Salem Chapel. Volume 2/2

CHAPTER XXIII

BUT the deputation and the increased salary and the silver salver were all ineffectual. Arthur would not hear reason, as his mother knew. It was with bitter restrained tears of disappointment and vexation that she heard from him, when he returned to that conference in Susan’s room, the events of the evening. It came hard upon the widow, who had invited her son to his sister’s bedside that they might for the first time talk together as of old over all their plans. But though her heart ached over the opportunity thus thrown away, and though she asked herself with terror, “What was Arthur to do now?” his mother knew he was not to be persuaded. She smiled on Tozer next morning, ready to cry with vexation and anxiety as she was. “When my son has made up his mind, it will be vain for any one to try to move him,” said the widow, proud of him in spite of all, though her heart cried out against his imprudence and foolishness; and so it proved. The minister made his acknowledgments so heartily to the good butterman, that Tozer’s disclaimer of any special merit, and declaration that he had but tried to “do his dooty,” was made with great faltering and unsteadiness; but the Nonconformist himself never wavered in his resolve. Half of Carlingford sat in tears to hear Mr. Vincent’s last sermon. Such a discourse had never been heard in Salem. Scarcely one of the deacons could find a place in the crowded chapel to which all the world rushed; and Tozer himself listened to the last address of his minister from one of the doors of the gallery, where his face formed the apex and culminating point of the crowd to Mr. Vincent’s eyes. When Tozer brushed his red handkerchief across his face, as he was moved to do two or three times in the course of the sermon, the gleam seemed to the minister, who was himself somewhat excited, to redden over the entire throng. It was thus that Mr. Vincent ended his connection with Salem Chapel. It was a heavy blow to the congregation for the time – so heavy that the spirit of the butterman yielded; he was not seen in his familiar seat for three full Sundays after; but the place was mismanaged in Pigeon’s hands, and regard for the connection brought Tozer to the rescue. They had Mr. Beecher down from Homerton, who made a very good impression. The subsequent events are so well known in Carlingford, that it is hardly necessary to mention the marriage of the new minister, which took place about six months afterwards. Old Mr. Tufton blessed the union of his dear young brother with the blushing Phœbe, who made a most suitable minister’s wife in Salem after the first disagreeables were over; and Mr. Beecher proved a great deal more tractable than any man of genius. If he was not quite equal to Mr. Vincent in the pulpit, he was much more complaisant at all the tea-parties; and, after a year’s experience, was fully acknowledged, both by himself and others, to have made an ’it.

Vincent meanwhile plunged into that world of life which the young man did not know; not that matters looked badly for him when he left Carlingford – on the contrary, the connection in general thrilled to hear of his conduct and his speech. The enthusiasm in Homerton was too great to be kept within bounds. Such a demonstration of the rightful claims of the preacher had not been made before in the memory of man; and the enlightened Nonconforming community did honour to the martyr. Three vacant congregations at least wooed him to their pulpits; his fame spread over the country: but he did not accept any of these invitations; and after a while the eminent Dissenting families who invited him to dinner, found so many other independencies cropping out in the young man, that the light of their countenances dimmed upon him. It began to be popularly reported, that a man so apt to hold opinions of his own, and so convinced of the dignity of his office, had best have been in the Church where people knew no better. Such, perhaps, might have been the conclusion to which he came himself; but education and prejudice and Homerton stood invincible in the way. A Church of the Future – an ideal corporation, grand and primitive, not yet realised, but surely real, to be come at one day – shone before his eyes, as it shines before so many; but, in the mean time, the Nonconformist went into literature, as was natural, and was, it is believed in Carlingford, the founder of the ‘Philosophical Review,’ that new organ of public opinion. He had his battle to fight, and fought it out in silence, saying little to any one. Sundry old arrows were in his heart, still quivering by times as he fought with the devil and the world in his desert; but he thought himself almost prosperous, and perfectly composed and eased of all fanciful and sentimental sorrows, when he went, two or three years after these events, to Folkestone, to meet his mother and sister, who had been living abroad, away from him, with their charge, and to bring them to the little house he had prepared for them in London, and where he said to himself he was prepared, along with them – a contented but neutral-coloured household – to live out his life.

