COLLECTION
OF
BRITISH AUTHORS
TAUCHNITZ EDITION.
VOL. 1091.
SALEM CHAPEL BY MRS. OLIPHANT.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.

Chronicles of Carlingford

———

SALEM CHAPEL

BY
MRS. OLIPHANT.
COPYRIGHT EDITION.
I N T W O V O L U M E S.
VOL. I.
LEIPZIG
BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ
1870.
The Right of Translation is reserved.

SALEM CHAPEL.

[CHAPTER I., ] [II., ] [III., ] [IV., ] [V., ] [VI., ] [VII., ] [VIII., ] [IX., ] [X., ] [XI., ] [XII., ] [XIII., ] [XIV., ] [XV., ] [XVI., ] [XVII., ] [XVIII., ] [XIX., ] [XX.]

CHAPTER I.

TOWARDS the west end of Grove Street, in Carlingford, on the shabby side of the street, stood a red brick building, presenting a pinched gable terminated by a curious little belfry, not intended for any bell, and looking not unlike a handle to lift up the edifice by to the public observation. This was Salem Chapel, the only Dissenting place of worship in Carlingford. It stood in a narrow strip of ground, just as the little houses which flanked it on either side stood in their gardens, except that the enclosure of the chapel was flowerless and sombre, and showed at the farther end a few sparsely-scattered tombstones—unmeaning slabs, such as the English mourner loves to inscribe his sorrow on. On either side of this little tabernacle were the humble houses—little detached boxes, each two storeys high, each fronted by a little flower-plot—clean, respectable, meagre, little habitations, which contributed most largely to the ranks of the congregation in the Chapel. The big houses opposite, which turned their backs and staircase windows to the street, took little notice of the humble Dissenting community. Twice in the winter, perhaps, the Miss Hemmings, mild evangelical women, on whom the late rector—the Low-Church rector, who reigned before the brief and exceptional incumbency of the Rev. Mr. Proctor—had bestowed much of his confidence, would cross the street, when other profitable occupations failed them, to hear a special sermon on a Sunday evening. But the Miss Hemmings were the only representatives of anything which could, by the utmost stretch, be called Society, who ever patronised the Dissenting interest in the town of Carlingford. Nobody from Grange Lane had ever been seen so much as in Grove Street on a Sunday, far less in the chapel. Greengrocers, dealers in cheese and bacon, milkmen, with some dressmakers of inferior pretensions, and teachers of day-schools of similar humble character, formed the élite of the congregation. It is not to be supposed, however, on this account, that a prevailing aspect of shabbiness was upon this little community; on the contrary, the grim pews of Salem Chapel blushed with bright colours, and contained both dresses and faces on the summer Sundays which the Church itself could scarcely have surpassed. Nor did those unadorned walls form a centre of asceticism and gloomy religiousness in the cheerful little town. Tea-meetings were not uncommon occurrences in Salem—tea-meetings which made the little tabernacle festive, in which cakes and oranges were diffused among the pews, and funny speeches made from the little platform underneath the pulpit, which woke the unconsecrated echoes with hearty outbreaks of laughter. Then the young people had their singing-class, at which they practised hymns, and did not despise a little flirtation; and charitable societies and missionary auxiliaries diversified the congregational routine, and kept up a brisk succession of “Chapel business,” mightily like the Church business which occupied Mr. Wentworth and his Sisters of Mercy at St. Roque’s. To name the two communities, however, in the same breath, would have been accounted little short of sacrilege in Carlingford. The names which figured highest in the benevolent lists of Salem Chapel, were known to society only as appearing, in gold letters, upon the backs of those mystic tradesmen’s books, which were deposited every Monday in little heaps at every house in Grange Lane. The Dissenters, on their part, aspired to no conquests in the unattainable territory of high life, as it existed in Carlingford. They were content to keep their privileges among themselves, and to enjoy their superior preaching and purity with a compassionate complacence. While Mr. Proctor was rector, indeed, Mr. Tozer, the butterman, who was senior deacon, found it difficult to refrain from an audible expression of pity for the “Church folks” who knew no better; but, as a general rule, the congregation of Salem kept by itself, gleaning new adherents by times at an “anniversary” or the coming of a new minister, but knowing and keeping “its own place” in a manner edifying to behold.

Such was the state of affairs when old Mr. Tufton declined in popularity, and impressed upon the minds of his hearers those now-established principles about the unfitness of old men for any important post, and the urgent necessity and duty incumbent upon old clergymen, old generals, old admirals, &c.—every aged functionary, indeed, except old statesmen—to resign in favour of younger men, which have been, within recent years, so much enforced upon the world. To communicate this opinion to the old minister was perhaps less difficult to Mr. Tozer and his brethren than it might have been to men more refined and less practical; but it was an undeniable relief to the managers of the chapel when grim Paralysis came mildly in and gave the intimation in the manner least calculated to wound the sufferer’s feelings. Mild but distinct was that undeniable warning. The poor old minister retired, accordingly, with a purse and a presentation, and young Arthur Vincent, fresh from Homerton, in the bloom of hope and intellectualism, a young man of the newest school, was recognised as pastor in his stead.

A greater change could not possibly have happened. When the interesting figure of the young minister went up the homely pulpit-stairs, and appeared, white-browed, white-handed, in snowy linen and glossy clerical apparel, where old Mr. Tufton, spiritual but homely, had been wont to impend over the desk and exhort his beloved brethren, it was natural that a slight rustle of expectation should run audibly through the audience. Mr. Tozer looked round him proudly to note the sensation, and see if the Miss Hemmings, sole representatives of a cold and unfeeling aristocracy, were there. The fact was, that few of the auditors were more impressed than the Miss Hemmings, who were there, and who talked all the evening after about the young minister. What a sermon it was! not much in it about the beloved brethren; nothing very stimulating, indeed, to the sentiments and affections, except in the youth and good looks of the preacher, which naturally made a more distinct impression upon the female portion of his hearers than on the stronger sex. But then what eloquence! what an amount of thought! what an honest entrance into all the difficulties of the subject! Mr. Tozer remarked afterwards that such preaching was food for men. It was too closely reasoned out, said the excellent butterman, to please women or weak-minded persons: but he did not doubt, for his part, that soon the young men of Carlingford, the hope of the country, would find their way to Salem. Under such prognostications, it was fortunate that the young minister possessed something else besides close reasoning and Homerton eloquence to propitiate the women too.

