Salem Chapel · Chapter 36 (2/2)

“But it ain’t to be,” said Tozer, looking round him with a tragic frown, and shaking his head slowly. “Them as is always a-finding fault, and always a-setting up to dictate, has set their faces again’ all that. It’s the way of some folks in our connection, ladies and gentlemen; a minister ain’t to be allowed to go on building up a chapel, and making hisself useful in the world. He ain’t to be left alone to do his dooty as his best friends approve. He’s to be took down out of his pulpit, and took to pieces behind his back, and made a talk and a scandal of to the whole connection! It’s not his preaching as he’s judged by, nor his dooty to the sick and dyin’, nor any of them things as he was called to be pastor for; but it’s if he’s seen going to one house more nor another, or if he calls often enough on this one or t’other, and goes to all the tea-drinkings. My opinion is,” said Tozer, suddenly breaking off into jocularity, “as a young man as maybe isn’t a marrying man, and anyhow can’t marry more nor one, ain’t in the safest place at Salem tea-drinkings; but that’s neither here nor there. If the ladies haven’t no pity, us men can’t do nothing in that matter; but what I say is this,” continued the butterman, once more becoming solemn; “to go for to judge the pastor of a flock, not by the dooty he does to his flock, but by the times he calls at one house or another, and the way he makes hisself agreeable at one place or another, ain’t a thing to be done by them as prides themselves on being Christians and Dissenters. It’s not like Christians⁠—and if it’s like Dissenters the more’s the pity. It’s mean, that’s what it is,” cried Tozer, with fine scorn; “it’s like a parcel of old women, if the ladies won’t mind me saying so. It’s beneath us as has liberty of conscience to fight for, and has to set an example before the Church folks as don’t know no better. But it’s what is done in our connection,” added the good deacon with pathos, shaking his forefinger mournfully at the crowd. “When there’s a young man as is clever and talented, and fills a chapel, and gives the connection a chance of standing up in the world as it ought, here’s someone as jumps up and says, ‘The pastor don’t come to see me,’ says he⁠—‘the pastor don’t do his duty⁠—he ain’t the man for Salem.’ And them as is always in every flock ready to do a mischief, takes it up; and there’s talk of a change, and meetings is called, and⁠—here we are! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, here we are! We’ve called a meeting, all in the dark, and give him no chance of defending himself; and them as is at the head of this movement is calling upon us to dismiss Mr. Vincent. But let me tell you,” continued Tozer, lowering his voice with a dramatic intuition, and shaking his forefinger still more emphatically in the face of the startled audience, “that this ain’t no question of dismissing Mr. Vincent; it’s a matter of disgusting Mr. Vincent, that’s what it is⁠—it’s a matter of turning another promising young man away from the connection, and driving him to throw it all up. You mark what I say. It’s what we’re doing most places, us Dissenters; them as is talented and promising and can get a better living working for the world than working for the chapel, and won’t give in to be worried about calling here and calling there⁠—we’re a-driving of them out of the connection, that’s what we’re doing! I could reckon up as many as six or seven as has been drove off already, and I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, what’s the good of subscribing and keeping up of colleges and so forth, if that’s how you’re a-going to serve every clever young man as trusts hisself to be your pastor? I’m a man as don’t feel no shame to say that the minister, being took up with his family affairs and his studies, has been for weeks as he hasn’t crossed my door; but am I that poor-spirited as I would drive away a young man as is one of the best preachers in the connection, because he don’t come, not every day, to see me? No, my friends! them as would ever suspect such a thing of me don’t know who they’re a-dealing with; and I tell you, ladies and gentlemen, as this is a question as must come home to every one of your bosoms. Them as is so set upon their own way that they can’t hear reason⁠—or them as is led away by folks as like to dictate⁠—may give their voice again’ the minister, if so be as they think fit; but as for me, and them as stands by me, I ain’t a-going to give in to no such tyranny! It shall never be said in our connection as a clever young man was drove away from Carlingford, and I had part in it. There’s the credit o’ the denomination to keep up among the Church folks⁠—and there’s the chapel to fill, as never had half the sittings let before⁠—and there’s Mr. Vincent, as is the cleverest young man I ever see in our pulpit, to be kep’ in the connection; and there ain’t no man living as shall dictate to me or them as stands by me! Them as is content to lose the best preaching within a hundred miles, because the minister don’t call on two or three families in Salem, not as often as they would like to see him,” said Tozer, with trenchant sarcasm, “can put down their names again’ Mr. Vincent; but for me, and them as stands by me, we ain’t a-going to give in to no such dictation: we ain’t a-going to set up ourselves against the spread of the Gospel, and the credit o’ the connection, and toleration and freedom of conscience, as we’re bound to fight for! If the pastor don’t make hisself agreeable, I can put up with that⁠—I can; but I ain’t a-going to see a clever young man drove away from Salem, and the sittings vacant, and the chapel falling to ruin, and the Church folks a-laughing and a-jeering at us, not for all the deacons in the connection, nor any man in Carlingford. And this I say for myself and for all as stands by me!”

