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Salem Chapel. Volume 1/2
CHAPTER II
IT was with a somewhat clouded aspect that the young pastor rose from his solitary breakfast-table next morning to devote himself to the needful work of visiting his flock. The minister’s breakfast, though lonely, had not been without alleviations. He had the “Carlingford Gazette” at his elbow, if that was any comfort, and he had two letters which were more interesting; one was from his mother, a minister’s widow, humbly enough off, but who had brought up her son in painful gentility, and had done much to give him that taste for good society which was to come to so little fruition in Carlingford. Mr. Vincent smiled sardonically as he read his good mother’s questions about his “dear people,” and her anxious inquiry whether he had found a “pleasant circle” in Salem. Remembering the dainty little household which it took her so much pains and pinching to maintain, the contrast made present affairs still more and more distasteful to her son. He could fancy her trim little figure in that traditionary black silk gown which never wore out, and the whitest of caps, gazing aghast at Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Tozer. But, nevertheless, Mrs. Vincent understood all about Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Tozer, and had been very civil to such, and found them very serviceable in her day, though her son, who knew her only in that widowed cottage where she had her own way, could not have realised it. The other letter was from a Homerton chum, a young intellectual and ambitious Nonconformist like himself, whose epistle was full of confidence and hope, triumph in the cause, and its perpetual advance. “We are the priests of the poor,” said the Homerton enthusiast, encouraging his friend to the sacrifices and struggles which he presumed to be already surrounding him. Mr. Vincent bundled up this letter with a sigh. Alas! there were no grand struggles or sacrifices in Carlingford. “The poor” were mostly church-goers, as he had already discovered. It was a tolerably comfortable class of the community, that dreadful “connection” of Browns, Pigeons, and Tozers. Amid their rude luxuries and commonplace plenty, life could have no heroic circumstances. The young man sighed, and did not feel so sure as he once did of the grand generalities in which his friend was still confident. If Dissenters led the van of progress generally, there was certainly an exception to be made in respect to Carlingford. And the previous evening’s entertainment had depressed the young minister’s expectations even of what he himself could do – a sad blow to a young man. He was less convinced that opportunity of utterance was all that was necessary to give him influence in the general community. He was not half so sure of success in opening the closed doors and sealed hearts of Grange Lane. On the whole, matters looked somewhat discouraging that particular morning, which was a morning in October, not otherwise depressing or disagreeable. He took his hat and went down-stairs with a kind of despairing determination to do his duty. There an encounter occurred which did not raise his spirits. The door was open, and his landlady, who was a member of Salem Chapel, stood there in full relief against the daylight outside, taking from the hands of Miss Phœbe Tozer a little basket, the destination of which she was volubly indicating. Mr. Vincent appearing before Phœbe had half concluded her speech, that young lady grew blushingly embarrassed, and made haste to relinquish her hold of the basket. Her conscious looks filled the unwitting minister with ignorant amaze.
“Oh, to think Mr. Vincent should catch me here! What ever will he think? and what ever will Ma say?” cried Miss Phœbe. “Oh, Mr. Vincent, Ma thought, please, you might perhaps like some jelly, and I said I would run over with it myself, as it’s so near, and the servant might have made a mistake, and Ma hopes you’ll enjoy it, and that you liked the party last night!”
“Mrs. Tozer is very kind,” said the minister, with cloudy looks. “Some what, did you say, Miss Phœbe?”