Mr. Vincent arrived at Carlingford in the beginning of winter, when society in that town was reassembling, or at least reappearing, after the temporary summer seclusion. The young man knew very little of the community which he had assumed the spiritual charge of. He was almost as particular as the Rev. Mr. Wentworth of St. Roque’s about the cut of his coat and the precision of his costume, and decidedly preferred the word clergyman to the word minister, which latter was universally used by his flock; but notwithstanding these trifling predilections, Mr. Vincent, who had been brought up upon the ‘Nonconformist’ and the ‘Eclectic Review,’ was strongly impressed with the idea that the Church Establishment, though outwardly prosperous, was in reality a profoundly rotten institution; that the Nonconforming portion of the English public was the party of progress; that the eyes of the world were turned upon the Dissenting interest; and that his own youthful eloquence and the Voluntary principle were quite enough to counterbalance all the ecclesiastical advantages on the other side, and make for himself a position of the highest influence in his new sphere. As he walked about Carlingford making acquaintance with the place, it occurred to the young man, with a thrill of not ungenerous ambition, that the time might shortly come when Salem Chapel would be all too insignificant for the Nonconformists of this hitherto torpid place. He pictured to himself how, by-and-by, those jealous doors in Grange Lane would fly open at his touch, and how the dormant minds within would awake under his influence. It was a blissful dream to the young pastor. Even the fact that Mr. Tozer was a butterman, and the other managers of the chapel equally humble in their pretensions, did not disconcert him in that flush of early confidence. All he wanted—all any man worthy of his post wanted—was a spot of standing-ground, and an opportunity of making the Truth—and himself—known. Such, at least, was the teaching of Homerton and the Dissenting organs. Young Vincent, well educated and enlightened according to his fashion, was yet so entirely unacquainted with any world but that contracted one in which he had been brought up, that he believed all this as devoutly as Mr. Wentworth believed in Anglicanism, and would have smiled with calm scorn at any sceptic who ventured to doubt. Thus it will be seen he came to Carlingford with elevated expectations—by no means prepared to circulate among his flock, and say grace at Mrs. Tozer’s “teas,” and get up soirees to amuse the congregation, as Mr. Tufton had been accustomed to do. These secondary circumstances of his charge had little share in the new minister’s thoughts. Somehow the tone of public writing has changed of late days. Scarcely a newspaper writer condescends now to address men who are not free of “society,” and learned in all its ways. The ‘Times’ and the Magazines take it for granted that all their readers dine out at splendid tables, and are used to a solemn attendant behind their chair. Young Vincent was one of those who accept the flattering implication. It is true, he saw few enough of such celestial scenes in his college-days. But now that life was opening upon him, he doubted nothing of the society that must follow; and with a swell of gratification listened when the advantages of Carlingford were discussed by some chance fellow-travellers on the railway; its pleasant parties—its nice people—Mr. Wodehouse’s capital dinners, and the charming breakfasts—such a delightful novelty!—so easy and agreeable!—of the pretty Lady Western, the young dowager. In imagination Mr. Vincent saw himself admitted to all these social pleasures; not that he cared for capital dinners more than became a young man, or had any special tendencies towards tuft-hunting, but because fancy and hope, and ignorance of the real world, made him naturally project himself into the highest sphere within his reach, in the simple conviction that such was his natural place.

With these thoughts, to be asked to Mrs. Tozer’s to tea at six o’clock, was the most wonderful cold plunge for the young man. He shrugged his shoulders, smiled to himself over the note of invitation, which, however, was very prettily written by Phœbe, Mrs. Tozer’s blooming daughter, on paper as pink as Lady Western’s, and consented, as he could not help himself. He went out from his nice lodgings a little after six, still smiling, and persuading himself that this would be quite a pleasant study of manners, and that of course he could not do less than patronise the good homely people in their own way, whatever that might be. Mr. Vincent’s rooms were in George Street, at what the Grange Lane people called the other end, in an imposing house with a large door, and iron extinguishers fixed in the railing, which had in their day quenched the links of the last century. To cross the street in his evening coat, and walk into the butter-shop, where the two white-aproned lads behind the counter stared, and a humble member of the congregation turned sharply round, and held out the hand, which had just clutched a piece of bacon, for her minister to shake, was a sufficiently trying introduction to the evening’s pleasure; but when the young pastor had been ushered up-stairs, the first aspect of the company there rather took away his breath, as he emerged from the dark staircase. Tozer himself, who awaited the minister at the door, was fully habited in the overwhelming black suit and white tie, which produced so solemnising an effect every Sunday at chapel; and the other men of the party were, with a few varieties, similarly attired. But the brilliancy of the female portion of the company overpowered Mr. Vincent. Mrs. Tozer herself sat at the end of her hospitable table, with all her best china tea-service set out before her, in a gown and cap which Grange Lane could not have furnished any rivals to. The brilliant hue of the one, and the flowers and feathers of the other, would require a more elaborate description than this chronicle has space for. Nor indeed in the particular of dress did Mrs. Tozer do more than hold her own among the guests who surrounded her. It was scarcely dark, and the twilight softened down the splendours of the company, and saved the dazzled eyes of the young pastor. He felt the grandeur vaguely as he came in with a sense of reproof, seeing that he had evidently been waited for. He said grace devoutly when the tea arrived and the gas was lighted, and with dumb amaze gazed round him. Could these be the veritable womankind of Salem Chapel? Mr. Vincent saw bare shoulders and flower-wreathed heads bending over the laden tea-table. He saw pretty faces and figures not inelegant, remarkable among which was Miss Phœbe’s, who had written him that pink note, and who herself was pink all over—dress, shoulders, elbows, cheeks, and all. Pink—not red—a softened youthful flush, which was by no means unbecoming to the plump full figure which had not an angle anywhere. As for the men, the lawful owners of all this feminine display, they huddled all together, indisputable cheesemongers as they were, quite transcended and extinguished by their wives and daughters. The pastor was young and totally inexperienced. In his heart he asserted his own claim to an entirely different sphere; but, suddenly cast into this little crowd, Mr. Vincent’s inclination was to join the dark group of husbands and fathers whom he knew, and who made no false pretences. He was shy of venturing upon those fine women, who surely never could be Mrs. Brown of the Devonshire Dairy, and Mrs. Pigeon, the poulterer’s wife; whereas Pigeon and Brown themselves were exactly like what they always were on Sundays, if not perhaps a trifle graver and more depressed in their minds.

“Here’s a nice place for you, Mr. Vincent—quite the place for you, where you can hear all the music, and see all the young ladies. For I do suppose ministers, bein’ young, are like other young men,” said Mrs. Tozer, drawing aside her brilliant skirts to make room for him on the sofa. “I have a son myself as is at college, and feel motherlike to those as go in the same line. Sit you down comfortable, Mr. Vincent. There ain’t one here, sir, I’m proud to say, as grudges you the best seat.”

“Oh, mamma, how could you think of saying such a thing!” said Phœbe, under her breath; “to be sure, Mr. Vincent never could think there was anybody anywhere that would be so wicked—and he the minister.”

