Salem Chapel · Chapter 5 (2/2)

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, moonstruck 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 role 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. Goodbye; 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!⁠—goodbye; 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 preoccupation, she had managed to rouse him, died away, however, as he reentered 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.