SOMEHOW the heavy week stole round without any other fluctuations but
those terrible ones of Susan's fever. Dreadful consolation and terrible
doubt breathed forth in those heartrending revelations which her poor
unconscious soul was continually pouring forth. The unhappy girl showed
her heart all naked and undisguised to the watchers round her--a heart
bewildered, alarmed, desperate, but not overwhelmed with guilty passion.
Through the dreadful haze which enveloped her mind, flashes of
indignation, bursts of hope, shone tragical and fierce; but she was not
a disgraced creature who lay there, arguing pitifully with herself what
she must do; not disgraced--but in an agony of self-preservation could
she have snatched up the ready pistol--could it be true? When Vincent
went into that room, it was always to withdraw with a shuddering dread.
Had she escaped one horror to fall into another yet more horrible? That
evidence of which, with Mrs. Hilyard's face before his eyes, he had been
half contemptuous at first, returned upon him with ever-growing
probability. Driven to bay, driven mad, reason and self-control scared
by the horrible emergency, had the desperate creature resorted to the
first wild expedient within her reach to save herself at last? With
this hideous likelihood growing in his mind, Vincent had to face the
Sunday, which came upon him like a new calamity. He would fain have
withdrawn, and, regardless of anything else which might happen, have
sent once more for Beecher. To confront the people of Salem, to look
down upon those familiar rows of faces, all of them bearing a
consciousness of the story in the newspapers, acquainted with all that
his landlady could tell, and guessing but too distinctly the terrible
misfortune which had befallen his family, seemed more than flesh and
blood could bear. He was sitting alone, pondering all this, with a
letter which he had commenced to write to Beecher before him, when
Tozer, who was now his constant visitor, came in. There could be no
doubt of the butterman's honest and genuine sympathy, but,
unfortunately, there was just as little doubt that Tozer took a pleasure
in managing the minister's affairs at this crisis, and piloting him
through the troubled waters. Tozer did all but neglect his business to
meet the emergency; he carried matters with rather a high hand in the
meetings of the managing committee; he took absolute control, or wished
to do so, of Vincent's proceedings. "We'll tide it over, we'll tide it
over," he said, rubbing his hands. To go in, in this state of mind,
secure in his own resources and in the skill with which he could guide
the wavering and half-informed mind of Salem, fluctuating as it did
between horror and sympathy, doubtful whether to take up the minister's
cause with zeal, or to cast him off and disown him, and to find the
minister himself giving in, deserting his post at the most critical
moment, and making useless all that his patron was doing for him, was
too much for the deacon's patience. He sat down in indignant surprise
opposite Vincent, and struck his stick against the floor involuntarily,
by way of emphasis to his words.
"Mr. Vincent, sir, this ain't the thing to do-- I tell you it ain't the
thing to do. Salem has a right to expect different," cried Tozer, in the
warmth of his disappointment; "a congregation as has never said a word,
and office-bearers as have stuck by you and stood up for you whatever
folks liked to say! I'm a man as will never desert my pastor in trouble;
but I'd like to know what you call this, Mr. Vincent, but a deserting of
me? What's the good of fighting for the minister, if he gives in and
sends for another man, and won't face nothing for himself? It's next
Sunday as is all the battle. Get that over, and things will come
straight. When they see you in the pulpit in your old way, and all
things as they was, bless you, they'll get used to it, and won't mind
the papers no more nor--nor I do. I tell you, sir, it's next Sunday as
is the battle. I don't undertake to answer for the consequences, not if
you gives in, and has Mr. Beecher down for next Sunday. It ain't the
thing to do, Mr. Vincent; Salem folks won't put up with that. Your good
mother, poor thing, wouldn't say no different. If you mean to stay and
keep things straight in Carlingford, you'll go into that pulpit, and
look as if nothing had happened. It's next Sunday as is the battle."