“Indeed, my dear,” said Mrs. Pigeon, who was close by, “not to affront Mr. Vincent, as is deserving of our best respects, I’ve seen many and many’s the minister I wouldn’t have given up my seat to; and I don’t misdoubt, sir, you’ve heard of such as well as we. There was Mr. Bailey at Parson’s Green, now. He went and married a poor bit of a governess, as common a looking creature as you could see, that set herself up above the people, Mr. Vincent, and was too grand, sir, if you’ll believe me, to visit the deacons’ wives. Nobody cares less than me about them vain shows. What’s visiting, if you know the vally of your time? Nothing but a laying up of judgment. But I wouldn’t be put upon neither by a chit that got her bread out of me and my husband’s hard earnins; and so I told my sister, Mrs. Tozer, as lives at Parson’s Green.”

“Poor thing!” said the gentler Mrs. Tozer, “it’s hard lines on a minister’s wife to please the congregation. Mr. Vincent here, he’ll have to take a lesson. That Mrs. Bailey was pretty-looking, I must allow——”

“Sweetly pretty!” whispered Phœbe, clasping her plump pink hands.

“Pretty-looking! I don’t say anything against it,” continued her mother; “but it’s hard upon a minister when his wife won’t take no pains to please his flock. To have people turn up their noses at you ain’t pleasant——”

“And them getting their livin’ off you all the time,” cried Mrs. Pigeon, clinching the milder speech.

“But it seems to me,” said poor Vincent, “that a minister can no more be said to get his living off you than any other man. He works hard enough generally for what little he has. And really, Mrs. Tozer, I’d rather not hear all these unfortunate particulars about one of my brethren——”

“He ain’t one of the brethren now,” broke in the poulterer’s wife. “He’s been gone out o’ Parson’s Green this twelvemonths. Them stuck-up ways may do with the Church folks as can’t help themselves, but they’ll never do with us Dissenters. Not that we ain’t as glad as can be to see you, Mr. Vincent, and I hope you’ll favour my poor house another night like you’re favouring Mrs. Tozer’s. Mr. Tufton always said that was the beauty of Carlingford in our connection. Cheerful folks and no display. No display, you know—nothing but a hearty meetin’, sorry to part, and happy to meet again. Them’s our ways. And the better you know us, the better you’ll like us, I’ll be bound to say. We don’t put it all on the surface, Mr. Vincent,” continued Mrs. Pigeon, shaking out her skirts and expanding herself on her chair, “but it’s all real and solid; what we say we mean—and we don’t say no more than we mean—and them’s the kind of folks to trust to wherever you go.”

Poor Vincent made answer by an inarticulate murmur, whether of assent or dissent it was impossible to say; and, inwardly appalled, turned his eyes towards his deacons, who, more fortunate than himself, were standing all in a group together discussing chapel matters, and wisely leaving general conversation to the fairer portion of the company. The unlucky minister’s secret looks of distress awoke the interest and sympathy of Phœbe, who sat in an interesting manner on a stool at her mother’s side. “Oh, mamma,” said that young lady, too bashful to address himself directly, “I wonder if Mr. Vincent plays or sings? There are some such nice singers here. Perhaps we might have some music, if Mr. Vincent——”

“I don’t perform at all,” said that victim,—“not in any way; but I am an exemplary listener. Let me take you to the piano.”

The plump Phœbe rose after many hesitations, and, with a simper and a blush and pretty air of fright, took the minister’s arm. After all, even when the whole company is beneath a man’s level, it is easier to play the victim under the supplice inflicted by a pretty girl than by two mature matrons. Phœbe understood pretty well about her h’s, and did not use the double negative; and when she rose up rustling from her low seat, the round, pink creature, with dimples all about her, was not an unpleasant object of contemplation. Mr. Vincent listened to her song with decorous interest. Perhaps it was just as well sung as Lucy Wodehouse, in Grange Lane, would have sung it. When Phœbe had concluded, the minister was called to the side of Mrs. Brown of the Devonshire Dairy, who had been fidgeting to secure him from the moment he approached the piano. She was fat and roundabout, good woman, and had the aspect of sitting upon the very edge of her chair. She held out to the distressed pastor a hand covered with a rumpled white glove, which did not fit, and had never been intended to fit, and beckoned to him anxiously. With the calmness of despair Mr. Vincent obeyed the call.

“I have been looking so anxious to catch your eye, Mr. Vincent,” said Mrs. Brown; “do sit you down, now there’s a chance, and let me talk to you a minnit. Bless the girl! there’s Miss Polly Pigeon going to play, and everybody can use their freedom in talking. For my part,” said Mrs. Brown, securing the vacant chair of the performer for her captive, “that’s why I like instrumental music best. When a girl sings, why, to be sure, it’s only civil to listen—ain’t it now, Mr. Vincent? but nobody expects it of you, don’t you see, when she only plays. Now do you sit down. What I wanted to speak to you was about that poor creetur in Back Grove Street—that’s the lane right behind the chapel. She do maunder on so to see the minister. Mr. Tozer he’s been to see her, and I sent Brown, but it wasn’t a bit of use. It’s you, Mr. Vincent, she’s awanting of. If you’ll call in to-morrow, I’ll show you the place myself, as you’re a stranger; for if you’ll excuse me saying it, I am as curious as can be to hear what she’s got to say.”

“If she has got anything to say, she might prefer that it was not heard,” said Vincent, with an attempt at a smile. “Is she ill—and who is she? I have never heard of her before.”

“Well, you see, sir, she doesn’t belong rightly to Salem. She’s a stranger here, and not a joined member; and she ain’t ill either, as I can see—only something on her mind. You ministers,” said Mrs. Brown, with a look of awe, “must have a deal of secrets confided to you. Folks may stand out against religion as long as things go on straight with them, but they’re sure to want the minister as soon as they’ve got something on their mind; and a deal better to have it out, and get a little comfort, than to bottle it all up till their latter end, like old Mrs. Thompson, and let it out in their will, to drive them as was expecting different distracted. It’s a year or two since that happened. I don’t suppose you’ve heerd tell of it yet. But that’s what makes old Mrs. Christian—I dare to say you’ve seen her at chapel—so uncomfortable in her feelins. She’s never got over it, sir, and never will to her dying day.”

“Some disappointment about money?” said Mr. Vincent.

“Poor old folks! their daughter did very well for herself—and very well for them too,” said Mrs. Brown; “but it don’t make no difference in Mrs. Christian’s feelins: they’re living, like, on Mr. Brown the solicitor’s charity, you see, sir, instead of their own fortin, which makes a deal o’ difference. It would have been a fine thing for Salem too,” added Mrs. Brown, reflectively, “if they had had the old lady’s money; for Mrs. Christian was always one that liked to be first, and stanch to her chapel, and would never have been wanting when the collecting-books went round. But it wasn’t to be, Mr. Vincent—that’s the short and the long of it; and we never have had nobody in our connection worth speaking of in Carlingford but’s been in trade. And a very good thing too, as I tell Brown. For if there’s one thing I can’t abear in a chapel, it’s one set setting up above the rest. But bein’ all in the way of business, except just the poor folks, as is all very well in their place, and never interferes with nothing, and don’t count, there’s nothing but brotherly love here, which is a deal more than most ministers can say for their flocks. I’ve asked a few friends to tea, Mr. Vincent, on next Thursday, at six. As I haven’t got no daughters just out of a boarding-school to write notes for me, will you take us in a friendly way, and just come without another invitation? All our own folks, sir, and a comfortable evening; and prayers, if you’ll be so good, at the end. I don’t like the new fashion,” said Mrs. Brown, with a significant glance towards Mrs. Tozer, “of separatin’ like heathens, when all’s of one connection. We might never meet again, Mr. Vincent. In the midst of life, you know, sir. You’ll not forget Thursday, at six.”