The last sentence was lost in thunders of applause. The “Salem folks” stamped with their feet, knocked the floor with their umbrellas, clapped their hands in a furore of enthusiasm and sympathy. Their pride was appealed to; nobody could bear the imputation of being numbered among the two or three to whom the minister had not paid sufficient attention. All the adherents of the Pigeon party deserted that luckless family sitting prominent upon their bench, with old Mrs. Tufton at the corner joining as heartily as her overshoes would permit in the general commotion. There they sat, a pale line of faces, separated, by their looks of dismay and irresponsive silence, from the applauding crowd, cruelly identified as “them as is always ready to dictate.” The occasion was indeed a grand one, had the leader of the opposition been equal to it; but Mrs. Pigeon only sat and stared at the new turn of affairs with a hysterical smile of spite and disappointment fixed on her face. Before the cheers died away, a young man⁠—one of the Young Men’s Christian Association connected with Salem⁠—jumped up on a bench in the midst of the assembly, and clinched the speech of Tozer. He told the admiring meeting that he had been brought up in the connection, but had strayed away into carelessness and neglect⁠—and when he went anywhere at all on Sundays, went to church like one of the common multitude, till Mr. Vincent’s lectures on Church and State opened his eyes, and brought him to better knowledge. Then came another, and another. Mrs. Vincent, sitting on the back seat with her veil over her face, did not hear what they said. The heroic little soul had broken down, and was lost in silent tears, and utterances in her heart of thanksgiving, deeper than words. No comic aspect of the scene appeared to her; she was not moved by its vulgarity or oddity. It was deliverance and safety to the minister’s mother. Her son’s honour and his living were alike safe, and his people had stood by Arthur. She sat for some time longer, lost in that haze of comfort and relief, afraid to move lest perhaps something untoward might still occur to change this happy state of affairs⁠—keen to detect any evil symptom, if such should occur, but unable to follow with any exactness the course of those addresses which still continued to be made in her hearing. She was not quite sure, indeed, whether anybody had spoken after Tozer, when, with a step much less firm than on her entrance, she went forth, wiping the tears that blinded her from under her veil, into the darkness and quiet of the street outside. But she knew that “resolutions” of support and sympathy had been carried by acclamation, and that somebody was deputed from the flock to assure the minister of its approval, and to offer him the new lease of popularity thus won for him in Salem. Mrs. Vincent waited to hear no more. She got up softly and went forth on noiseless, weary feet, which faltered, now that her anxiety was over, with fatigue and agitation. Thankful to the bottom of her heart, yet at the same time doubly worn out with that deliverance, confused with the lights, the noises, and the excitement of the scene, and beginning already to take up her other burden, and to wonder by times, waking up with sharp touches of renewed anguish, how she might find Susan, and whether “any change” had appeared in her other child. It was thus that the great Salem congregational meeting, so renowned in the connection, ended for the minister’s mother. She left them still making speeches when she emerged into Grove Street. The political effect of Tozer’s address, or the influence which his new doctrine might have on the denomination, did not occur to Mrs. Vincent. She was thinking only of Arthur. Not even the darker human misery by her side had power to break through her preoccupation. How the gentle little woman had shaken off that anxious hand which grasped her old black dress, she never knew herself, nor could anyone tell; somehow she had done it: alone, as she entered, she went away again⁠—secret, but not clandestine, under that veil of her widowhood. She put it up from her face when she got into the street, and wiped her tears off with a trembling, joyful hand. She could not see her way clearly for those tears of joy. When they were dried, and the crape shadow put back from her face, Mrs. Vincent looked up Grove Street, where her road lay in the darkness, broken by those flickering lamps. It was a windy night, and Dr. Rider’s drag went up past her rapidly, carrying the doctor home from some late visit, and recalling her thoughts to her own patient whom she had left so long. She quickened her tremulous steps as Dr. Rider disappeared in the darkness; but almost before she had got beyond the last echoes of the Salem meeting, that shadow of darker woe and misery than any the poor mother wist of, was again by Mrs. Vincent’s side.