"Look as if nothing had happened!--and why should I wish to stay in
Carlingford, or--or anywhere?" cried Vincent, in a momentary outbreak of
dejection. But he threw down his pen, and closed his blotting-book over
the half-written letter. He was too wretched to have much resolution one
way or another. To argue the matter was worse than to suffer any
consequences, however hard they might be.
"I don't deny it's natural as you should feel strange," admitted Tozer.
"I do myself, as am only your friend, Mr. Vincent, when folks are
a-talking in the shop, and going over one thing and another--asking if
it's true as she belongs to you, and how a minister's daughter ever come
to know the likes of him----"
"For heaven's sake, no more, no more!--you will drive me mad!" cried
Vincent, springing to his feet. Tozer, thus suddenly interrupted, stared
a little, and then changed the subject, though without quite finding out
how it was that he had startled his sensitive companion into such sudden
impatience. "When I was only telling him the common talk!" as he said to
his wife in the privacy of their own parlour. In the mean time he had
other subjects equally interesting.
"If you'll take my advice, you'll begin your coorse all the same," said
Tozer; "it would have a good effect, that would. When folks are in a
state of excitement, and a-looking for something, to come down upon them
as before, and accordin' to intimation, would have a wonderful effect,
Mr. Vincent. You take my word, sir, it would be very telling--would
that. Don't lose no time, but begin your coorse as was intimated. It's
a providence, is the intimation. I wouldn't say nothing about what's
happened--not plain out; but if you could bring in a kind of an
inference like, nothing as had anything to do with the story in the
papers, but just as might be understood----"
The butterman sat quite calmly and at his ease, but really anxious and
interested, making his sober suggestions. The unfortunate minister,
unable otherwise to subdue his impatience and wretchedness, fell to
walking up and down the room, as was natural. When he could bear it no
longer, he came back to the table at which Tozer sat in all the pomp of
advice and management. He took his unfinished letter and tore it in
little pieces, then stopped the calm flow of the deacon's counsel by a
sudden outburst.
"I will preach," cried the young man, scattering the bits of paper out
of his hand unawares. "Is not that enough? don't tell me what I am to
do--the evil is sufficient without that. I tell you I will preach. I
would rather cut off my right hand, if that would do as well. I am
speaking like a child or a fool: who cares for my right hand, I wonder,
or my life, or my senses? No more of this. I will preach--don't speak of
it again. It will not matter a hundred years hence," muttered the
minister, with that sudden adoption of the philosophy of recklessness
which misery sometimes plays with. He threw himself into his chair
again, and covered his face with his hands. He was thinking of Salem,
and all those rows of gazing eyes. He could see them all in their pews,
imagination, with a cruel freak like a mocking spirit, depicting all
the finery of Mrs. Pigeon and Mrs. Brown upon that vivid canvass. The
minister groaned at the thought of them; but to put it down on paper,
and record the pang of exasperation and intolerable wretchedness which
was thus connected with the fine winter bonnets of the poulterer's wife
and the dairy-woman would make a picture rather grotesque than terrible
to unconcerned eyes. It was dreadful earnest to poor Vincent, thinking
how he should stand before them on that inexorable Sunday, and preach
"as if nothing had happened;" reading all the while, in case his own
mind would let him forget them, the vulgarest horrors of all that had
happened in all that crowd of eyes.
"And you'll find a great consolation, take my word, sir, in the thought
that you're a-doing of your duty," said Tozer, shaking his head
solemnly, as he rose to go away; "that's a wonderful consolation, Mr.
Vincent, to all of us; and especially to a minister that knows he's
a-serving his Master and saving souls."
Saving souls! Heaven help him! the words rang in his ears like mocking
echoes long after the butterman had settled into his arm-chair, and
confided to his wife and Phoebe that the pastor was a-coming to
himself and taking to his duties, and that we'll tide it over yet.
"Saving souls!" the words came back and back to Vincent's bewildered
mind. They formed a measure and cadence in their constant repetition,
haunting him like some spiritual suggestion, as he looked over, with
senses confused and dizzy, his little stock of sermons, to make
preparation for the duty which he could not escape. At last he tossed
them all away in a heap, seized his pen, and poured forth his heart.