“La! only some jelly – nothing worth mentioning – only a shape that was over supper last night, and Ma thought you wouldn’t mind,” cried the messenger, half alarmed by the unusual reception of her offering. Mr. Vincent turned very red, and looked at the basket as if he would like nothing better than to pitch it into the street; but prudence for once restrained the young man. He bit his lips, and bowed, and went upon his way, without waiting, as she intended he should, to escort Miss Phœbe back again to her paternal shop. Carrying his head higher than usual, and thrilling with offence and indignation, the young pastor made his way along George Street. It was a very trifling circumstance, certainly; but just when an enthusiastic companion writes to you about the advance of the glorious cause, and your own high vocation as a soldier of the Cross, and the undoubted fact that the hope of England is in you, to have a shape of jelly, left over from last night’s tea-party, sent across the street with complacent kindness, for your refreshment – ! It was trying. To old Mrs. Tufton, indeed, who had an invalid daughter, it might have seemed a Christian bounty; but to Arthur Vincent, five-and-twenty, a scholar and a gentleman – ah me! If he had been a Christchurch man, or even a Fellow of Trinity, the chances are he would have taken it much more graciously; for then he would have had the internal consciousness of his own dignity to support him; whereas the sting of it all was, that poor young Vincent had no special right to his own pretensions, but had come to them he could not tell how; and, in reality, had his mind been on a level with his fortunes, ought to have found the Tozers and Pigeons sufficiently congenial company. He went along George Street with troubled haste, pondering his sorrows – those sorrows which he could confide to nobody. Was he actually to live among these people for years – to have no other society – to circulate among their tea-parties, and grow accustomed to their finery, and perhaps “pay attention” to Phœbe Tozer; or, at least, suffer that young lady’s attentions to him? And what would become of him at the end? To drop into a shuffling old gossip, like good old Mr. Tufton, seemed the best thing he could hope for; and who could wonder at the mild stupor of paralysis – disease not tragical, only drivelling – which was the last chapter of all?
The poor young man accordingly marched along George Street deeply disconsolate. When he met the perpetual curate of St. Roque’s at the door of Masters’s bookshop – where, to be sure, at that hour in the morning, it was natural to encounter Mr. Wentworth – the young Nonconformist gazed at him with a certain wistfulness. They looked at each other, in fact, being much of an age, and not unsimilar in worldly means just at the present moment. There were various points of resemblance between them. Mr. Vincent, too, wore an Anglican coat, and assumed a high clerical aspect – sumptuary laws forbidding such presumption being clearly impracticable in England; and the Dissenter was as fully endowed with natural good looks as the young priest. How was it, then, that so vast a world of difference and separation lay between them? For one compensating moment Mr. Vincent decided that it was because of his more enlightened faith, and felt himself persecuted. But even that pretence did not serve the purpose. He began to divine faintly, and with a certain soreness, that external circumstances do stand for something, if not in the great realities of a man’s career, at least in the comforts of his life. A poor widow’s son, educated at Homerton, and an English squire’s son, public school and university bred, cannot begin on the same level. To compensate that disadvantage requires something more than a talent for preaching. Perhaps genius would scarcely do it without the aid of time and labour. The conviction fell sadly upon poor Arthur Vincent as he went down the principal street of Carlingford in the October sunshine. He was rapidly becoming disenchanted, and neither the ‘Nonconformist’ nor the ‘Patriot,’ nor Exeter Hall itself, could set him up again.
With these feelings the young pastor pursued his way to see the poor woman who, according to Mrs. Brown’s account, was so anxious to see the minister. He found this person, whose desire was at present shared by most of the female members of Salem without the intervention of the Devonshire Dairy, in a mean little house in the close lane dignified by the name of Back Grove Street. She was a thin, dark, vivacious-looking woman, with a face from which some forty years of energetic living had withdrawn all the colour and fulness which might once have rendered it agreeable, but which was, nevertheless, a remarkable face, not to be lightly passed over. Extreme thinness of outline and sharpness of line made the contrast between this educated countenance and the faces which had lately surrounded the young minister still more remarkable. It was not a profound or elevated kind of education, perhaps, but it was very different from the thin superficial lacker with which Miss Phœbe was coated. Eager dark eyes, with dark lines under them – thin eloquent lips, the upper jaw projecting slightly, the mouth closing fast and firm – a well-shaped small head, with a light black lace handkerchief fastened under the chin – no complexion or softening of tint – a dark, sallow, colourless face, thrilling with expression, energy, and thought, was that on which the young man suddenly lighted as he went in, somewhat indifferent, it must be confessed, and expecting to find nothing that could interest him. She was seated in a shabby room, only half-carpeted, up two pair of stairs, which looked out upon no more lively view than the back of Salem Chapel itself, with its few dismal scattered graves – and was working busily at men’s clothing of the coarsest kind, blue stuff which had transferred its colour to her thin fingers. Meagre as were her surroundings, however, Mr. Vincent, stumbling listlessly up the narrow bare stair of the poor lodging-house, suddenly came to himself as he stood within this humble apartment. If this was to be his penitent, the story she had to tell might be not unworthy of serious listening. He stammered forth a half apology and explanation of his errand, as he gazed surprised at so unexpected a figure, wondering within himself what intense strain and wear of life could have worn to so thin a tissue the outer garment of this keen and sharp-edged soul.
