WHEN the minister fully came to himself, it was after a long rapid walk of many miles through the silent fields and hazy country. There the clouds cleared off from him in the quietness. When he began to see clearly he turned back towards Carlingford. Nothing now stood between him and the crisis which henceforward must determine his personal affairs. He turned in the long country road, which he had been pursuing eagerly without knowing what he was doing, and gazed back towards the distant roofs. His heart ached and throbbed with the pangs that were past. He had a consciousness that it stirred within his breast, still smarting and thrilling with that violent access of agony—but the climax was over. The strong pulsations fell into dull beats of indefinite pain. Now for the other world—the neutral-coloured life. Vincent did not very well know which road he had taken, for he had not been thinking of where he was going; but it roused him a little to perceive that his homeward way brought him through Grove Street, and past Siloam Cottage, where Mr. Tufton lived.
Mrs. Tufton was at the window, behind the great geranium, when the minister came in sight. When she saw him she tapped upon the pane and beckoned him to go in. He obeyed the summons, almost without impatience, in the languor of his mind. He went in to find them all by the fire, just as they had been when he came first to Carlingford. The old minister, in his arm-chair, holding out his flabby white hand to his dear young brother; the invalid daughter still knitting, with cold blue eyes, always vigilant and alert, investigating everything. It was a mild day, and Mrs. Tufton herself had shifted her seat to the window, where she had been reading aloud as usual the ‘Carlingford Gazette.’ The motionless warm air of the little parlour, the prints of the brethren on the walls, the attitudes of the living inhabitants, were all unchanged from the time when the young minister of Salem paid his first visit, and chafed at Mr. Tufton’s advice, and heard with a secret shiver the prophecy of Adelaide, that “they would kill him in six months.” He took the same chair, again making a little commotion among the furniture, which the size of the room made it difficult to displace. It was with a bewildering sensation that he sat down in that unchangeable house. Had time really gone on through all these passions and pains, of which he was conscious in his heart? or had it stood still, and were they only dreams? Adelaide Tufton, immovable in her padded chair, with pale blue eyes that searched through everything, had surely never once altered her position, but had knitted away the days with a mystic thread like one of the Fates. Even the geranium did not seem to have gained or shed a single leaf.
“I have just been reading in the ‘Gazette’ the report of last night’s meeting,” said good Mrs. Tufton. “Oh, Mr. Vincent, I was so glad—your dear mother herself, if she had been there, could not have been happier than I was. I hope she has seen the ‘Gazette’ this morning. You young men always like the ‘Times;’ but they never put in anything that is interesting to me in the ‘Times.’ Perhaps, if she has not seen it, you will put the paper in your pocket. Indeed, it made me as happy as if you had been my own son. I always say that is very much how Mr. Tufton and I feel for you.”
“Yes, it went off very well,” said the old minister. “My dear young brother, it all depends on whether you have friends that know how to deal with a flock; nothing can teach you that but experience. I am sorry I dare not go out again to-night—it cost me my night’s rest last night, as Mrs. Tufton will tell you; but that is nothing in consideration of duty. Never think of ease to yourself, my dear young friend, when you can serve a brother; it has always been my rule through life——”
“Mr. Vincent understands all that,” said Adelaide; “that will do, papa—we know. Tell me about Lady Western’s marriage, Mr. Vincent. I daresay you were invited, as she was such a friend of yours. It must have made an awkwardness between you when she turned out to be Colonel Mildmay’s sister; but, to be sure, those things don’t matter among people in high life. It was delightful that she should marry her old love after all, don’t you think? Poor Sir Joseph would have left a different will if he had known. Parted for ten years and coming together again! it is like a story in a book——”
“I do not know the circumstances,” said poor Vincent. He turned to Mr. Tufton with a vain hope of escaping. “I shall have to bid you good-bye shortly,” said the minister; “though it was very good of the Salem people not to dismiss me, I prefer——”
“You mean to go away?” said Adelaide; “that will be a wonderful piece of news in the connection; but I don’t think you will go away: there will be a deputation, and they will give you a piece of plate, and you will remain—you will not be able to resist. Papa never was a preacher to speak of,” continued the dauntless invalid, “but they gave him a purse and a testimonial when he retired; and you are soft-hearted, and they will get the better of you——”
“Adelaide!” said Mrs. Tufton, “Mr. Vincent will think you out of your senses: indeed, Mr. Vincent, she does not mind what she says; and she has had so much ill-health, poor child, that both her papa and I have given in to her too much; but as for my husband’s preaching, it is well known he could have had many other charges if his duty had not called him to stay at Salem; invitations used to come——”
“Oh, stuff!” said the irreverent Adelaide—“as if Mr. Vincent did not know. But I will tell you about Lady Western—that is the romance of the day. Mr. Fordham was very poor, you know, when they first saw each other—only a poor barrister—and the friends interfered. Friends always interfere,” said the sick woman, fixing her pale eyes on Vincent’s face as she went on with her knitting; “and they married her to old Sir Joseph Western; and so, after a while, she became the young dowager. She must have been very pretty then—she is beautiful now; but I would not have married a widow, had I been Mr. Fordham, after I came into my fortune. His elder brother died, you know. I would not have married her, however lovely she had been. Mr. Vincent, would you?”
