Salem Chapel · Chapter 35 (1/2)

XXXV

Sunday! It came again, the inevitable morning. There are pathetic stories current in the world about most of the other professions that claim the ear of the public; how lawyers prepare great speeches, which are to open for them the gates of the future, in the midst of the killing anxieties of life and poverty⁠—how mimes and players of all descriptions keep the world in laughter while their hearts are breaking. But few people think of the sufferings of the priest, whom, let trouble or anxiety come as they please, necessity will have in the inexorable pulpit Sunday after Sunday. So Vincent thought as he put on his Geneva gown in his little vestry, with the raw February air coming in at the open window, and his sermon, which was dull, lying on the table beside him. It was dull⁠—he knew it in his heart; but after all the strain of passion he had been held at, what was to preserve him any more than another from the unavoidable lassitude and blank that followed? Still it was not agreeable to know that Salem was crowded to the door, and that this sermon, upon which the minister looked ruefully, was laboured and feeble, without any divine spark to enlighten it, or power to touch the hearts of other men. The consciousness that it was dull would, the preacher knew, make it duller still⁠—its heaviness would affect himself as well as his audience. Still that was not to be helped now, there it lay, ready for utterance; and here in his Geneva gown, with the sound in his ears of all the stream of entering worshippers who were then arranging themselves in the pews of Salem, stood the minister prepared to speak. There was, as Vincent divined, a great crowd⁠—so great a crowd that various groups stood during the whole service, which, by dint of being more laboured and feeble than usual, was longer too. With a certain dullness of feeling, half despairing, the minister accomplished the preliminary devotions, and was just opening his Bible to begin the work of the day when his startled eye caught a most unlooked-for accession to the flock. Immediately before him, in the same pew with Mrs. Tozer and Phoebe, what was that beautiful vision that struck him dumb for the moment? Tozer himself had brought her in during the prayers, through the groups that occupied the passage, to his own seat, where she sat expanding her rustling plumage, and looking round with all her natural sweetness, and a kind of delightful unconscious patronage and curiosity, upon the crowd of unknown people who were nobody in Carlingford. The sight of her struck the young Nonconformist dumb. He took some moments to recover himself, ere, with a pang in his heart, he began his dull sermon. It mattered nothing to Lady Western what kind of a sermon he preached. She was not clever, and probably would never know the difference; but it went to the young man’s heart, an additional pang of humiliation, to think that it was not his best he had to set before that unexpected hearer. What had brought the beauty here? Vincent’s dazzled eyes did not make out for some time the dark spare figure beside her, all sunned over with the rays of her splendour. Mrs. Tozer and Phoebe on one side, proud yet half affronted, contemplating with awe and keen observation the various particulars of Lady Western’s dress, were not more unlike her, reposing in her soft beauty within the hard wooden enclosure of the pew, beaming upon everybody in sweet ease and composure⁠—than was the agitated restless face, with gleaming uncertain eyes that flashed everywhere, which appeared at her other side when Vincent came to be able to see. He preached his sermon with a certain self-disgust growing more and more intense every time he ventured to glance at that strange line of faces. The only attentive hearer in Tozer’s pew was Lady Western, who looked up at the young minister steadily with her sweet eyes, and listened with all the gracious propriety that belonged to her. The Tozers, for their part, drawn up in their end of the seat, gave a very divided attention, being chiefly occupied with Lady Western; and as for Mrs. Hilyard, the sight of her restlessness and nervous agitation would have been pitiful had anybody there been sufficiently interested to observe it. Mr. Vincent’s sermon certainly did not secure that wandering mind. All her composure had deserted this strange woman. Now and then she almost rose up by way apparently of relieving the restless fever that possessed her; her nervous hands wandered among the books of the Tozer pew with an incessant motion. Her eyes gleamed in all directions with a wistful anxiety and suspicion. All this went on while Vincent preached his sermon; he had no eyes for the other people in the place. Now and then the young man became rhetorical, and threw in here and there a wild flourish to break the deadness of his discourse, with no success as he saw. He read tedium in all the lines of faces before him as he came to a close with a dull despair⁠—in all the faces except that sweet face never disturbed out of its lovely calm of attention, which would have listened to the Dissenting minister quite as calmly had he preached like Paul. With a sensation that this was one of the critical moments of his fate, and that he had failed in it, Vincent dropped into his seat in exhaustion and self-disgust, while his hearers got up to sing their hymn. It was at this moment that Tozer walked up through the aisle, steadily, yet with his heart beating louder than usual, and ascended the pulpit-stairs to give forth that intimation which had been agreed upon in the back parlour on Friday. The minister was disturbed in his uncomfortable repose by the entrance of the deacon into the pulpit, where the worthy butterman seated himself by Vincent’s side. The unconscious congregation sang its hymn, while the Nonconformist, rousing up, looked with surprised eyes upon his unexpected companion; yet there were bosoms in the flock which owned a thrill of emotion as Tozer’s substantial person partially disappeared from view behind the crimson cushion. Phoebe left off singing, and subsided into tears and her seat. Mrs. Pigeon lifted up her voice and expanded her person; meanwhile Tozer whispered ominously, with a certain agitation, in his pastor’s ear⁠—

