in a
dreary garden and smoking a disconsolate cigar. Look there!"

The young minister, much startled and rather nervous, mechanically
looked, as she bade him, through the little grated loophole in Lady
Western's garden-door. He saw the lights shining in the windows, and a
red spark moving about before the house, as, with a little shame for his
undignified position, he withdrew his eyes from that point of vantage.
But Mrs. Hilyard was moved by no such sentiment. She planted herself
opposite the door, and, bending her head to the little grating, gazed
long and steadfastly. In the deep silence of the night, standing with
some uneasiness at her side, and not insensible to the fact that his
position, if he were seen by anybody who knew him, would be rather
absurd and slightly equivocal, Vincent heard the footsteps of the man
inside, the fragrance of whose cigar faintly penetrated the damp air.
The stranger was evidently walking up and down before the house in
enjoyment of that luxury which the feminine arrangements of the young
Dowager's household would not permit indoors; but the steady eagerness
with which this strange woman gazed--the way in which she had managed to
interweave Mrs. Vincent and pretty Susan at Lonsdale into the
conversation--the suggestions of coming danger and evil with which her
words had invested the very night, all heightened by the instinctive
repugnance and alarm of which the young man had himself been conscious
whenever he met the eye of Lady Western's companion--filled him with
discomfort and dread. His mind, which had been lately too much occupied
in his own concerns to think much of Susan, reverted now with sudden
uneasiness to his mother's cottage, from which Susan's betrothed had
lately departed to arrange matters for their speedy marriage. But how
Lady Western's "near relation"--this man whom Mrs. Hilyard watched with
an intense regard which looked like hatred, but might be dead
love--could be connected with Lonsdale, or Susan, or himself, or the
poor needlewoman in Back Grove Street, Vincent could not form the
remotest idea. He stood growing more and more impatient by that dark
closed door, which had once looked a gate of paradise--which, he felt in
his heart, half-a-dozen words or a single smile could any day make again
a gate of the paradise of fools to his bewildered feet--the steps of the
unseen stranger within, and the quick breath of agitation from the
watcher by his side, being the only sounds audible in the silence of the
night. At last some restless movement he made disturbed Mrs. Hilyard in
her watch. She left the door noiselessly and rapidly, and turned to
recross the wet road. Vincent accompanied her without saying a word. The
two walked along together half the length of Grange Lane without
breaking silence, without even looking at each other, till they came to
the large placid white lamp at Dr. Marjoribanks's gate, which cleared a
little oasis of light out of the heart of the gloom. There she looked up
at him with a face full of agitated life and motion--kindled eyes,
elevated head, nostril and lips swelling with feelings which were
totally undecipherable to Vincent; her whole aspect changed by an
indescribable inspiration which awoke remnants of what might have been
beauty in that thin, dark, middle-aged face.

"You are surprised at me and my curiosity," she said, "and indeed you
have good reason; but it is astonishing, when one is shut up in one's
self and knows nobody, how excited one gets over the sudden apparition
of a person one has known in the other world. Some people die two or
three times in a lifetime, Mr. Vincent. There is a real transmigration
of souls, or bodies, or both if you please. This is my third life I am
going through at present. I knew that man, as I was saying, in the other
world."

"The world _does_ change strangely," said Vincent, who could not tell
what to say; "but you put it very strongly--more strongly than I----"

"More strongly than you can understand; I know that very well," said
Mrs. Hilyard; "but you perceive you are speaking to a woman who has died
twice. Coming to life is a bitter process, but one gets over it. If you
ever should have such a thing to go through with--and survive it," she
added, giving him a wistful glance, "I should like to tell you my
experiences. However, I hope better things. You are very well looked
after at Salem Chapel, Mr. Vincent. I think of you sometimes when I look
out of my window and see your tabernacle. It is not so pretty as Mr.
Wentworth's at St. Roque's, but you have the advantage of the curate
otherwise. So far as I can see, he never occupies himself with anything
higher than his prayer-book and his poor people. I doubt much whether
he would ever dream of replying to what you told us to-night."

"Probably he holds a Dissenting minister in too much contempt," said
Vincent, with an uncomfortable smile on his lips.

"Don't sneer--never sneer--no gentleman does," said his companion. "I
like you, though you are only a Dissenting minister. You know me to be
very poor, and you have seen me in very odd circumstances to-night; yet
you walk home with me--I perceive you are steering towards Back Grove
Street, Mr. Vincent--without an illusion which could make me feel myself
an equivocal person, and just as if this was the most reasonable thing
in the world which I have been doing to-night. Thank you. You are a
paladin in some things, though in others only a Dissenting minister. If
I were a fairy, the gift I would endow you with would be just that same
unconsciousness of your own disadvantages, which courtesy makes you show
of mine."