“But, my dear Mrs. Brown, I am very sorry: Thursday is one of the days I have specially devoted to study,” stammered forth the unhappy pastor. “What with the Wednesday meeting and the Friday committee——”

Mrs. Brown drew herself up as well as the peculiarities of her form permitted, and her roseate countenance assumed a deeper glow. “We’ve been in the chapel longer than Tozer,” said the offended deaconess. “We’ve never been backward, in takin’ trouble, nor spendin’ our substance, nor puttin’ our hands to every good work; and as for makin’ a difference between one member and another, it’s what we ain’t been accustomed to, Mr. Vincent. I’m a plain woman, and speak my mind. Old Mr. Tufton was very particular to show no preference. He always said, it never answered in a flock to show more friendship to one nor another; and if it had been put to me, I wouldn’t have said, I assure you, sir, that it was us as was to be made the first example of. If I haven’t a daughter fresh out of a boarding-school, I’ve been a member of Salem five-and-twenty year, and had ministers in my house many’s the day, and as friendly as if I were a duchess; and for charities and such things, we’ve never been known to fail, though I say it; and as for trouble——”

“But I spoke of my study,” said the poor minister, as she paused, her indignation growing too eloquent for words: “you want me to preach on Sunday, don’t you? and I must have some time, you know, to do my work.”

“Sir,” said Mrs. Brown, severely, “I know it for a fact that Mr. Wentworth of St. Roque’s dines out five days in the week, and it don’t do his sermons no injury; and when you go out to dinner, it stands to reason it’s a different thing from a friendly tea.”

“Ah, yes, most likely!” said Mr. Vincent, with a heavy sigh. “I’ll come, since you wish it so much; but,” added the unlucky young man, with a melancholy attempt at a smile, “you must not be too kind to me. Too much of this kind of thing, you know, might have an effect——” Here he paused, inclined to laugh at his own powers of sarcasm. As chance would have it, as he pointed generally to the scene before them, the little wave of his hand seemed to Mrs. Brown to indicate the group round the piano, foremost in which was Phœbe, plump and pink, and full of dimples. The good mistress of the Devonshire Dairy gave her head a little toss.

“Ah!” said Mrs. Brown, with a sigh, “you don’t know, you young men, the half of the tricks of them girls that look so innocent. But I don’t deny it’s a pleasant party,” added the deaconess, looking round on the company in general with some complacency. “But just you come along our way on Thursday, at six, and judge for yourself if mine ain’t quite as good; though I have not got no daughters, Mr. Vincent,” she concluded, with severe irony, elevating her double chin and nodding her flowery head.

The subdued minister made no reply; only deeper and deeper humiliation seemed in store for him. Was it he, the first prize-man of Homerton, who was supposed to be already smitten by the pink charms of Phœbe Tozer? The unfortunate young man groaned in spirit, and, seizing a sudden opportunity, plunged into the black group of deacons, and tried to immerse himself in chapel business. But vain was the attempt. He was recaptured and led back in triumph to Mrs. Tozer’s sofa. He had to listen to more singing, and accept another invitation to tea. When he got off at last, it was with a sensation of dreadful dwindlement that poor Vincent crossed the street again to his lonely abode. He knocked quite humbly at the big door, and, with a sensation of unclerical rage, wondered to himself whether the policeman who met him knew he had been out to tea. Ah, blessed Mr. Wentworth of St. Roque’s! The young Nonconformist sighed as he put on his slippers, and kicked his boots into a corner of his sitting-room. Somehow he had come down in the world all at once, and without expecting it. Such was Salem Chapel and its requirements: and such was Mr. Vincent’s first experience of social life in Carlingford.

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.”

“But don’t you think it possible that things may never settle down, but continue rising up instead?” said Mr. Vincent, making a little venture in the inspiration of the moment.

Mr. Tufton shook his head and raised his large hands slowly, with a deprecating regretful motion, to hold them over the fire. “Alas! he’s got the fever already,” said the old minister. “My dear young brother, you shall have my experience to refer to always. You’re always welcome to my advice. Dear Tozer said to me just yesterday, ‘You point out the pitfalls to him, Mr. Tufton, and give him your advice, and I’ll take care that he shan’t go wrong outside,’ says dear Tozer. Ah, an invaluable man!”

“But a little disposed to interfere, I think,” said Vincent, with an irrestrainable inclination to show his profound disrelish of all the advice which was about to be given him.

Mr. Tufton raised his heavy forefinger and shook it slowly. “No—no. Be careful, my dear brother. You must keep well with your deacons. You must not take up prejudices against them. Dear Tozer is a man of a thousand—a man of a thousand! Dear Tozer, if you listen to him, will keep you out of trouble. The trouble he takes and the money he spends for Salem Chapel is, mark my words, unknown—and,” added the old pastor, awfully syllabling the long word in his solemn bass, “in-con-ceiv-able.”

“He is a bore and an ass for all that,” said the daring invalid opposite, with perfect equanimity, as if uttering the most patent and apparent of truths. “Don’t you give in to him, Mr. Vincent. A pretty business you will have with them all,” she continued, dropping her knitting-needles and lifting her pale-blue eyes, with their sudden green gleam, to the face of the new-comer with a rapid perception of his character, which, having no sympathy in it, but rather a certain mischievous and pleased satisfaction in his probable discomfiture, gave anything but comfort to the object of her observation. “You are something new for them to pet and badger. I wonder how long they’ll be of killing Mr. Vincent. Papa’s tough; but you remember, mamma, they finished off the other man before us in two years.”

“Oh, hush, Adelaide, hush! you’ll frighten Mr. Vincent,” cried the kind little mother, with uneasy looks: “when he comes to see us and cheer us up—as I am sure is very kind of him—it is a shame to put all sorts of things in his head, as papa and you do. Never mind Adelaide, Mr. Vincent, dear. Do your duty, and never fear anybody; that’s always been my maxim, and I’ve always found it answer. Not going away, are you? Dear, dear! and we’ve had no wise talk at all, and never once asked for your poor dear mother—quite well, I hope?—and Miss Susan? You should have them come and see you, and cheer you up. Well, good morning, if you must go; don’t be long before you come again.”

