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 Phoebe, 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
Phoebe 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. Phoebe 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--
"It's three words of an intimation as I'd like to give--nothing of no
importance; a meeting of the flock as some of us would like to call, if
it's quite agreeable--nothing as you need mind, Mr. Vincent. We wouldn't
go for to occupy your time, sir, attending of it. There wasn't no
opportunity to tell you before. I'll give it out, if it's agreeable,"
said Tozer, with hesitation--"or if you'd rather----"
"Give it to me," said the minister quickly. He took the paper out of the
butterman's hand, who drew back uncomfortable and embarrassed, wishing
himself anywhere in the world but in the pulpit, from which that
revolutionary document menaced the startled pastor with summary
deposition. It was a sufficiently simple notice of a meeting to be held
on the following Monday evening, in the schoolroom, which was the scene
of all the tea and other meetings of Salem. This, however, was no
tea-meeting. Vincent drew his breath hard, and changed colour, as he
bent down under the shadow of the pulpit-cushion and the big Bible, and
read this dangerous document. Meanwhile the flock sang their hymn, to
which Tozer, much discomposed, added a few broken notes of tremulous
bass as he sat by the minister's side. When Mr. Vincent again raised his
head, and sat erect with the notice in his hand, the troubled deacon
made vain attempts to catch his eye, and ask what was to be done. The
Nonconformist made no reply to these telegraphic communications. When
the sinking was ended he rose, still with the paper in his hand, and
faced the congregation, where he no longer saw one face with a vague
background of innumerable other faces, but had suddenly woke up to
behold his battle-ground and field of warfare, in which everything dear
to him was suddenly assailed. Unawares the assembled people, who had
received no special sensation from the sermon, woke up also at the sight
of Vincent's face. He read the notice to them with a voice that tingled
through the place; then he paused. "This meeting is one of which I have
not been informed," said Vincent. "It is one which I am not asked to
attend. I invite you to it, all who are here present; and I invite you
thereafter," continued the minister, with an unconscious elevation of
his head, "to meet me on the following evening to hear what I have to
say to you. Probably the business will be much the same on both
occasions, but it will be approached from different sides of the
question. I invite you to meet on Monday, according to this notice; and
I invite you on Tuesday, at the same place and hour, to meet me."
Vincent did not hear the audible hum and buzz of surprise and excitement
which ran through his startled flock. He did not pay much attention to
what Tozer said to him when all was over. He lingered in his vestry,
taking off his gown, until he could hear Lady Western's carriage drive
off after an interval of lingering. The young Dowager had gone out
slowly, thinking to see him, and comfort him with a compliment about his
sermon, concerning the quality of which she was not critical. She was
sorry in her kind heart to perceive his troubled looks, and to discover
that somehow, she could not quite understand how, something annoying and
unexpected had occurred to him. And then this uneasy companion, to whom
he had bound her, and whose strange agitation and wonderful change of
aspect Lady Western could in no way account for-- But the carriage rolled
away at last, not without reluctance, while the minister still remained
in his vestry. Then he hurried home, speaking to no one. Mrs. Vincent
did not understand her son all day, nor even next morning, when he might
have been supposed to have time to calm down. He was very silent, but no
longer dreamy or languid, or lost in the vague discontent and dejection
with which she was familiar. On the contrary, the minister had woke up
out of that abstraction. He was wonderfully alert, open-eyed, full of
occupation. When he sat down to his writing-table it was not to muse,
with his pen in his languid fingers, now and then putting down a
sentence, but to write straight forward with evident fire and emphasis.
He was very tender to herself, but he did not tell her anything. Some
new cloud had doubtless appeared on the firmament where there was little
need for any further clouds. The widow rose on the Monday morning with a
presentiment of calamity on her mind--rose from the bed in Susan's room
which she occupied for two or three hours in the night, sometimes
snatching a momentary sleep, which Susan's smallest movement
interrupted. Her heart was rent in two between her children. She went
from Susan's bedside, where her daughter lay in dumb apathy, not to be
roused by anything that could be said or done, to minister wistfully at
Arthur's breakfast, which, with her heart in her throat, the widow made
a pitiful pretence of sharing. She could not ask him questions. She was
silent, too, in her great love and sorrow. Seeing some new trouble
approaching--wistfully gazing into the blank skies before her, to
discover, if that were possible, without annoying Arthur, or
compromising him, what it was; but rather than compromise or annoy him,
contenting herself not to know--the greatest stretch of endurance to
which as yet she had constrained her spirit.