"Indeed," said Vincent, with natural gratification, "it required no
discrimination on my part to recognise at once that I was
addressing----"

"Hush! you have never even insinuated that an explanation was necessary,
which is the very height and climax of fine manners," said Mrs. Hilyard;
"and I speak who am, or used to be, an authority in such matters. I
don't mean to give you any explanation either. Now, you must turn back
and go home. Good-night. One thing I may tell you, however," she
continued, with a little warmth; "don't mistake me. There is no reason
in this world why you might not introduce me to the ladies in Lonsdale,
if any accident brought it about that we should meet. I say this to make
your mind easy about your penitent; and now, my good young father in the
faith, good-night."

"Let me see you to your door first," said the wondering young man.

"No--no farther. Good-night," she said, hastily, shaking hands, and
leaving him. The parting was so sudden that it took Vincent a minute to
stop short, under way and walking quickly as he was. When she had made
one or two rapid steps in advance, Mrs. Hilyard turned back, as if with
a sudden impulse.

"Do you know I have an uneasiness about these ladies in Lonsdale?" she
said; "I know nothing whatever about them--not so much as their names;
but you are their natural protector; and it does not do for women to be
as magnanimous and generous in the reception of strangers as you are.
There! don't be alarmed. I told you I knew nothing. They may be as safe,
and as middle-aged, and as ugly as I am; instead of a guileless widow
and a pretty little girl, they may be hardened old campaigners like
myself; but they come into my mind, I cannot tell why. Have them here to
live beside you, and they will do you good."

"My sister is about to be married," said Vincent, more and more
surprised, and looking very sharply into her face in the lamplight, to
see whether she really did not know anything more than she said.

A certain expression of relief came over her face.

"Then all is well," she said, with strange cordiality, and again held
out her hand to him. Then they parted, and pursued their several ways
through the perfectly silent and dimly-lighted streets. Vincent walked
home with the most singular agitation in his mind. Whether to give any
weight to such vague but alarming suggestions--whether to act
immediately upon the indefinite terror thus insinuated into his
thoughts--or to write, and wait till he heard whether any real danger
existed--or to cast it from him altogether as a fantastic trick of
imagination, he could not tell. Eventful and exciting as the evening had
been, he postponed the other matters to this. If any danger threatened
Susan, his simple mother could suffer with her, but was ill qualified to
protect her: but what danger could threaten Susan? He consoled himself
with the thought that these were not the days of abductions or violent
love-making. To think of an innocent English girl in her mother's house
as threatened with mysterious danger, such as might have surrounded a
heroine of the last century, was impossible. If there are Squire
Thornhills nowadays, their operations are of a different character.
Walking rapidly home, with now and then a blast of chill rain in his
face, and the lamplight gleaming in the wet streets, Vincent found less
and less reason for attaching any importance to Mrs. Hilyard's hints and
alarms. It was the sentiment of the night, and her own thoughts, which
had suggested such fears to her mind--a mind evidently experienced in
paths more crooked than any which Vincent himself, much less simple
Susan, had ever known. When he reached home, he found his little fire
burning brightly, his room arranged with careful nicety, which was his
landlady's appropriate and sensible manner of showing her appreciation
of the night's lecture, and her devotion to the minister; and, lastly,
on the table a letter from that little house in Lonsdale, round which
such fanciful fears had gathered. Never was there a letter which
breathed more of the peaceful security and tranquillity of home. Mrs.
Vincent wrote to her Arthur in mingled rejoicing and admonition, curious
and delighted to hear of his lectures, but not more anxious about his
fame and success than about his flannels and precautions against wet
feet; while Susan's postscript--a half longer than the letter to which
it was appended--furnished her affectionate brother with sundry details,
totally incomprehensible to him, of her wedding preparations, and, more
shyly, of her perfect girlish happiness. Vincent laughed aloud as he
folded up that woman's letter. No mysterious horror, no whispering
doubtful gloom, surrounded that house from which the pure, full daylight
atmosphere, untouched by any darkness, breathed fresh upon him out of
these simple pages. Here, in this humble virtuous world, were no
mysteries. It was a deliverance to a heart which had begun to falter.
Wherever fate might be lingering in the wild darkness of that January
night, it was not on the threshold of his mother's house.




CHAPTER X.


