“I rest, Reverend Sir,
“Your obliged friend and servant,
“Nicholas Godliman.”
The box contained a considerable sum of money in small coins. The care of the merchant had provided his bounty in the form most easily distributed.
“Father,” said Edith,” here is a Providence for me. I will be Master Godliman’s almoner. Your work is not with the bread that perisheth.”
“Truly,” said Master Vincent, “the maiden speaks wisely, brother. There are various gentlewomen of repute, to mine own knowledge, engaged in like work already. But Mistress Edith, bethink you first of the peril—it is no trope in these days to say we go with our lives in our hands, and you are young.”
“I am ready; indeed, Master Vincent, I am ready,” said Edith, hastily. “I came here almost in rebellion against my father’s will, but I did not come to be idle, and this office is sent for my using. Father, think you not so?”
“I think you are over youthful to calculate all the perils,” said her father, “but I must trust you now—only remember to use all needful caution; you started at my care of this charitable letter; but remember, Edith, that there are dangers in the very air, and that where I would use needful measures for mine own safety, I would do tenfold more for thine. Stir not abroad to-day, I have other counsel to give thee ere thou makest a beginning; and now, Master Vincent, it is the hour for the meeting of the brethren.”
So they went forth together. Their meeting was in a vestry attached to the old church of St. Margaret’s, in Westminister. The Presbyterian ministers of London were assembling in their classis when Vincent and Field entered the room.
In the chair sat a little, quick, lively man, with small vivacious features and keen dark eyes. He was one of that peculiar class, whose names are redolent of solemn quip and quaint antithesis, balanced with a nice art and dexterity forgotten in our times. A study chair in some fair vicarage, in “the leisure of the olden ministry,” elaborating courses of quaint sermons, and decking his beloved Bible with the flowery gathering of an antique philosophy, somewhat artificial it may be, yet having life in its veins withal, would have better realized the abstract idea of suitability in the case of Master Chester, than did the Moderator’s chair of this small but solemn assembly within the bounds of stricken London. But that race of quaint commentators was a race fearing God truly and faithfully, and their representative here, strengthened by such loyal love and reverence, had risen to the top of this bitter wave; and relaxing the scrupulous cares of composition which formed his most congenial work, was now laboring in the fervent inspiration of that dire and solemn necessity, no less zealous and manful than any there.
Beside him sat a good-looking, portly, middle-aged man, with a ruddy and healthful face. He belonged to another distinct class. Master Franklin had not the gift of originating or suggesting; but he had in an especial manner, in that docile, laborious, patient strength of his, the gift of carrying out. An unobtrusive, placid, humble man, he accomplished heaps of work unwittingly, and went on day by day in a series of dumb, unthought-of heroisms, appreciated by few men, least of all by himself; for there was little light, save the quiet radiance of goodness to set off his labor withal, and in the unfeigned humility of his honest heart, he himself would have been the first to repudiate the praise due to his constant devotion.
The preacher, Vincent, had an individuality strikingly distinct from these. Prone to examine the depths of his own sensitive spirit, he had endured at the outset of his career a fiery ordeal akin to that of the famed dreamer of Bedford; and fighting through spiritual perils, like the pilgrim of that wondrous vision, had become at last a great master in all the subtle processes and unseen movements of the heart. “Cases of conscience,” such as formed no unimportant part of the ministerial labors of those zealous times, were referred to him from all places. In probing the wounds, disentangling the twisted threads of motive and design, elucidating the hidden working, and evolving the secret struggles of the soul, he was at home and strong; and joined with this peculiar gift was a melancholy bias of mind, a tendency to despondency and speculative grief, a mood akin to that of the preacher of old, who, as the conclusion of his experience, leaves the sorrowful record to us, that all is vanity. A certain melancholy vivacity of expression and overwhelming earnestness made him, as it makes his class still, an especially effective preacher, and in this time of singular distress the effect was proportionably increased.