“And, my dear young brother, don’t take up any prejudices,” interposed Mr. Tufton, in tremulous bass, as he pressed Vincent’s half-reluctant fingers in that large soft flabby ministerial hand. Adelaide added nothing to these valedictions; but when she too had received his leave-taking, and he had emerged from the shadow of the geraniums, the observer paused once more in her knitting. “This one will not hold out two years,” said Adelaide, calmly, to herself, no one else paying any attention; and she returned to her work with the zest of a spectator at the commencement of an exciting drama. She did double work all the afternoon under the influence of this refreshing stimulant. It was quite a new interest in her life.

Meanwhile young Vincent left the green gates of Siloam Cottage with no very comfortable feelings—with feelings, indeed, the reverse of comfortable, yet conscious of a certain swell and elevation in his mind at the same moment. It was for him to show the entire community of Carlingford the difference between his reign and the old regime. It was for him to change the face of affairs—to reduce Tozer into his due place of subordination, and to bring in an influx of new life, intelligence, and enlightenment over the prostrate butterman. The very sordidness and contraction of the little world into which he had just received so distinct a view, promoted the revulsion of feeling which now cheered him. The aspiring young man could as soon have consented to lose his individuality altogether as to acknowledge the most distant possibility of accepting Tozer as his guide, philosopher, and friend. He went back again through Grove Street, heated and hastened on his way by those impatient thoughts. When he came as far as Salem, he could not but pause to look at it with its pinched gable and mean little belfry, innocent of a bell. The day was overclouded, and no clearness of atmosphere relieved the aspect of the shabby chapel, with its black railing, and locked gates, and dank flowerless grass inside. To see anything venerable or sacred in the aspect of such a place, required an amount of illusion and glamour which the young minister could not summon into his eyes. It was not the centre of light in a dark place, the simple tribune from which the people’s preacher should proclaim, to the awe and conviction of the multitude, that Gospel once preached to the poor, of which he flattered himself he should be the truest messenger in Carlingford. Such had been the young man’s dreams in Homerton—dreams mingled, it is true, with personal ambition, but full notwithstanding of generous enthusiasm. No—nothing of the kind. Only Salem Chapel, with so many pews let, and so many still to be disposed of, and Tozer a guardian angel at the door. Mr. Vincent was so far left to himself as to give vent to an impatient exclamation as he turned away. But still matters were not hopeless. He himself was a very different man from Mr. Tufton. Kindred spirits there must surely be in Carlingford to answer to the call of his. Another day might dawn for the Nonconformists, who were not aware of their own dignity. With this thought he retraced his steps a little, and, with an impulse which he did not explain to himself, threaded his way up a narrow lane and emerged into Back Grove Street, about the spot where he had lately paid his pastoral visit, and made so unexpected an acquaintance. This woman—or should he not say lady?—was a kind of first-fruits of his mission. The young man looked up with a certain wistful interest at the house in which she lived. She was neither young nor fair, it is true, but she interested the youthful Nonconformist, who was not too old for impulses of chivalry, and who could not forget her poor fingers scarred with her rough work. He had no other motive for passing the house but that of sympathy and compassion for the forlorn brave creature who was so unlike her surroundings; and no throbbing pulse or trembling nerve forewarned Arthur Vincent of the approach of fate.

At that moment, however, fate was approaching in the shape of a handsome carriage, which made quite an exaggeration of echo in this narrow back-street, which rang back every jingle of the harness and dint of the hoofs from every court and opening. It drew up before Mrs. Hilyard’s door—at the door of the house, at least, in which Mrs. Hilyard was a humble lodger; and while Vincent slowly approached, a brilliant vision suddenly appeared before him, rustling forth upon the crowded pavement, where the dirty children stood still to gape at her. A woman—a lady—a beautiful dazzling creature, resplendent in the sweetest English roses, the most delicate bewildering bloom. Though it was but for a moment, the bewildered young minister had time to note the dainty foot, the daintier hand, the smiling sunshiny eyes, the air of conscious supremacy, which was half command and half entreaty—an ineffable combination. That vision descended out of the heavenly chariot upon the mean pavement just as Mr. Vincent came up; and at the same moment a ragged boy, struck speechless, like the young minister, by the apparition, planted himself full in her way with open mouth and staring eyes, too much overpowered by sudden admiration to perceive that he stopped the path. Scarcely aware what he was doing, as much beauty-struck as his victim, Vincent, with a certain unconscious fury, seized the boy by the collar, and swung him impatiently off the pavement, with a feeling of positive resentment against the imp, whose rags were actually touching those sacred splendid draperies. The lady made a momentary pause, turned half round, smiled with a gracious inclination of her head, and entered at the open door, leaving the young pastor in an incomprehensible ecstasy, with his hat off, and all his pulses beating loud in his ears, riveted, as the romancers say, to the pavement. When the door shut he came to himself, stared wildly into the face of the next passenger who came along the narrow street, and then, becoming aware that he still stood uncovered, grew violently red, put on his hat, and went off at a great pace. But what was the use of going off? The deed was done. The world on the other side of these prancing horses was a different world from that on this side. Those other matters, of which he had been thinking so hotly, had suddenly faded into a background and accessories to the one triumphant figure which occupied all the scene. He scarcely asked himself who was that beautiful vision? The fact of her existence was at the moment too overpowering for any secondary inquiries. He had seen her—and lo! the universe was changed. The air tingled softly with the sound of prancing horses and rolling wheels, the air breathed an irresistible soft perfume, which could nevermore die out of it, the air rustled with the silken thrill of those womanly robes. There she had enthroned herself—not in his startled heart, but in the palpitating world, which formed in a moment’s time into one great background and framework for that beatific form.

What the poor young man had done to be suddenly assailed and carried off his feet by this wonderful and unexpected apparition, we are unable to say. He seemed to have done nothing to provoke it: approaching quietly as any man might do, pondering grave thoughts of Salem Chapel, and how he was to make his post tenable, to be transfixed all at once and unawares by that fairy lance, was a spite of fortune which nobody could have predicted. But the thing was done. He went home to hide his stricken head, as was natural; tried to read, tried to think of a popular series of lectures, tried to lay plans for his campaign and heroic desperate attempts to resuscitate the shopkeeping Dissenterism of Carlingford into a lofty Nonconformist ideal. But vain were the efforts. Wherever he lifted his eyes, was not She there, all-conquering and glorious? when he did not lift his eyes, was not she everywhere Lady Paramount of the conscious world? Womankind in general, which had never, so to speak, entered his thoughts before, had produced much trouble to poor Arthur Vincent since his arrival in Carlingford. But Phœbe Tozer, pink and blooming—Mrs. Hilyard, sharp and strange—Adelaide Tufton, pale spectator of a life with which she had nothing to do—died off like shadows, and left no sign of their presence. Who was She?

CHAPTER IV.