“Adelaide!” cried Mrs. Tufton, again in dismay. The poor minister thrust back his chair from the table, and came roughly against the stand of the great geranium, which had to be adjusted, and covered his retreat. He glanced at his conscious tormentor with the contemptuous rage and aggravation which men sometimes feel towards a weak creature who insults them with impunity. But she did not show any pleasurable consciousness of her triumph; she kept knitting on, looking at him with her pale blue eyes. There was something in that loveless eagerness of curiosity which appalled Vincent. He got up hastily to his feet, and said he had something to do and must go away.
“Good-bye, my dear brother,” said Mr. Tufton slowly, shaking the young minister’s hand; “you will be judicious to-night? The flock have stood by you, and been indulgent to your inexperience. They see you never meant to hurt any of their feelings. It is what I always trained my dear people to be—considerate to the young preachers. Take my advice, my beloved young brother, and dear Tozer’s advice. We do all we can for you here, and dear Tozer is a tower of strength. And you have our prayers; we are but a little assembly—I and my dear partner in life and our afflicted child—but two or three, you know—and we never forget you at the throne of grace.”
With this parting blessing Vincent hastened away. Poor little Mrs. Tufton had added some little effusion of motherly kindness which he did not listen to. He came away with a strange impression on his mind of that knitting woman, pale and curious, in her padded chair. Adelaide Tufton was not old—not a great many years older than himself. To him, with the life beating so strong in his veins, the sight of that life in death was strange, almost awful. The despair, the anguish, the vivid uncertainty and reality of his own existence, appeared to him in wonderful relief against that motionless background. If he came back here ten years hence, he might still find as now the old man by the fire, the pale woman knitting in her chair, as they had been for these six months which had brought to the young minister a greater crowd of events than all his previous years. When he thought of that helpless woman, with her lively thoughts and curious eyes, always busy and speculating about the life from which she was utterly shut out, a strange sensation of thankfulness stole over the young man; though he was miserable he was alive. Between him and the lovely figure on which his heart had dwelt too long, rose up now this other figure which was not lovely. He grew stronger as he went home along the streets in the changed light of the afternoon. Siloam Cottage interposed between him and that ineffable moment at the bridal doors; presently Salem too would interpose, and all the difficulties and troubles of his career. He had taken up life again, after that pause when the sun and the moon stood still and the battle raged. Now it was all over, and the world’s course had begun anew.
Mrs. Vincent was looking out for him when he reached his own door. He could see her disappear from the window above, where she had been standing watching. She came to meet him as he went up to the sitting-room. There was nobody now in that room, where the widow had been making everything smile for her son. The table was spread; the fire bright; the lamp ready to be lighted on the table. Mrs. Vincent had been alarmed by Arthur’s long absence, but she did not say so. She only made haste to tell him that Susan was so much better, and that the doctor was in such high spirits about her. “After we come back from the meeting you are to go in and sit with your sister for an hour, my dear boy,” said his mother. “Till that was over, we knew your mind would be occupied, and Susan would like to see you. Oh, Arthur! it will make you happy only to look at her. She remembers everything now; she has asked me even all about the flock, and cried with joy to hear how things had gone off last night—not for joy only,” said the truthful widow, “with indignation, too, that you ever should have been doubted—for Susan thinks there is nobody like her brother; but, my dear, we ought to be very thankful that things have happened so well. Everybody must learn to put up with a little injustice in this world, particularly the pastor of a flock. If you will go and get ready for dinner, Arthur,” said Mrs. Vincent, “I will light the lamp. I have taken it into my own hands, dear; it is better to put it right at first than to be always arranging it after it has been put wrong. Dinner is quite ready, and make haste, my dear boy. I have got a little fish for you, and you know it will spoil if you keep it waiting; and I have so much to tell you before we go out to the meeting to-night.”