“Come in,” said the stranger, “I am glad to see you. I know you, Mr. Vincent, though I can’t suppose you’ve observed me. Take a seat. I have heard you preach ever since you came – so, knowing in a manner how your thoughts run, I’ve a kind of acquaintance with you: which, to be sure, isn’t the same on your side. I daresay the woman at the Dairy sent you to me?”
“I understood – from Mrs. Brown certainly – that you wanted to see me,” said the puzzled pastor.
“Yes, it was quite true. I have resources in myself, to be sure, as much as most people,” said his new acquaintance, whom he had been directed to ask for as Mrs. Hilyard, “but still human relations are necessary; and as I don’t know anybody here, I thought I’d join the Chapel. Queer set of people, rather, don’t you think?” she continued, glancing up from her rapid stitching to catch Vincent’s conscious eye; “they thought I was in spiritual distress, I suppose, and sent me the butterman. Lord bless us! if I had been, what could he have done for me, does anybody imagine? and when he didn’t succeed, there came the Dairy person, who, I daresay, would have understood what I wanted had I been a cow. Now I can make out what I’m doing when I have you, Mr. Vincent. I know your line a little from your sermons. That was wonderfully clever on Sunday morning about confirmation. I belong to the Church myself by rights, and was confirmed, of course, at the proper time, like other people, but I am a person of impartial mind. That was a famous downright blow. I liked you there.”
“I am glad to have your approbation,” said the young minister, rather stiffly; “but excuse me – I was quite in earnest in my argument.”
“Yes, yes; that was the beauty of it,” said his eager interlocutor, who went on without ever raising her eyes, intent upon the rough work which he could not help observing sometimes made her scarred fingers bleed as it passed rapidly through them. “No argument is ever worth listening to if it isn’t used in earnest. I’ve led a wandering life, and heard an infinity of sermons of late years. When there are any brains in them at all, you know, they are about the only kind of mental stimulant a poor woman in my position can come by, for I’ve no time for reading lately. Down here, in these regions, where the butterman comes to inquire after your spiritual interests, and is a superior being,” added this singular new adherent of Salem, looking full for a single moment in her visitor’s eyes, with a slight movement of the muscles of her thin face, and making a significant pause, “the air’s a trifle heavy. It isn’t pure oxygen we breathe in Back Grove Street, by any means.”
“I assure you it surprises me more than I can explain, to find,” said Vincent, hesitating for a proper expression, “to find – ”
“Such a person as I am in Back Grove Street,” interrupted his companion, quickly; “yes – and thereby hangs a tale. But I did not send for you to tell it. I sent for you for no particular reason, but a kind of yearning to talk to somebody. I beg your pardon sincerely – but you know,” she said, once more with a direct sudden glance and that half-visible movement in her face which meant mischief, “you are a minister, and are bound to have no inclinations of your own, but to give yourself up to the comfort of the poor.”
“Without any irony, that is the aim I propose to myself,” said Vincent; “but I fear you are disposed to take rather a satirical view of such matters. It is fashionable to talk lightly on those subjects; but I find life and its affairs sufficiently serious, I assure you – ”
Here she stopped her work suddenly, and looked up at him, her dark sharp eyes lighting up her thin sallow face with an expression which it was beyond his power to fathom. The black eyelashes widened, the dark eyebrows rose, with a full gaze of the profoundest tragic sadness, on the surface of which a certain gleam of amusement seemed to hover. The worn woman looked over the dark world of her own experience, of which she was conscious in every nerve, but of which he knew nothing, and smiled at his youth out of the abysses of her own life, where volcanoes had been, and earthquakes. He perceived it dimly, without understanding how, and faltered and blushed, yet grew angry with all the self-assertion of youth.
“I don’t doubt you know that as well as I do – perhaps better; but notwithstanding, I find my life leaves little room for laughter,” said the young pastor, not without a slight touch of heroics.
