Salem Chapel · Chapter 8 (1/2)

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 reenactment 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 whatnot, 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 someone 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.”