Vincent made no answer to the wistful inquiring look which his mother turned to his face as she mentioned this meeting. He went away with an impatient exclamation about that lamp, which seemed to him to occupy half her thoughts. Mrs. Vincent was full of many cares and much news which she had to give her son; she was also deeply anxious and curious to know what he was going to do that night; but still she spared a little time for the lamp, to set the screw right, and light to a delicate evenness the well-trimmed wick. When she had placed it on the table, it gave her a certain satisfaction to see how clearly it burned, and how bright it made the table. “If I only knew what Arthur was going to do,” she said to herself, with a little sigh, as she rang the bell for the dinner, and warned the little maid to be very careful with the fish; “for if it is not put very nicely on the table Mr. Vincent will not have any of it,” said the minister’s mother, with that feminine mingling of small cares and great which was so incomprehensible to her son. When he came back and seated himself listlessly at the table, he never thought of observing the light, or taking note of the brightness of the room. To think of this business of dinner at all, interjected into such a day, was almost too much for Arthur; and he was half disgusted with himself when he found that, after all, he could eat, and that not only for his mother’s sake. Mrs. Vincent talked only of Susan while the little maid was going and coming into the room; but when they were alone she drew her chair a little nearer and entered upon other things.
“Arthur, I had a great deal of conversation with Mrs. Mildmay; she told me—everything,” said the widow, growing pale. “Oh, my dear! when God leaves us alone to our own devices, what dreadful things a sinful creature may do! I said you would do nothing to harm her now when Susan was safe. Hush, dear! we must never breathe a word of it to Susan, or any one. Susan is changed, Arthur; sometimes I am glad of it, sometimes I could cry. She is not an innocent girl now. She is a woman—oh, Arthur! a great deal stronger than her mother; she would clear herself somehow if she knew; she would not bear that suspicion. She is more like your dear papa,” said the mother, wiping her eyes, “than I ever thought to see one of my children. I can see his high-minded ways in her, Arthur—and steadier than you and me; for you have my quick temper, dear. Wait just another moment, Arthur. This poor child dotes upon Susan; and her mother asked me,” said poor Mrs. Vincent, pausing, and looking her son in the face, “if—I would keep her with me.”
“Keep her with you! Let us be rid of them,” cried the minister; “they have brought us nothing but misery ever since we heard their names.”
“Yes, Arthur dear; but the poor child never did any one any harm. They have made her a ward in Chancery now. It should have been done long ago but for the wickedness and the disputes; and, my dear boy,” said Mrs. Vincent, anxiously, “I will have to leave Lonsdale, you know, my poor child could not go back there; and we will not stay with you in Carlingford to get you into trouble with your flock,” continued the widow, gazing wistfully in his face to see if she could gather anything of his purpose from his looks; “and with my little income, you know, it would be hard work without coming on you; but all the difficulty is cleared away if we take this child. I was thinking I might take Susan abroad,” said the widow, with a little sigh; “it is the best thing, I have always heard, after such trouble; and it would be an occupation for her when she got better. My dear boy, don’t be hasty; your dear father always took a little time to think upon a thing before he would speak; but you have always had my temper, Arthur. I won’t say any more; we will speak of it, dear, in your sister’s room, when we come home from the meeting to-night.”
“I think you had better not go to the meeting to-night; there will be nothing said to please you, mother,” said the minister, rising from the table, and taking his favourite position on the hearthrug. His mother turned round frightened, but afraid to show her fright, determined still to look as if she believed everything was going well.
“No fine speeches, Arthur? My dear boy, I always like to hear you speak. I know you will say what you ought,” said the widow, smiling, with a patient determination in her face. Then there was a pause. “Perhaps you will give me a little sketch of what you are going to say,” she went on, with a tender artifice, concealing her anxiety. “Your dear papa often did, Arthur, when anything was going on among the flock.”
But Arthur made no reply. His clouded face filled his mother with a host of indefinite fears. But she saw, as she had seen so often, that womanish entreaties were not practicable, and that he must be left to himself. “He will tell me as we go to Salem,” she said in her heart, to quiet its anxious throbbing. “Perhaps you would like to have the room to yourself a little, dear,” she said aloud. “I will go to Susan till it is time to leave; and I know my Arthur will ask the counsel of God,” she added softly, just touching his hand with a tender momentary clasp. It was all the minister could do to resist the look of anxious inquiry with which this little caress was accompanied; and then she left him to prepare for his meeting. Whether he asked advice or not of his Father in heaven, the widow asked it for him with tears in her anxious eyes. She had done all that she could do. When the minister was left to himself, he opened his desk and took out the manuscript with which he had been busy last night. It was the speech he had intended to deliver, and he had been pleased with it. He sat down now and read it over to himself, by the white-covered table, on which his mother’s lamp burned bright. Sheet by sheet, as he read it over, the impatient young man tossed into the fire, with hasty exclamations of disgust. He was excited; his mind was in fiery action; his heart moved to the depths. No turgid Homerton eloquence would do now. What he said must be not from the lips, but from the heart.