AFTER the remarkable encounter which had thus happened to the young minister, life went on with him in the dullest routine for some days. Thursday came, and he had to go to Mrs. Brown’s tea-party, where, in the drawing-room up-stairs, over the Devonshire Dairy, after tea, and music, and the diversions of the evening, he conducted prayers to the great secret satisfaction of the hostess, who felt that the superior piety of her entertainment entirely made up for any little advantage in point of gentility which Mrs. Tozer, with a grown-up daughter fresh from a boarding-school, might have over her. On Friday evening there was the singing-class at the chapel, which Mr. Vincent was expected to look in upon, and from which he had the privilege of walking home with Miss Tozer. When he arrived with his blooming charge at the private door, the existence of which he had not hitherto been aware of, Tozer himself appeared, to invite the young pastor to enter. This time it was the butterman’s unadorned domestic hearth to which Mr. Vincent was introduced. This happy privacy was in a little parlour, which, being on the same floor with the butter-shop, naturally was not without a reminiscence of the near vicinity of all those hams and cheeses—a room nearly blocked up by the large family-table, at which, to the disgust of Phœbe, the apprentices sat at meal-times along with the family. One little boy, distinguished out of doors by a red worsted comforter, was, besides Phœbe, the only member of the family itself now at home; the others being two sons, one in Australia, and the other studying for a minister, as Mrs. Tozer had already informed her pastor, with motherly pride. Mrs. Tozer sat in an easy-chair by the fire darning stockings on this October night; her husband, opposite to her, had been looking over his greasy books, one of which lay open upon a little writing-desk, where a bundle of smaller ones in red leather, with “Tozer, Cheesemonger,” stamped on them in gilt letters, lay waiting Phœbe’s arrival to be made up. The Benjamin of the house sat half-way down the long table with his slate working at his lessons. The margin of space round this long table scarcely counted in the aspect of the room. There was space enough for chairs to be set round it, and that was all: the table with its red-and-blue cover and the faces appearing above it, constituted the entire scene. Mr. Vincent stood uneasily at a corner when he was brought into the apartment, and distinctly placed himself at table, as if at a meal, when he sat down.

“Do you now take off your greatcoat, and make yourself comfortable,” said Mrs. Tozer; “there’s a bit of supper coming presently. This is just what I like, is this. A party is very well in its way, Mr. Vincent, sir; but when a gen’leman comes in familiar, and takes us just as we are, that’s what I like. We never can be took wrong of an evening, Tozer and me; there’s always a bit of something comfortable for supper; and after the shop’s shut in them long evenings, time’s free. Phœbe, make haste and take off your things. What a colour you’ve got, to be sure, with the night air! I declare, Pa, somebody must have been saying something to her, or she’d never look so bright.”

“I daresay there’s more things than music gets talked of at the singing,” said Tozer, thus appealed to. “But she’d do a deal better if she’d try to improve her mind than take notice what the young fellows says.”

“Oh, Pa, the idea! and before Mr. Vincent too,” cried Phoebe—“to think I should ever dream of listening to anything that anybody might choose to say!”

Vincent, to whom the eyes of the whole family turned, grinned a feeble smile, but, groaning in his mind, was totally unequal to the effort of saying anything. After a moment’s pause of half-disappointed expectation, Phœbe disappeared to take off her bonnet; and Mrs. Tozer, bestirring herself, cleared away the desk and books, and went into the kitchen to inquire into the supper. The minister and the deacon were accordingly left alone.

“Three more pews applied for this week—fifteen sittings in all,” said Mr. Tozer; “that’s what I call satisfactory, that is. We mustn’t let the steam go down—not on no account. You keep well at them of Sundays, Mr. Vincent, and trust to the managers, sir, to keep ’em up to their dooty. Me and Mr. Tufton was consulting the other day. He says as we oughtn’t to spare you, and you oughtn’t to spare yourself. There hasn’t been such a opening not in our connection for fifteen year. We all look to you to go into it, Mr. Vincent. If all goes as I expect, and you keep up as you’re doing, I see no reason why we shouldn’t be able to put another fifty to the salary next year.”

“Oh!” said poor Vincent, with a miserable face. He had been rather pleased to hear about the “opening,” but this matter-of-fact encouragement and stimulus threw him back into dismay and disgust.

“Yes,” said the deacon, “though I wouldn’t advise you, as a young man settin’ out in life, to calculate upon it, yet we all think it more than likely; but if you was to ask my advice, I’d say to give it ’em a little more plain—meaning the Church folks. It’s expected of a new man. I’d touch ’em up in the State-Church line, Mr. Vincent, if I was you. Give us a coorse upon the anomalies, and that sort of thing—the bishops in their palaces, and the fisherman as was the start of it all; there’s a deal to be done in that way. It always tells; and my opinion is as you might secure the most part of the young men and thinkers, and them as can see what’s what, if you lay it on pretty strong. Not,” added the deacon, remembering in time to add that necessary salve to the conscience—“not as I would have you neglect what’s more important; but, after all, what is more important, Mr. Vincent, than freedom of opinion and choosing your own religious teacher? You can’t put gospel truth in a man’s mind till you’ve freed him out of them bonds. It stands to reason—as long as he believes just what he’s told, and has it all made out for him the very words he’s to pray, there may be feelin’, sir, but there can’t be no spiritual understandin’ in that man.”

“Well, one can’t deny that there have been enlightened men in the Church of England,” said the young Nonconformist, with lofty candour. “The inconsistencies of the human mind are wonderful; and it is coming to be pretty clearly understood in the intellectual world, that a man may show the most penetrating genius, and even the widest liberality, and yet be led a willing slave in the bonds of religious rite and ceremony. One cannot understand it, it is true; but in our clearer atmosphere we are bound to exercise Christian charity. Great as the advantages are on our side of the question, I would not willingly hurt the feelings of a sincere Churchman, who, for anything I know, may be the best of men.”

Mr. Tozer paused with a “humph!” of uncertainty; rather dazzled with the fine language, but doubtful of the sentiment. At length light seemed to dawn upon the excellent butterman. “Bless my soul! that’s a new view,” said Tozer; “that’s taking the superior line over them! My impression is as that would tell beautiful. Eh! it’s famous, that is! I’ve heard a many gentlemen attacking the Church, like, from down below, and giving it her about her money and her greatness, and all that; but our clearer atmosphere—there’s the point! I always knew as you was a clever young man, Mr. Vincent, and expected a deal from you; but that’s a new view, that is!”

“Oh, Pa, dear! don’t be always talking about chapel business,” said Miss Phœbe, coming in. “I am sure Mr. Vincent is sick to death of Salem. I am sure his heart is in some other place now; and if you bore him always about the chapel, he’ll never, never take to Carlingford. Oh, Mr. Vincent, I am sure you know it is quite true!”

“Indeed,” said the young minister, with a sudden recollection, “I can vouch for my heart being in Carlingford, and nowhere else;” and as he spoke his colour rose. Phœbe clapped her hands with a little semblance of confusion.