Saving souls! what did it mean? He was not writing a sermon. Out of the
depths of his troubled heart poured all the chaos of thought and wonder,
which leapt into fiery life under that quickening touch of personal
misery and unrest. He forgot the bounds of orthodox speculation--all
bounds save those of the drear mortal curtain of death, on the other
side of which that great question is solved. He set forth the dark
secrets of life with exaggerated touches of his own passion and anguish.
He painted out of his own aching fancy a soul innocent, yet stained with
the heaviest of mortal crimes: he turned his wild light aside and poured
it upon another, foul to the core, yet unassailable by man. Saving
souls!--which was the criminal? which was the innocent? A wild
confusion of sin and sorrow, of dreadful human complications,
misconceptions, of all incomprehensible, intolerable thoughts, surged
round and round him as he wrote. Were the words folly that haunted him
with such echoes? Could he, and such as he, unwitting of half the
mysteries of life, do anything to that prodigious work? Could words help
it--vain syllables of exhortation or appeal? God knows. The end of it
all was a confused recognition of the One half-known, half-identified,
who, if any hope were to be had, held that hope in His hands. The
preacher, who had but dim acquaintance with His name, paused, in the
half idiocy of his awakened genius, to wonder, like a child, if perhaps
his simple mother knew a little more of that far-off wondrous
figure--recognised it wildly by the confused lights as the only hope in
earth or heaven--and so rose up, trembling with excitement and
exhaustion, to find that he had spent the entire night in this sudden
inspiration, and that the wintry dawn, cold and piercing to the heart,
was stealing over the opposite roofs, and another day had begun.
This was the sermon which startled half the population of Carlingford on
that wonderful Sunday. Salem, had never been so full before. Every
individual of the Chapel folks was there who could by any means come
out, and many other curious inhabitants, full of natural wonder, to see
how a man looked, and what he would preach about, concerning whom, and
whose family, such mysterious rumours were afloat. The wondering
congregation thrilled like one soul under that touch of passion. Faces
grew pale, long sobs of emotion burst here and there from the
half-terrified excited audience, who seemed to see around them, instead
of the every-day familiar world, a throng of those souls whom the
preacher disrobed of everything but passion and consciousness and
immortality. Just before the conclusion, when he came to a sudden pause
all at once, and made a movement forward as if to lay hold of something
he saw, the effect was almost greater than the deacons could approve of
in chapel. One woman screamed aloud, another fainted, some people
started to their feet--all waited with suspended breath for the next
words, electrified by the real life which palpitated there before them,
where life so seldom appears, in the decorous pulpit. When he went on
again the people were almost too much excited to perceive the plain
meaning of his words, if any plain meaning had ever been in that
passionate outcry of a wounded and bewildered soul. When the services
were over, many of them watched the precipitate rush which the young
preacher made through the crowd into his vestry. He could not wait the
dispersion of the flock, as was the usual custom. It was with a buzz of
excitement that the congregation did disperse slowly, in groups, asking
each other had such a sermon ever been preached before in Carlingford.
Some shook their heads, audibly expressing their alarm lest Mr. Vincent
should go too far, and unsettle his mind; some pitied and commented on
his looks--women these. He sent them all away in a flutter of
excitement, which obliterated all other objects of talk for the moment,
even the story in the papers, and left himself in a gloomy splendour of
eloquence and uncertainty, the only object of possible comment until the
fumes of his wild oration should have died away.