“Mr. Vincent,” said Mrs. Hilyard, with a gleam of mirth in her eye, “in inferring that I perhaps know better, you infer also that I am older than you, which is uncivil to a lady. But for my part, I don’t object to laughter. Generally it’s better than crying, which in a great many cases I find the only alternative. I doubt, however, much whether life, from the butterman’s point of view, wears the same aspect. I should be inclined to say not; and I daresay your views will brighten with your company,” added the aggravating woman, again resuming, with eyes fixed upon it, her laborious work.
“I perceive you see already what is likely to be my great trial in Carlingford,” said young Vincent. “I confess that the society of my office-bearers, which I suppose I must always consider myself bound to – ”
“That was a very sad sigh,” said the rapid observer beside him; “but don’t confide in me, lest I should be tempted to tell somebody. I can speak my mind without prejudice to anybody; and if you agree with me, it may be a partial relief to your feelings. I shall be glad to see you when you can spare me half an hour. I can’t look at you while I talk, for that would lose me so much time, but at my age it doesn’t matter. Come and see me. It’s your business to do me good – and it’s possible I might even do some good to you.”
“Thank you. I shall certainly come,” said the minister, rising with the feeling that he had received his dismissal for to-day. She rose, too, quickly, and but for a moment, and held out her hand to him.
“Be sure you don’t betray to the dairywoman what I had on my mind, and wanted to tell you, though she is dying to know,” said his singular new acquaintance, without a smile, but with again a momentary movement in her thin cheeks. When she had shaken hands with him, she seated herself again immediately, and without a moment’s pause proceeded with her work, apparently concentrating all her faculties upon it, and neither hearing nor seeing more of her visitor, though he still stood within two steps of her, overshadowing the table. The young man turned and left the room with involuntary quietness, as if he had been dismissed from the presence of a princess. He went straight down-stairs without ever pausing, and hastened through the narrow back-street with still the impulse communicated by that dismissal upon him. When he drew breath, it was with a curious mixture of feelings. Who she was or what she was – how she came there, working at those “slops” till the colour came off upon her hands, and her poor thin fingers bled – she so strangely superior to her surroundings, yet not despising or quarrelling with them, or even complaining of them, so far as he could make out – infinitely perplexed the inexperienced minister. He came away excited and bewildered from the interview, which had turned out so different from his expectations. Whether she had done him good, was extremely doubtful; but she had changed the current of his thoughts, which was in its way an immediate benefit. Marvelling over such a mysterious apparition, and not so sure as in the morning that nothing out of the most vulgar routine ever could occur in Carlingford, Mr. Vincent turned with meditative steps towards the little house at the extreme end of Grove Street, where his predecessor still lingered. A visit to old Mr. Tufton was a periodical once a-week duty, to be performed with the utmost regularity. Tozer and Pigeon had agreed that it would be the making of the young minister to draw thus from the experience of the old one. Whether Mr. Vincent agreed with them, may be apprehended from the scene which follows.
CHAPTER III
MR. TUFTON’S house was at the extremity of Grove Street – at the extremity, consequently, in that direction, of Carlingford, lying parallel with the end of Grange Lane, and within distant view of St. Roque’s. It was a little old-fashioned house, with a small garden in front and a large garden behind, in which the family cabbages, much less prosperous since the old minister became unable to tend them, flourished. The room into which Mr. Vincent, as an intimate of the house, was shown, was a low parlour with two small windows, overshadowed outside by ivy, and inside by two large geraniums, expanded upon a Jacob’s ladder of props, which were the pride of Mrs. Tufton’s heart, and made it almost impossible to see anything clearly within, even at the height of day. Some prints, of which one represented Mr. Tufton himself, and the rest other ministers of “the connection,” in mahogany frames, hung upon the green walls. The furniture, though it was not unduly abundant, filled up the tiny apartment, so that quite a dislocation and rearrangement of everything was necessary before a chair could be got for the visitor, and he got into it. Though it was rather warm for October out of doors, a fire, large for the size of the room, was burning in the fireplace, on either side of which was an easy-chair and an invalid. The one fronting the light, and consequently fronting the visitor, was Adelaide Tufton, the old minister’s daughter, who had been confined to that chair longer than Phœbe Tozer could remember; and who, during that long seclusion, had knitted, as all Salem Chapel believed, without intermission, nobody having ever yet succeeded in discovering where the mysterious results of her labour went to. She was knitting now, reclining back in the cushioned chair which had been made for her, and was her shell and habitation. A very pale, emaciated, eager-looking woman, not much above thirty, but looking, after half a lifetime spent in that chair, any age that imagination might suggest; a creature altogether separated from the world – separated from life, it would be more proper to say – for nobody more interested in the world and other people’s share of it than Adelaide Tufton existed in Carlingford. She had light-blue eyes, rather prominent, which lightened without giving much expression to her perfectly colourless face. Her very hair was pale, and lay in braids of a clayey yellow, too listless and dull to be called brown, upon the thin temples, over which the thin white skin seemed to be strained like an over-tight bandage. Somehow, however, people who were used to seeing her, were not so sorry as they might have been for Adelaide Tufton. No one could exactly say why; but she somehow appeared, in the opinion of Salem Chapel, to indemnify herself for her privations, and was treated, if without much sympathy, at least without that ostentatious pity which is so galling to the helpless. Few people could afford to be sorry for so quick-sighted and all-remembering an observer; and the consequence was, that Adelaide, almost without knowing it, had managed to neutralise her own disabilities, and to be acknowledged as an equal in the general conflict, which she could enter only with her sharp tongue and her quick eye.