Arthur did not go out all that Monday. Even in the house a certain
excitement was visible to Mrs. Vincent's keen observation. The landlady
herself made her appearance in tears to clear away the remains of the
minister's dinner. "I hope, sir, as you don't think what's past and gone
has made no difference on me," said that tearful woman in Mrs. Vincent's
hearing; "it ain't me as would ever give my support to such doings."
When the widow asked, "What doings?" Arthur only smiled and made some
half articulate remark about gossip, which his mother of course treated
at its true value. As the dark wintry afternoon closed in, Mrs.
Vincent's anxiety increased under the influence of the landlady's Sunday
dress, in which she was visible progressing about the passages, and
warning her husband to mind he wasn't late. At last Mrs. Tufton called,
and the minister's mother came to a true understanding of the state of
affairs. Mrs. Tufton was unsettled and nervous, filled with a not
unexhilarating excitement, and all the heat of partisanship. "Don't you
take on," said the good little woman; "Mr. Tufton is going to the
meeting to tell them his sentiments about his young brother. My dear,
they will never go against what Mr. Tufton says: and if I should mount
upon the platform and make a speech myself, there shan't be anything
done that could vex you; for we always said he was a precious young man,
and a credit to the connection; and it would be a disgrace to us all to
let the Pigeons, or such people, have it all their own way." Mrs.
Vincent managed to ascertain all the particulars from the old minister's
wife. When she was gone, the widow sat down a little with a very
desolate heart to think it all over. Arthur, with a new light in his
eye, and determination in his face, was writing in the sitting-room; but
Arthur's mother could not sit still as he did, and imagine the scene in
the Salem schoolroom, and how everybody discussed and sat upon her boy,
and decided all the momentous future of his young life in this private
inquisition. She went back, however, beside him, and poured out a cup of
tea for him, and managed to swallow one for herself, talking about Susan
and indifferent household matters, while the evening wore on and the
hour of the meeting approached. A little before that hour Mrs. Vincent
left Arthur, with an injunction not to come into the sick-room that
evening until she sent for him, as she thought Susan would sleep. As she
left the room the landlady went downstairs, gorgeous in her best bonnet
and shawl, with all the personal satisfaction which a member of a flock
naturally feels when called to a bed of justice to decide the future
destiny of its head. The minister's fate was in the hands of his people;
and it was with a pleasurable sensation that, from every house
throughout Grove Street and the adjacent regions, the good people were
going forth to decide it. As for the minister's mother, she went softly
back to Susan's room, where the nurse, who was Mrs. Vincent's assistant,
had taken her place. "She looks just the same," said the poor mother.
"Just the same," echoed the attendant. "I don't think myself as there'll
be no change until----" Mrs. Vincent turned away silently in her
anguish, which she dared not indulge. She wrapped herself in a black
shawl, and took out the thick veil of crape which she had worn in her
first mourning. Nobody could recognise her under that screen. But it was
with a pang that she tied that sign of woe over her pale face. The touch
of the crape made her shiver. Perhaps she was but forestalling the
mourning which, in her age and weakness, she might have to renew again.
With such thoughts she went softly through the wintry lighted streets
towards Salem. As she approached the door, groups of people going the
same way brushed past her through Grove Street. Lively people, talking
with animation, pleased with this new excitement, declaring, sometimes
so loudly that she could hear them as they passed, what side they were
on, and that they, for their part, were going to vote for the minister
to give him another trial. The little figure in those black robes, with
anxious looks shrouded under the crape veil, went on among the rest to
the Salem schoolroom. She took her seat close to the door, and saw Tozer
and Pigeon, and the rest of the deacons, getting upon the platform,
where on occasions more festive the chairman and the leading people had
tea. The widow looked through her veil at the butterman and the
poulterer with one keen pang of resentment, of which she repented
instantly. She did not despise them as another might have done. They
were the constituted authorities of the place, and her son's fate, his
reputation, his young life, all that he had or could hope for in the
world, was in their hands. The decision of the highest authorities in
the land was not so important to Arthur as that of the poulterer and the
butterman. There they stood, ready to open their session, their
inquisition, their solemn tribunal. The widow drew her veil close, and
clasped her hands together to sustain herself. It was Pigeon who was
about to speak.