But when Mr. Vincent met his mother at Folkestone, not even the haze of the spring evening, nor the agitation of the meeting, which brought back again so forcibly all the events which accompanied the parting, could soften to him the wonderful thrill of surprise, almost a shock, with which he looked upon two of the party. The widow, in her close white cap and black bonnet, was unchanged as when she fell, worn out, into his arms on her first visit to Carlingford. She gave a little cry of joy as she saw her son. She trembled so with emotion and happiness, that he had to steady her on his arm and restrain his own feelings till another time. The other two walked by their side to the hotel where they were to rest all night. He had kissed Susan in the faint evening light, but her brother did not know that grand figure, large and calm and noble like a Roman woman, at whom the other passengers paused to look as they went on; and his first glance at the younger face by her side sent the blood back to his heart with a sudden pang and thrill which filled him with amazement at himself. He heard the two talking to each other, as they went up the crowded pier in the twilight, like a man walking in a dream. What his mother said, leaning on his arm, scarcely caught his attention. He answered to her in monosyllables, and listened to the voices – the low, sweet laughter, the sound of the familiar names. Nothing in Susan’s girlish looks had prophesied that majestic figure, that air of quiet command and power. And a wilder wonder still attracted the young man’s heart as he listened to the beautiful young voice which kept calling on Susan, Susan, like some sweet echo of a song. These two, had they been into another world, an enchanted country? When they came into the lighted room, and he saw them divest themselves of their wrappings, and beheld them before him, visible tangible creatures and no dreams, Vincent was struck dumb. He seemed to himself to have been suddenly carried out of the meaner struggles of his own life into the air of a court, the society of princes. When Susan came up to him and laid her two beautiful hands on his shoulders, and looked with her blue eyes into his face, it was all he could do to preserve his composure, and conceal the almost awe which possessed him. The wide sleeve had fallen back from her round beautiful arm. It was the same arm that used to lie stretched out uncovered upon her sick-bed like a glorious piece of marble. Her brother could scarcely rejoice in the change, it struck him with so much wonder, and was so different from his thoughts. Poor Susan! he had said in his heart for many a day. He could not say poor Susan now.

“Arthur does not know me,” she said, with a low, liquid voice, fuller than the common tones of women. “He forgets how long it is ago since we went away. He thinks you cannot have anything so big belonging to you, my little mother. But it is me, Arthur. Susan all the same.”

“Susan perhaps, since you say so – but not all the same,” said Arthur, with his astonished eyes.

“And I daresay you don’t know Alice either,” said his sister. “I was little and Alice was foolish when we went away. At least I was little in Lonsdale, where nobody minded me. Somehow most people mind me now, because I am so big, I suppose; and Alice, instead of being foolish, is a little wise woman. Come here, Alice, and let my brother see you. You have heard of him every day for three years. At last here is Arthur; but what am I to do if he has forgotten me?”

“I have forgotten neither of you,” said the young man. He was glad to escape from Susan’s eyes, which somehow looked as if they were a bit of the sky, a deep serene of blue; and the little Alice imagined he did not look at her at all, and was a little mortified in her tender heart. Things began to grow familiar to him after a while. However wonderful they were, they were real creatures, who did not vanish away, but were close by him all the evening, moving about – this with lovely fairy lightness, that with majestic maiden grace – talking in a kind of dual, harmonious movement of sound, filling the soft spring night with a world of vague and strange fascination. The window was opened in their sitting-room, where they could see the lights and moving figures, and, farther off, the sea – and hear outside the English voices, which were sweet to hear to the strangers newly come home. Vincent, while he recovered himself, stood near this window by his mother’s chair, paying her such stray filial attentions as he could in the bewilderment of his soul, and slowly becoming used to the two beautiful young women, unexpected apparitions, who transformed life itself and everything in it. Was one his real sister, strange as it seemed? and the other – ? Vincent fell back and resigned himself to the strange, sweet, unlooked-for influence. They went up to London together next day. Sunshine did not disperse them into beautiful mists, as he had almost feared. It came upon him by glimpses to see that fiery sorrow and passion had acted like some tropical tempestuous sun upon his sister’s youth; and the face of his love looked back upon him from the storm in which it died, as if somehow what was impossible might be possible again. Mrs. Mildmay, a wandering restless soul as she was, happened to be absent from London just then. Alice was still to stay with her dearest friends. The Nonconformist went back to his little home with the sensation of an enchanted prince in a fairy tale. Instead of the mud-coloured existence, what a glowing, brilliant firmament! Life became glorious again under their touch. As for Mrs. Vincent, she was too happy in getting home – in seeing Susan, after all the anguishes and struggles which no one knew of fully but herself, rising up in all the strength of her youth to this renewed existence – to feel as much distressed as she had expected about Arthur’s temporary withdrawal from his profession. It was only a temporary withdrawal, she hoped. He still wore his clerical coat, and called himself “clergyman” in the Blue Book – and he was doing well, though he was not preaching. The Nonconformist himself naturally was less sober in his thoughts. He could not tell what wonderful thing he might not yet do in this wonderful elevation and new inspiring of his heart. His genius broke forth out of the clouds. Seeing these two as they went about the house, hearing their voices as they talked in perpetual sweet accord, with sweeter jars of difference, surprised the young man’s life out of all its shadows; – one of them his sister – the other – . After all his troubles, the loves and the hopes came back with the swallows to build under his eaves and stir in his heart.