It was Mr. Tufton himself who sat opposite – his large expanse of face, with the white hair which had been apostrophised as venerable at so many Salem tea-parties, and which Vincent himself had offered homage to, looming dimly through the green shade of the geraniums, as he sat with his back to the window. He had a green shade over his eyes besides, and his head moved with a slight palsied tremor, which was now the only remnant of that “visitation” which had saved his feelings, and dismissed more benignly than Tozer and his brother deacons the old pastor from his old pulpit. He sat very contentedly doing nothing, with his large feet in large loose slippers, and his elbows supported on the arms of his chair. By the evidence of Mrs. Tufton’s spectacles, and the newspaper lying on the table, it was apparent that she had been reading the ‘Carlingford Gazette’ to her helpless companions; and that humble journal, which young Vincent had kicked to the other end of his room before coming out, had made the morning pass very pleasantly to the three secluded inmates of Siloam Cottage, which was the name of the old minister’s humble home. Mr. Tufton said “’umble ‘ome,” and so did his wife. They came from storied Islington, both of them, and were of highly respectable connections, not to say that Mrs. Tufton had a little property as well; and, acting in laudable opposition to the general practice of poor ministers’ wives, had brought many dividends and few children to the limited but comfortable fireside. Mr. Vincent could not deny that it was comfortable in its way, and quite satisfied its owners, as he sat down in the shade of the geraniums in front of the fire, between Adelaide Tufton and her father; but, oh heavens! to think of such a home as all that, after Homerton and high Nonconformist hopes, could come to himself! The idea, however, was one which did not occur to the young minister. He sat down compassionately, seeing no analogy whatever between his own position and theirs; scarcely even seeing the superficial contrast, which might have struck anybody, between his active youth and their helplessness and suffering. He was neither hard-hearted nor unsympathetic, but somehow the easy moral of that contrast never occurred to him. Adelaide Tufton’s bloodless countenance conveyed an idea of age to Arthur Vincent; her father was really old. The young man saw no grounds on which to form any comparison. It was natural enough for the old man and ailing woman to be as they were, just as it was natural for him, in the height of his early manhood, to rejoice in his strength and youth.
“So there was a party at Mr. Tozer’s last night – and you were there, Mr. Vincent,” said old Mrs. Tufton, a cheerful active old lady, with pink ribbons in her cap, which asserted their superiority over the doubtful light and the green shade of the geraniums. “Who did you have? The Browns and the Pigeons, and – everybody else, of course. Now tell me, did Mrs. Tozer make tea herself, or did she leave it to Phœbe?”
“As well as I can remember, she did it herself,” said the young pastor.
“Exactly what I told you, mamma,” said Adelaide, from her chair. “Mrs. Tozer doesn’t mean Phœbe to make tea this many a year. I daresay she wants her to marry somebody, the little flirting thing. I suppose she wore her pink, Mr. Vincent – and Mrs. Brown that dreadful red-and-green silk of hers; and didn’t they send you over a shape of jelly this morning? Ha, ha! I told you so, mamma; that was why it never came to me.”