“Oh, la!” cried that young lady, “that is quite as good as a confession that you have lost it, Mr. Vincent. Oh, I am so interested! I wonder who it can be!”

“Hush, child; I daresay we shall know before long,” said Mrs. Tozer, who had also rejoined the domestic party; “and don’t you colour up or look ashamed, Mr. Vincent. Take my word, it’s the very best a young minister can do. To be sure, where there’s a quantity of young ladies in a congregation, it sometimes makes a little dispeace; but there ain’t to say many to choose from in Salem.”

“La, mamma, how can you think it’s a lady in Salem?” cried Phœbe, in a flutter of consciousness.

“Oh, you curious thing!” cried Mrs. Tozer: “she’ll never rest, Mr. Vincent, till she’s found it all out. She always was, from a child, a dreadful one for finding out a secret. But don’t you trouble yourself; it’s the very best thing a young minister can do.”

Poor Vincent made a hasty effort to exculpate himself from the soft impeachment, but with no effect. Smiles, innuendoes, a succession of questions asked by Phœbe, who retired, whenever she had made her remark, with conscious looks and pink blushes, perpetually renewed this delightful subject. The unlucky young man retired upon Tozer. In desperation he laid himself open to the less troublesome infliction of the butterman’s advice. In the mean time the table was spread, and supper appeared in most substantial and savoury shape; the only drawback being, that whenever the door was opened, the odours of bacon and cheese from the shop came in like a musty shadow of the boiled ham and hot sausages within.

“I am very partial to your style, Mr. Vincent,” said the deacon; “there’s just one thing I’d like to observe, sir, if you’ll excuse me. I’d give ’em a coorse; there’s nothing takes like a coorse in our connection. Whether it’s on a chapter or a book of Scripture, or on a perticklar doctrine, I’d make a pint of giving ’em a coorse if it was me. There was Mr. Bailey, of Parson’s Green, as was so popular before he married—he had a historical coorse in the evenings, and a coorse upon the eighth of Romans in the morning; and it was astonishing to see how they took. I walked over many and many’s the summer evening myself, he kep’ up the interest so. There ain’t a cleverer man in our body, nor wasn’t a better liked as he was then.”

“And now I understand he’s gone away—what was the reason?” asked Mr. Vincent.

Tozer shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. “All along of the women: they didn’t like his wife; and my own opinion is, he fell off dreadful. Last time I heard him, I made up my mind I’d never go back again—me that was such an admirer of his; and the managers found the chapel was falling off, and a deputation waited on him; and, to be sure, he saw it his duty to go.”

“And, oh, she was so sweetly pretty!” cried Miss Phœbe: “but pray, pray, Mr. Vincent, don’t look so pale. If you marry a pretty lady, we’ll all be so kind to her! We shan’t grudge her our minister; we shall——”

Here Miss Phœbe paused, overcome by her emotions.

“I do declare there never was such a child,” said Mrs. Tozer: “it’s none of your business, Phœbe. She’s a great deal too feelin’, Mr. Vincent. But I don’t approve, for my part, of a minister marrying a lady as is too grand for her place, whatever Phœbe may say. It’s her that should teach suchlike as us humility and simple ways; and a fine lady isn’t no way suitable. Not to discourage you, Mr. Vincent, I haven’t a doubt, for my part, that you’ll make a nice choice.”

“I have not the least intention of trying the experiment,” said poor Vincent, with a faint smile; then, turning to his deacon, he plunged into the first subject that occurred to him. “Do you know a Mrs. Hilyard in Back Grove Street?” asked the young minister. “I went to see her the other day. Who is she, or where does she belong to, can you tell me?—and which of your great ladies in Carlingford is it,” he added, with a little catching of his breath after a momentary pause, “who visits that poor lady? I saw a carriage at her door.”

“Meaning the poor woman at the back of the chapel?” said Tozer—“I don’t know nothing of her, except that I visited there, sir, as you might do, in the way of dooty. Ah! I fear she’s in the gall of bitterness, Mr. Vincent; she didn’t take my ’umble advice, sir, not as a Christian ought. But she comes to the chapel regular enough; and you may be the means of putting better thoughts into her mind; and as for our great ladies in Carlingford,” continued Mr. Tozer, with the air of an authority, “never a one of them, I give you my word, would go out of her way a-visiting to one of the chapel folks. They’re a deal too bigoted for that, especially them at St. Roque’s.”

“Oh, Pa, how can you say so,” cried Phœbe, “when it’s very well known the ladies go everywhere, where the people are very, very poor? but then Mr. Vincent said a poor lady. Was it a nice carriage? The Miss Wodehouses always walk, and so does Mrs. Glen, and all the Strangeways. Oh, I know, it was the young Dowager—that pretty, pretty lady, you know, mamma, that gives the grand parties, and lives in Grange Lane. I saw her carriage going up the lane by the chapel once. Oh, Mr. Vincent, wasn’t she very, very pretty, with blue eyes and brown hair?”

“I could not tell you what kind of eyes and hair they were,” said Mr. Vincent, trying hard to speak indifferently, and quite succeeding so far as Phœbe Tozer was concerned; for who could venture to associate the minister of Salem, even as a victim, with the bright eyes of Lady Western? “I thought it strange to see her there, whoever she was.”

“Oh, how insensible you are!” murmured Phœbe, across the table. Perhaps, considering all things, it was not strange that Phœbe should imagine her own pink bloom to have dimmed the young pastor’s appreciation of other beauty.

“But it was Mrs. Hilyard I inquired about, and not this Lady—Lady what, Miss Phœbe?” asked the reverend hypocrite; “I don’t profess to be learned in titles, but hers is surely a strange one. I thought dowager was another word for an old woman.”

“She’s a beautiful young creature,” broke in the butterman. “I mayn’t approve of such goings-on, but I can’t shut my eyes. She deals with me regular, and I can tell you the shop looks like a different place when them eyes of hers are in it. She’s out of our line, and she’s out of your line, Mr. Vincent,” added Tozer, apologetically, coming down from his sudden enthusiasm, “or I mightn’t say as much as I do say, for she’s gay, and always a-giving parties, and spending her life in company, as I don’t approve of; but to look in her face, you couldn’t say a word against her—nor I couldn’t. She might lead a man out of his wits, and I wouldn’t not to say blame him. If the angels are nicer to look at, it’s a wonder to me!” Having reached to this pitch of admiration, the alarmed butterman came to a sudden pause, looked round him somewhat dismayed, wiped his forehead, rubbed his hands, and evidently felt that he had committed himself, and was at the mercy of his audience. Little did the guilty Tozer imagine that never before—not when giving counsel upon chapel business in the height of wisdom, or complimenting the sermon as only a chapel-manager, feeling in his heart that the seats were letting, could—had he spoken so much to the purpose in young Vincent’s hearing, or won so much sympathy from the minister. As for the female part of the company, they were at first too much amazed for speech. “Upon my word, Papa!” burst from the lips of the half-laughing, half-angry Phœbe. Mrs. Tozer, who had been cutting bread with a large knife, hewed at her great loaf in silence, and not till that occupation was over divulged her sentiments.