“It’s three words of an intimation as I’d like to give⁠—nothing of no importance; a meeting of the flock as some of us would like to call, if it’s quite agreeable⁠—nothing as you need mind, Mr. Vincent. We wouldn’t go for to occupy your time, sir, attending of it. There wasn’t no opportunity to tell you before. I’ll give it out, if it’s agreeable,” said Tozer, with hesitation⁠—“or if you’d rather⁠—”

“Give it to me,” said the minister quickly. He took the paper out of the butterman’s hand, who drew back uncomfortable and embarrassed, wishing himself anywhere in the world but in the pulpit, from which that revolutionary document menaced the startled pastor with summary deposition. It was a sufficiently simple notice of a meeting to be held on the following Monday evening, in the schoolroom, which was the scene of all the tea and other meetings of Salem. This, however, was no tea-meeting. Vincent drew his breath hard, and changed colour, as he bent down under the shadow of the pulpit-cushion and the big Bible, and read this dangerous document. Meanwhile the flock sang their hymn, to which Tozer, much discomposed, added a few broken notes of tremulous bass as he sat by the minister’s side. When Mr. Vincent again raised his head, and sat erect with the notice in his hand, the troubled deacon made vain attempts to catch his eye, and ask what was to be done. The Nonconformist made no reply to these telegraphic communications. When the sinking was ended he rose, still with the paper in his hand, and faced the congregation, where he no longer saw one face with a vague background of innumerable other faces, but had suddenly woke up to behold his battleground and field of warfare, in which everything dear to him was suddenly assailed. Unawares the assembled people, who had received no special sensation from the sermon, woke up also at the sight of Vincent’s face. He read the notice to them with a voice that tingled through the place; then he paused. “This meeting is one of which I have not been informed,” said Vincent. “It is one which I am not asked to attend. I invite you to it, all who are here present; and I invite you thereafter,” continued the minister, with an unconscious elevation of his head, “to meet me on the following evening to hear what I have to say to you. Probably the business will be much the same on both occasions, but it will be approached from different sides of the question. I invite you to meet on Monday, according to this notice; and I invite you on Tuesday, at the same place and hour, to meet me.”

Vincent did not hear the audible hum and buzz of surprise and excitement which ran through his startled flock. He did not pay much attention to what Tozer said to him when all was over. He lingered in his vestry, taking off his gown, until he could hear Lady Western’s carriage drive off after an interval of lingering. The young Dowager had gone out slowly, thinking to see him, and comfort him with a compliment about his sermon, concerning the quality of which she was not critical. She was sorry in her kind heart to perceive his troubled looks, and to discover that somehow, she could not quite understand how, something annoying and unexpected had occurred to him. And then this uneasy companion, to whom he had bound her, and whose strange agitation and wonderful change of aspect Lady Western could in no way account for⁠—But the carriage rolled away at last, not without reluctance, while the minister still remained in his vestry. Then he hurried home, speaking to no one. Mrs. Vincent did not understand her son all day, nor even next morning, when he might have been supposed to have time to calm down. He was very silent, but no longer dreamy or languid, or lost in the vague discontent and dejection with which she was familiar. On the contrary, the minister had woke up out of that abstraction. He was wonderfully alert, open-eyed, full of occupation. When he sat down to his writing-table it was not to muse, with his pen in his languid fingers, now and then putting down a sentence, but to write straight forward with evident fire and emphasis. He was very tender to herself, but he did not tell her anything. Some new cloud had doubtless appeared on the firmament where there was little need for any further clouds. The widow rose on the Monday morning with a presentiment of calamity on her mind⁠—rose from the bed in Susan’s room which she occupied for two or three hours in the night, sometimes snatching a momentary sleep, which Susan’s smallest movement interrupted. Her heart was rent in two between her children. She went from Susan’s bedside, where her daughter lay in dumb apathy, not to be roused by anything that could be said or done, to minister wistfully at Arthur’s breakfast, which, with her heart in her throat, the widow made a pitiful pretence of sharing. She could not ask him questions. She was silent, too, in her great love and sorrow. Seeing some new trouble approaching⁠—wistfully gazing into the blank skies before her, to discover, if that were possible, without annoying Arthur, or compromising him, what it was; but rather than compromise or annoy him, contenting herself not to know⁠—the greatest stretch of endurance to which as yet she had constrained her spirit.