“Pray let me send it to you,” cried Vincent, eagerly.
The offer was not rejected, though coquetted with for a few minutes. Then Mr. Tufton broke in, in solemn bass.
“Adelaide, we shouldn’t talk, my dear, of pinks and green silks. Providence has laid you aside, my love, from temptations; and you remember how often I used to say in early days, No doubt it was a blessing, Jemima, coming when it did, to wean our girl from the world; she might have been as fond of dress as other girls, and brought us to ruin, but for her misfortune. Everything is for the best.”
“Oh, bother!” said Adelaide, sharply – “I don’t complain, and never did; but everybody else finds my misfortune, as they call it, very easy to be borne, Mr. Vincent – even papa, you see. There is a reason for everything, to be sure; but how things that are hard and disagreeable are always to be called for the best, I can’t conceive. However, let us return to Phœbe Tozer’s pink dress. Weren’t you rather stunned with all their grandeur? You did not think we could do as much in Salem, did you? Now tell me, who has Mrs. Brown taken in hand to do good to now? I am sure she sent you to somebody; and you’ve been to see somebody this morning,” added the quick-witted invalid, “who has turned out different from your expectations. Tell me all about it, please.”
“Dear Adelaide does love to hear what’s going on. It is almost the only pleasure she has – and we oughtn’t to grudge it, ought we?” said Adelaide’s mother.
“Stuff!” muttered Adelaide, in a perfectly audible aside. “Now I think of it, I’ll tell you who you’ve been to see. That woman in Back Grove Street – there! What do you think of that for a production of Salem, Mr. Vincent? But she does not really belong to Carlingford. She married somebody who turned out badly, and now she’s in hiding that he mayn’t find her; though most likely, if all be true, he does not want to find her. That’s her history. I never pretend to tell more than I know. Who she was to begin with, or who he is, or whether Hilyard may be her real name, or why she lives there and comes to Salem Chapel, I can’t tell; but that’s the bones of her story, you know. If I were a clever romancer like some people, I could have made it all perfect for you, but I prefer the truth. Clever and queer, isn’t she? So I have guessed by what people say.”
“Indeed, you seem to know a great deal more about her than I do,” said the astonished pastor.
“I daresay,” assented Adelaide, calmly. “I have never seen her, however, though I can form an idea of what she must be like, all the same. I put things together, you see; and it is astonishing the number of scraps of news I get. I shake them well down, and then the broken pieces come together; and I never forget anything, Mr. Vincent,” she continued, pausing for a moment to give him a distinct look out of the pale-blue eyes, which for the moment seemed to take a vindictive feline gleam. “She’s rather above the Browns and the Tozers, you understand. Somehow or other, she’s mixed up with Lady Western, whom they call the Young Dowager, you know. I have not made that out yet, though I partly guess. My lady goes to see her up two pairs of stairs in Back Grove Street. I hope it does her ladyship good to see how the rest of the world manage to live and get on.”
“I am afraid, Adelaide, my dear,” said Mr. Tufton, in his bass tones, “that my young brother will not think this very improving conversation. Dear Tozer was speaking to me yesterday about the sermon to the children. I always preached them a sermon to themselves about this time of the year. My plan has been to take the congregation in classes; the young men – ah, and they’re specially important, are the young men! Dear Tozer suggested that some popular lectures now would not come amiss. After a long pastorate like mine,” said the good man, blandly, unconscious that dear Tozer had already begun to suggest a severance of that tie before gentle sickness did it for him, “a congregation may be supposed to be a little unsettled, – without any offence to you, my dear brother. If I could appear myself and show my respect to your ministry, it would have a good effect, no doubt; but I am laid aside, laid aside, brother Vincent! I can only help you with my prayers.”
“But dear, dear Mr. Tufton!” cried his wife, “bless you, the chapel is twice as full as it was six months ago – and natural too, with a nice young man.”
“My dear!” said the old minister in reproof. “Yes, quite natural – curiosity about a stranger; but my young brother must not be elated; nor discouraged when they drop off. A young pastor’s start in life is attended by many trials. There is always a little excitement at first, and an appearance of seats letting and the ladies very polite to you. Take it easily, my dear brother! Don’t expect too much. In a year or two – by-and-by, when things settle down – then you can see how it’s going to be.”