On the next evening after this there was a tea-meeting in Salem Chapel.
In the back premises behind the chapel were all needful accommodations
for the provision of that popular refreshment--boilers, tea-urns,
unlimited crockery and pewter. In fact, it was one of Mr. Tozer's
boasts, that owing to the liberality of the "connection" in Carlingford,
Salem was fully equipped in this respect, and did not need to borrow so
much as a spoon or teapot, a very important matter under the
circumstances. This, however, was the first tea-meeting which had taken
place since that one at which Mr. Tufton's purse had been presented to
him, and the old pastor had taken leave of his flock. The young pastor,
indeed, had set his face against tea-meetings. He was so far behind his
age as to doubt their utility, and declared himself totally unqualified
to preside over such assemblies; but, in the heat of his recent
disappointment, when, stung by other people's neglect, he had taken up
Salem and all belonging to it into his bosom, a cruel use had been made
of the young minister's compliance. They had wrung a reluctant consent
from him in that unguarded moment, and the walls of Carlingford had been
for some days blazing with placards of the tea-meeting, at which the now
famous (in Carlingford) lecturer on Church and State was to speak. Not
Tozer, with all his eloquence, had been able to persuade the pastor to
preside; but at least he was to appear, to take tea at that table
elevated on the platform, where Phoebe Tozer, under the matronly care
of Mrs. Brown (for it was necessary to divide these honours, and guard
against jealousy), dispensed the fragrant lymph, and to address the
meeting. There had been thoughts of a grand celebration in the Music
Hall to do more honour to the occasion; but as that might have
neutralised the advantages of having all the needful utensils within
themselves, convenience and economy carried the day, and the scene of
these festivities, as of all the previous festivities of Salem, was the
large low room underneath the chapel, once intended for a school, but
never used, except on Sundays, in that capacity. Thither for two or
three days all the "young ladies" of the chapel had streamed to and fro,
engaged in decorations. Some manufactured festoons of evergreens, some
concocted pink and white roses in paper to embellish the same. The
printed texts of the Sunday school were framed, and in some cases
obliterated, in Christmas garlands. Christmas, indeed, was past, but
there were still holly and red berries and green smooth laurel leaves.
The Pigeon girls, Phoebe Tozer, Mrs. Brown's niece from the country,
and the other young people in Salem who were of sufficiently advanced
position, enjoyed the preparations greatly--entering into them with even
greater heartiness than Lucy Wodehouse exhibited in the adornment of St.
Roque's, and taking as much pleasure in the task as if they had been
picturesque Italians adorning the shrine of their favourite saint.
Catterina and Francesca with their flower-garlands are figures worthy of
any picture, and so is Lucy Wodehouse under the chancel arch at St.
Roque's; but how shall we venture to ask anybody's sympathy for Phoebe
and Maria Pigeon as they put up their festoons round the four square
walls of the low schoolroom in preparation for the Salem tea-party?
Nevertheless it is a fact that the two last mentioned had very much the
same intentions and sensations, and amid the coils of fresh ivy and
laurel did not look amiss in their cheerful labour--a fact which, before
the work was completed, had become perceptible to various individuals of
the Carlingford public. But Mr. Vincent was, on this point, as on
several others, unequal to the requirements of his position. When he did
glance in for a moment of the afternoon of the eventful day, it was in
company with Tozer and the Rev. Mr. Raffles of Shoebury, who was to take
the chair. Mr. Raffles was very popular in Carlingford, as everywhere.
To secure him for a tea-meeting was to secure its success. He examined
into all the preparations, tasted the cake, pricked his fingers with the
garlands to the immense delight of the young ladies, and complimented
them on their skill with beaming cheerfulness; while the minister of
Salem, on the contrary, stalked about by his side pale and preoccupied,
with difficulty keeping himself from that contempt of the actual things
around to which youth is so often tempted. His mind wandered off to the
companion of his last night's walk--to the stranger pacing up and down
that damp garden with inscrutable unknown thoughts--to the beautiful
creature within those lighted windows, so near and yet so overwhelmingly
distant--as if somehow they had abstracted life and got it among
themselves. Mr. Vincent had little patience for what he considered the
mean details of existence nearer at hand. As soon as he could possibly
manage it, he escaped, regarding with a certain hopeless disgust the
appearance he had to make in the evening, and without finding a single
civil thing to say to the fair decorators. "My young brother looks sadly
low and out of spirits," said jolly Mr. Raffles. "What do you mean by
being so unkind to the minister, Miss Phoebe, eh?" Poor Phoebe
blushed pinker than ever, while the rest laughed. It was pleasant to be
supposed "unkind" to the minister; and Phoebe resolved to do what she
could to cheer him when she sat by his elbow at the platform table
making tea for the visitors of the evening.

The evening came, and there was not a ticket to be had anywhere in
Carlingford: the schoolroom, with its blazing gas, its festoons, and its
mottoes, its tables groaning with dark-complexioned plumcake and heavy
buns, was crowded quite beyond

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