As for Vincent himself, he had retired from the conflict. He paid no visits; with a certain half-conscious falling back upon the one thing he could do best, he devoted himself to his sermons. At least he shut himself up to write morning after morning, and remained all day dull and undisturbed, brooding over his work. The congregation somehow got to hear of his abstraction. And to the offended mind of Salem there was something imposing in the idea of the minister, misunderstood and unappreciated, thus retiring from the field, and devoting himself to “study.” Even Mrs. Pigeon owned to herself a certain respect for the foe who did not humble himself, but withdrew with dignity into the intrenchments of his own position. It was fine; but it was not the thing for Salem. Mrs. Brown had a tea-party on the Thursday, to which the pastor was not even invited, but where there were great and manifold discussions about him, and where the Tozers found themselves an angry minority, suspected on all sides. “A pastor as makes himself agreeable here and there, but don’t take no thought for the good of the flock in general, ain’t a man to get on in our connection,” said Mrs. Pigeon, with a toss of her head at Phœbe, who blushed over all her pink arms and shoulders with mingled gratification and discomposure. Mrs. Tozer herself received this insinuation without any violent disclaimer. “For my part, I can’t say as the minister hasn’t made himself very agreeable as far as we are concerned,” said that judicious woman. “It’s well known as friends can’t come amiss to Tozer and me. Dinner or supper, we never can be took wrong, not being fine folks but comfortable,” said the butterman’s wife, directing her eyes visibly to Mrs. Pigeon, who was not understood to be liberal in her house-keeping. Poor Phœbe was not so discriminating. When she retired into a corner with her companions, Phœbe’s injured feelings disclosed themselves. “I am sure he never said anything to me that he might not have said to any one,” she confessed to Maria Pigeon; “it is very hard to have people look so at me when perhaps he means nothing at all,” said Phœbe, half dejected, half important. Mrs. Pigeon heard the unguarded confession, and made use of it promptly, not careful for her consistency.
“I said when you had all set your hearts on a young man, that it was a foolish thing to do,” said poor Vincent’s skilful opponent; “I said he’d be sure to come a-dangling about our houses, and a-trifling with the affections of our girls. It’ll be well if it doesn’t come too true; not as I want to pretend to be wiser nor other folks—but I said so, as you’ll remember, Mrs. Brown, the very first day Mr. Vincent preached in Salem. I said, ‘He’s not bad-looking, and he’s young and has genteel ways, and the girls don’t know no better. You mark my words, if he don’t make some mischief in Carlingford afore all’s done,’—and I only hope as it won’t come too true.”
“Them as is used to giddy girls gets timid, as is natural,” said Mrs. Tozer; “it’s different where there is only one, and she a quiet one. I can’t say as I ever thought a young man was more taking for being a minister; but there can’t be no doubt as it must be harder upon you, ma’am, as has four daughters, than me as has only one—and she a quiet one,” added the deacon’s wife, with a glance of maternal pride at Phœbe, who was just then enfolding the spare form of Maria Pigeon in an artless embrace, and who looked in her pink wreath and white muslin dress, “quite the lady,” at least in her mother’s eyes.
“The quiet ones is the deep ones,” said Tozer, interfering, as a wise man ought, in the female duel, as it began to get intense. “Phœbe’s my girl, and I don’t deny being fond of her, as is natural; but she ain’t so innocent as not to know how things is working, and what meaning is in some folks’ minds. But that’s neither here nor there, and it’s time as we was going away.”
“Not before we’ve had prayers,” said Mrs. Brown. “I was surprised the first time I see Mr. Vincent in your house, Mr. Tozer, as we all parted like heathens without a blessing, specially being all chapel folks, and of one way of thinking. Our ways is different in this house; and though we’re in a comfortless kind of condition, and no better than if we hadn’t no minister, still as there’s you and Mr. Pigeon here——”
The tea-party thus concluded with a still more distinct sense of the pastor’s shortcomings. There was nobody to “give prayers” but Pigeon and Tozer. For all social purposes, the flock in Salem might as well have had no minister. The next little committee held in the back parlour at the butter-shop was still more unsatisfactory. While it was in progress, Mr. Vincent himself appeared, and had to be taken solemnly up-stairs to the drawing-room, where there was no fire, and where the hum of the voices below was very audible, as Mrs. Tozer and Phœbe, getting blue with cold, sat vainly trying to occupy the attention of the pastor.
“Pa has some business people with him in the parlour,” explained Phœbe, who was very tender and sympathetic, as might be expected; but it did not require a very brilliant intelligence to divine that the business under discussion was the minister, even if Mrs. Tozer’s solemnity, and the anxious care with which he was conveyed past the closed door of the parlour, had not already filled the mind of the pastor with suspicion.
“Go down and let your pa know as Mr. Vincent’s here,” said Mrs. Tozer, after this uncomfortable séance had lasted half an hour; “and he’s not to keep them men no longer than he can help; and presently we’ll have a bit of supper—that’s what I enjoy, that is, Mr. Vincent; no ceremony like there must be at a party, but just to take us as we are; and we can’t be took amiss, Tozer and me. There’s always a bit of something comfortable for supper; and no friend as could be made so welcome as the minister,” added the good woman, growing more and more civil as she came to her wits’ end; for had not Pigeon and Brown been asked to share that something comfortable? For the first time it was a relief to the butterman’s household when the pastor declined the impromptu invitation, and went resolutely away. His ears, sharpened by suspicion, recognised the familiar voices in the parlour, where the door was ajar when he went out again. Vincent could not have imagined that to feel himself unwelcome at Tozer’s would have had any effect whatever upon his preoccupied mind, or that to pass almost within hearing of one of the discussions which must inevitably be going on about him among the managers of Salem, could quicken his pulse or disturb his composure. But it was so notwithstanding. He had come out at the entreaty of his mother, half unwillingly, anticipating, with the liveliest realisation of all its attendant circumstances, an evening spent at that big table in the back parlour, and something comfortable to supper. He came back again tingling with curiosity, indignation, and suppressed defiance. The something comfortable had not this time been prepared for him. He was being discussed, not entertained, in the parlour; and Mrs. Tozer and Phœbe, in the chill fine drawing-room up-stairs, where the gas was blazing in a vain attempt to make up for the want of the fire—shivering with cold and civility—had been as much disconcerted by his appearance as if they too were plotting against him. Mr. Vincent returned to his sermon not without some additional fire. He had spent a great deal of time over his sermon that week; it was rather learned and very elaborate, and a little—dull. The poor minister felt very conscious of the fact, but could not help it. He was tempted to put it in the fire, and begin again, when he returned that Friday evening, smarting with those little stinging arrows of slight and injury; but it was too late: and this was the beginning of the “coorse” which Tozer had laid so much store by. Vincent concluded the elaborate production by a few sharp sentences, which he was perfectly well aware did not redeem it, and explained to his mother, with a little ill-temper, as she thought, that he had changed his mind about visiting the Tozers that night. Mrs. Vincent did Arthur injustice as she returned to Susan’s room, where again matters looked very sadly; and so the troubled week came to a close.
CHAPTER XV.
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 dulness 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 Phœbe, 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 Phœbe 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. Phœbe 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—