“I never heard as they had any books—more than the hymn-books, which they took with them, I suppose. It’s our new Rector as has bought it—a real good man, as gives none of us no peace——”
“And sets you all on with your tongues,” said her husband, throwing his basket over his shoulder.
Edgar did not wait to hear the retort of the wife, and felt no interest in the doings of the new Rector. He did not know what to do in this unforeseen difficulty. He went across the road, and up the little entry, and looked at the grimy building beyond, which was no great satisfaction to his feelings. It was a dreary little chapel, of the most ordinary type, cleared of its pews, and filled with the low benches and staring pictures of an infant school, and looked as if it had been thrust up into a corner by the little line of houses built across the scrap of open space which had formerly existed in front of its doors. As he gazed round him helplessly, another woman came up, who asked with bated breath what he wanted.
“We’re all church folks now hereabouts,” she said; “but I don’t mind telling you, sir, as a stranger, I was always fond of the old chapel. What preaching there used to be, to be sure!—dreadful rousing and comforting! And it’s more relief, like, to the mind, to say, ‘Lord, ha’ mercy upon us!’ or, ‘Glory, glory!’ or the like o’ that, just when you pleases, than at set times out o’ a book. There’s nothing most but prayers here now. If you want any of the chapel folks, maybe I could tell you. I’ve been in the street twenty years and more.”
“I want to find out about a marriage that took place here ten years ago,” said Edgar.
“Marriage!” said the woman, shaking her head. “I don’t recollect no marriage. Preachings are one thing, and weddings is another. I don’t hold with weddings out of church. If there’s any good in church—”
Edgar had to stop this exposition by asking after the “chapel-folks” to whom she could direct him, and in answer was told of three tradesmen in the neighbourhood who “held by the Methodys,” one of whom had been a deacon in the disused chapel. This was a carpenter, who could not be seen till his dinner-hour, and on whom Edgar had to dance attendance with very indifferent satisfaction; for the deacon’s report was that the chapel had never been, so far as he could remember, licensed for marriages, and that none had taken place within it. This statement, however, was flatly contradicted by the pork-butcher, whose name was the next on his list, and who recollected to have heard that some one had been married there just about the time indicated by Miss Lockwood. Finally, Edgar lighted on an official who had been a local preacher in the days of the chapel, and who was now a Scripture-reader, under the sway of the new Rector, who had evidently turned the church and parish upside-down. This personage had known something of the Lockwoods, and was not disinclined—having ascertained that Edgar was a stranger, and unlikely to betray any of his hankerings after the chapel—to gossip about the little defunct community. Its books and records had, he said, been removed, when it was closed, to some central office of the denomination, where they would, no doubt, be shown on application. This man was very anxious to give a great deal of information quite apart from the matter in hand. He gave Edgar a sketch of the decay of the chapel, in which, I fear, the young man took no interest, though it was curious enough; and he told him about the Lockwoods, and about the eldest daughter, who, he was afraid, had come to no good.
“She said as she was married, but nobody believed her. She was always a flighty one,” said the Scripture-reader.
This was all that Edgar picked up out of a flood of unimportant communications. He could not even find any clue to the place where these denominational records were kept, and by this time the day was too far advanced to do more. Drearily he left the grimy little street, with its damp pavements, its poor little badly-lighted shops and faint lamps, not without encountering the new Rector in person, an omniscient personage, who had already heard of his inquiries, and regarded him suspiciously, as perhaps a “Methody” in disguise, planning the restoration of dissent in a locality just purged from its taint. Edgar was too tired, too depressed and down-hearted to be amused by the watchful look of the muscular Christian, who saw in him a wolf prowling about the fold. He made his way into the main road, and jumped into a hansom, and drove down the long line of shabby, crowded thoroughfare, so mean and small, yet so great and full of life. Those miles and miles of mean, monotonous street, without a feature to mark one from another, full of crowds of human creatures, never heard of, except as counting so many hundreds, more or less, in the year’s calendar of mortality—how strangely impressive they become at last by mere repetition, mass upon mass, crowd upon crowd, poor, nameless, mean, unlovely! Perhaps it was the general weariness and depression of Edgar’s whole being that brought this feeling into his mind as he drove noisily, silently along between those lines of faintly-lighted houses towards what is impertinently, yet justly, called the habitable part of London. For one fair, bright path in the social, as in the physical world, how many mean, and darkling, and obscure!—how small the spot which lies known and visible to the general eye!—how great the confused darkness all round! Such reflections are the mere growth of weariness and despondency, but they heighten the depression of which they are an evidence.
The whole of noisy, crowded London was as a wilderness to Edgar. He drove to his club, where he had not been since the day when he met Mr. Tottenham. So short a time ago, and yet how his life had altered in the interval! He was no longer drifting vaguely upon the current, as he had been doing. His old existence had caught at him with anxious hands. Notwithstanding all the alterations of time, circumstances, and being, he was at this moment not Edgar Earnshaw at all, but the Edgar Arden of three years ago, caught back into the old sphere, surrounded by the old thoughts. Such curious vindications of the unchangeableness of character, the identity of being, which suddenly seize upon a man, and whirl him back in a moment, defying all external changes, into his old, his unalterable self, are among the strangest things in humanity. Dizzy with the shock he had received, harassed by anxiety, worn out by unsuccessful effort, Edgar felt the world swim round with him, and scarcely could answer to himself who he was. Had all the Lockwood business been a dream? Was it a dream that he had been as a stranger for three long years to Clare, his sister—to Gussy, his almost bride? And yet his mind at this moment was as full of their images as if no interval had been.