"I said we'd tide it over," said Tozer, in a triumphant whisper, to his
wife. "That's what he can do when he's well kep' up to it, and put on
his mettle. The man as says he ever heard anything as was finer, or had
more mind in it," added the worthy butterman to his fellow-deacons, "has
had more opportunities nor me; and though I say it, I've heard the best
preachers in our connection. That's philosophical, that is--there ain't
a man in the Church as I ever heard of as could match that, and not a
many as comes out o' 'Omerton. We're not a-going to quarrel with a
pastor as can preach a sermon like that, not because he's had a
misfortune in his family. Come into the vestry, Pigeon, and say a kind
word--as you're sorry, and we'll stand by him. He wants to be kep' up,
that's what he wants. Mind like that always does. It ain't equal to
doing for itself, like most. Come along with me, and say what's kind,
and cheer him up, as has exerted hisself and done his best."
"It was rousing up," said Pigeon, with a little reluctance; "even the
missis didn't go again' that; but where he's weak is in the application.
I don't mind just shaking hands----"
"If we was all to go, he might take it kind," suggested Brown, the
dairyman, who had little to say, and not much confidence in his own
opinion; and pride and kindness combined won the day. The deacons who
were in attendance went in, in a body, to shake hands with the pastor,
and express their sympathy, and congratulate him on his sermon, the
latter particular being an established point of deacon's duty in every
well-regulated and harmonious community. They went in rather pleased
with themselves, and full of the gratification they were about to
confer. But the open door of the vestry revealed an empty room, with the
preacher's black gown lying tossed upon the floor, as if it had been
thrown down recklessly in his sudden exit. The little procession came to
a halt, and stared in each other's faces. Their futile good intentions
flashed into exasperation. They had come to bestow their favour upon
him, to make him happy, and behold he had fled in contemptuous haste,
without waiting for their approval; even Tozer felt the shock of the
failure. So far as the oligarchs of Salem were concerned, the sermon
might never have been preached, and the pastor sank deeper than ever
into the bad opinion of Mr. Pigeon and Mr. Brown.
In the mean time Vincent had rushed from his pulpit, thrown on his coat,
and rushed out again into the cold mid-day, tingling in every limb with
the desperate effort of self-restraint, which alone had enabled him to
preserve the gravity of the pulpit and conclude the services with due
steadiness and propriety. When he made that sudden pause, it was not for
nought. Effective though it was, it was no trick of oratory which caught
the breath at his lips, and transfixed him for the moment. There, among
the crowded pews of Salem, deep in the further end of the chapel, half
lost in the throng of listeners, suddenly, all at once, had flashed upon
him a face--a face, unchanged from its old expression, intent as if no
deluge had descended, no earthquake fallen; listening, as of old, with
gleaming keen eyes and close-shut emphatic mouth. The whole building
reeled in Vincent's eyes, as he caught sight of that thin head, dark and
silent, gleaming out in all its expressive refinement and intelligence
from the common faces round. How he kept still and went on was to
himself a kind of miracle. Had she moved or left the place, he could not
have restrained himself. But she did not move. He watched her, even
while he prayed, with a profanity of which he was conscious to the
heart. He watched her with her frightful composure finding the hymn,
standing up with the rest to sing. When she disappeared, he rushed from
the pulpit--rushed out--pursued her. She was not to be seen anywhere
when he got outside, and the first stream of the throng of dispersing
worshippers, which fortunately, however, included none of the leading
people of Salem, beheld with amazed eyes the minister who darted through
them, and took his hurried way to Back Grove Street. Could she have gone
there? He debated the question vainly with himself as he hastened on the
familiar road. The door was open as of old, the children playing upon
the crowded pavement. He flew up the staircase, which creaked under his
hasty foot, and knocked again at the well-known door, instinctively
pausing before it, though he had meant to burst in and satisfy himself.
Such a violence was unnecessary--as if the world had stood still, Mrs.
Hilyard opened the door and stood before him, with her little kerchief
on her head, her fingers still marked with blue. "Mr. Vincent," said
this incomprehensible woman, admitting him without a moment's
hesitation, pointing him to a chair as of old, and regarding him with
the old steady look of half-amused observation, "you have never come to
see me on a Sunday before. It is the best day for conversation for
people who have work to do. Sit down, take breath; I have leisure, and
there is time now for everything we can have to say."