In the course of time, Thorburn grew weary of trying to spiritualize a congregation of people who were so well off in this world that they regarded their probable transposition to heaven with great distaste. He sickened of being restricted in his spiritual efforts to emotional women and priggish boys and girls. Religion, he felt, was an affair for men—but of the few men communicants in the church, every one of them would have instantly withdrawn his subscription and quitted the church had the clergyman showed any undue solicitude about his soul. And if he had ventured to speak of their sins, in any except the most general way, the bishop would have come down upon him. So this zealous man, so cruelly misplaced, found his fashionable congregation and handsome salary utterly unendurable after that frightful and heart-breaking tragedy in his life. He was glad enough for the chance to preach to a congregation of decent brick makers, such as made up most of the population of East Harrowby, and who did not find this world so pleasant that they could not grasp the idea of a better one.
Dr. Sunbury, the rector of the handsome stone church in West Harrowby, was a good man, but he would have cut a poor figure as an apostle alongside of that independent citizen, Paul of Tarsus, or Peter the fisherman. The doctor had the kindest heart, though, and the most liberal mind in West Harrowby, and having early had a safe and easy path to heaven pointed out to him, he had walked along it for forty years, never doubting that he would get there in the end. It is true that the spectacle of Mr. Thorburn, going night and day among his poor parishioners, being doctor, nurse, adviser, everything to them, sometimes gave the excellent old doctor a qualm, but he had sense enough to see that, even if he wished to follow the same life as the Rev. Mr. Thorburn, he couldn't do it. There were no sick, poor, ignorant people in the well-bred, well-fed congregation that listened to Dr. Sunbury's mild and strictly general exhortations.
Priscilla Mildmay alone of all the doctor's flock went after the new parson at East Harrowby and his shabby, uncomfortable church. But Priscilla always had an odd way with her, so her elder sisters gently lamented. For example, instead of reading the religious flapdoodle with which they were quite satisfied, Priscilla would devour her Thomas à Kempis as if all of truth was to be found therein, and declared she could not read anything after that except the four Gospels. The Misses Mildmay had not failed to report Priscilla's iniquity to Dr. Sunbury, but they got cold comfort.
"Let the girl alone," he said. "Thorburn's a better preacher than I am, and, God knows, he is a better man" (the doctor possessed, without knowing it, one of the greatest Christian' virtues—humility) "and don't bother her. She is right. I'd go to hear Thorburn myself if I didn't have to preach." The two clergymen were upon the most friendly terms, although so widely apart in every respect but that of mutual good-will. The only house in West Harrowby that Thorburn visited was Dr. Sunbury's and the old doctor trudged over to East Harrowby sometimes, to smoke a pipe of peace in Thorburn's dingy lodgings. Dr. Sunbury hated walking, but he could not find it in his conscience to drive over to that woe-begone community in his snug brougham—all of which the recording angel put down in his favor.
Priscilla's face had not escaped Thorburn's notice. He had keen eyes, and he saw everything. He saw Priscilla with wonder. Women, as a rule, did not flock to his church. They said they found his sermons cold. Men, and some of them none of the best, chiefly made up his audiences. It was not hard anywhere to observe Priscilla's snow-drop face in her little black bonnet, with her eager, beseeching eyes. After a while Mr. Thorburn began to feel their mesmeric influence, as Dr. Sunbury had done ever since she was fifteen. He began to watch for her, to preach at her, to feel that she understood him—a very comfortable thing for a public speaker. Of course he knew who Miss Priscilla Mildmay was—"Very nice, but not the equal of the elder Misses Mildmay," he usually heard—and sometimes they had met at Dr. Sunbury's. As Mr. Thorburn was naturally a silent man, and Priscilla lacked courage in a drawing-room, they scarcely exchanged half a dozen words. It came about, though, as these things will, that in the course of his parish work he came upon Priscilla—Priscilla teaching a class of ragged boys their lessons, after having taught the most stylish young ladies in West Harrowby the most elegant branches of a polite education. Some way, all the restraint they had felt in Dr. Sunbury's drawing-room melted away in the little bare school room. There Priscilla reigned supreme, calmly confident under Mr. Thorburn's searching gaze. She had a peculiar knack of teaching. Her gentle, "Now, please, boys," had the same effect as Mr. Thorburn's stern, "See, you fellows, behave yourselves." Mr. Thorburn watched with admiration the tact with which she managed her somewhat unruly crowd.
Of course all this teaching did not go on with the unqualified approbation of the Misses Mildmay. Priscilla showed a phenomenal determination about it, and being upheld by Dr. Sunbury, who in some way always encouraged her vagaries, the Misses Mildmay, although they might look coldly on it, could not forbid it.
It did not take much to violently excite West Harrowby; and therefore when the Harrowby Union-Palladium published one morning, with a big display head that covered half the first page of the paper, the burning of the Northern Lunatic Asylum, a certain circumstance connected therewith gave West Harrowby something to talk about for a week. Five inmates of the women's ward were missing, and among them was Mrs. Eleanor Thorburn. Five bodies, charred beyond recognition, were found in the ruins. Some days after a notice appeared in the obituary column of the Union-Palladium: "Suddenly, on the 17th of February, Mrs. Eleanor Thorburn, wife of the Reverend Edmund Thorburn, of East Harrowby." That was all.
Nobody—not the most censorious—could accuse Mr. Thorburn of not paying scrupulous respect to his wife's memory. Yet it made but little outward difference in his life. For two or three Sundays he was absent from his pulpit, and when he reappeared he wore a band of crape upon his hat.
So things went on until nearly two years had slipped past. One spring afternoon Dr. Sunbury, with his particular chum and crony, Dr. Forman, the great light of the medical profession in and about Harrowby, was enjoying a quiet saunter through the familiar shady street. They had wrestled in argument so often, and practiced in company so much, that Dr. Sunbury had become a pretty good doctor of medicine, and Dr. Forman was no mean proficient in theology. Right in the midst of a friendly-fierce wrangle on the subject of ecclesiastical history, Dr. Forman suddenly remarked, "That's going to be a match."
Dr. Sunbury glanced up, and saw Mr. Thorburn, as he met Priscilla Mildmay, stop, smile, speak a few words, and, lifting his hat, go upon his way.