“Some bread, Mr. Vincent?” said at last that injured woman: “that’s how it is with all you men. Niver a one, however you may have been brought up, nor whatever pious ways you may have been used to, can stand out against a pretty face. Thank goodness, we know better. Beauty’s but skin-deep, Mr. Vincent; and, for my part, I can’t see the difference between one pair o’ eyes and another. I daresay I see as well out of mine as Lady Western does out o’ hers, though Tozer goes on about ’em. It’s a mercy for the world, women ain’t carried away so; and to hear a man as is the father of a family, and ought to set an example, a-talking like this in his own house! What is the minister to think, Tozer? and Phœbe, a girl as is as likely to take up notions about her looks as most? It’s what I didn’t expect from you.”

“La, mamma! as if there was any likeness between Lady Western and me!” cried Phœbe, lifting a not-unexpectant face across the table. But Mr. Vincent was not equal to the occasion. In that locale, and under these circumstances, a tolerable breadth of compliment would not have shocked anybody’s feelings; but the pastor neglected his opportunities. He sat silent, and made no reply to Phœbe’s look. He even at this moment, if truth must be told, devoted himself to the well-filled plate which Mrs. Tozer’s hospitality had set before him. He would fain have made a diversion in poor Tozer’s favour had anything occurred to him in the thrill of sudden excitement which Tozer’s declaration had surprised him into. As it was, tingling with anxiety to hear more of that unknown enchantress, whose presence made sunshine even in the butterman’s shop, no indifferent words would find their way to Vincent’s lips. So he bestowed his attentions instead upon the comfortable supper to which everybody around him, quite unexcited by this little interlude, was doing full justice, and, not venturing to ask, listened with a palpitating heart.

“You see, Mr. Vincent,” resumed Mrs. Tozer, “that title of ‘the young Dowager’ has been given to Lady Western by them as is her chief friends in Carlingford. Such little things comes to our knowledge as they mightn’t come to other folks in our situation, by us serving the best families. There’s but two families in Grange Lane as don’t deal with Tozer, and one of them’s a new-comer as knows no better, and the other a stingy old bachelor, as we wouldn’t go across the road to get his custom. A well-kept house must have its butter, and its cheese, and its ham regular; but when there’s but a man and a maid, and them nigh as bilious as the master, and picking bits of cheese as one never heard the name of, and as has to be sent to town for, or to the Italian shop, it stands to reason neither me nor Tozer cares for a customer like that.”

“Oh, Ma, what does Mr. Vincent care about the customers?” cried Phœbe, in despair.

“He might, then, before all’s done,” said the deaconess. “We couldn’t be as good friends to the chapel, nor as serviceable, nor as well thought on in our connection, if it wasn’t for the customers. So you see, sir, Lady Western, she’s a young lady not a deal older than my Phœbe, but by reason of having married an old man, she has a step-son twice as old as herself, and he’s married; and so this gay pretty creature here, she’s the Dowager Lady Western. I’ve seen her with young Lady Western, her step-daughter-in-law, and young Lady Western was a deal older, and more serious-looking, and knew twenty times more of life than the Dowager—and you may be sure she don’t lose the opportunity to laugh at it neither—and so that’s how the name arose.”

“Thank you for the explanation; and I suppose, of course, she lives in Grange Lane,” said the pastor, still bending with devotion over his plate.

“Dear, dear, you don’t eat nothink, Mr. Vincent,” cried his benevolent hostess; “that comes of study, as I’m always a-telling Tozer. A deal better, says I, to root the minister out, and get him to move about for the good of his health, than to put him up to sermons and coorses, when we’re all as pleased as Punch to start with. She lives in Grange Lane, to be sure, as they most all do as is anything in Carlingford. Fashion’s all—but I like a bit of stir and life myself, and couldn’t a-bear them close walls. But it would be news in Salem that we was spending our precious time a-talking over a lady like Lady Western; and as for the woman at the back of the chapel, don’t you be led away to go to everybody as Mrs. Brown sends you to, Mr. Vincent. She’s a good soul, but she’s always a-picking up somebody. Tozer’s been called up at twelve o’clock, when we were all a-bed, to see somebody as was dying; and there was no dying about it, but only Mrs. Brown’s way. My son, being at his eddication for a minister, makes me feel mother-like to a young pastor, Mr. Vincent. I’d be grateful to anybody as would give my boy warning when it comes to be his time.”

“I almost wonder,” said Vincent, with a little natural impatience, “that you did not struggle on with Mr. Tufton for a little longer, till your son’s education was finished.”

Mrs. Tozer held up her head with gratified pride. “He’ll be two years before he’s ready, and there’s never no telling what may happen in that time,” said the pleased mother, forgetting how little favourable to her guest was any anticipated contingency. The words were very innocently spoken, but they had their effect upon Vincent. He made haste to extricate himself from the urgent hospitality which surrounded him. He was deafer than ever to Miss Phœbe’s remarks, and listened with a little impatience to Tozer’s wisdom. As soon as he could manage it, he left them, with abundant material for his thoughts. “There’s never no telling what may happen in that time,” rang in his ears as he crossed George Street to his lodging, and the young minister could scarcely check the disgust and impatience which were rising in his mind. In all the pride of his young intellect, to be advised by Tozer—to have warning stories told him of that unfortunate brother in Parson’s Green, whose pretty wife made herself obnoxious to the deacons’ wives—to have the support afforded by the butterman to the chapel thrown in his face with such an undisguised claim upon his gratitude—oh heaven, was this what Homerton was to come to? Perhaps he had been brought here, in all the young flush of his hopes, only to have the life crushed out of him by those remorseless chapel-managers, and room made over his tarnished fame and mortified expectations—over his body, as the young man said to himself in unconscious heroics—for young Tozer’s triumphant entrance. On the whole, it was not to be supposed that to see himself at the mercy of such a limited and jealous coterie—people proud of their liberality to the chapel, and altogether unable to comprehend the feelings of a sensitive and cultivated mind—could be an agreeable prospect to the young man. Their very approbation chafed him; and if he went beyond their level, or exceeded their narrow limit, what mercy was he to expect, what justice, what measure of comprehension? He went home with a bitterness of disgust in his mind far more intense and tragical than appeared to be at all necessary in the circumstances, and which only the fact that this was his first beginning in real life, and that his imagination had never contemplated the prominent position of the butter-shop and the Devonshire Dairy, in what he fondly called his new sphere, could have justified. Perhaps no new sphere ever came up to the expectations of the neophyte; but to come, if not with too much gospel, yet with an intellectual Christian mission, an evangelist of refined nonconformity, an apostle of thought and religious opinion, and to sink suddenly into “coorses” of sermons and statistics of seat-letting in Salem—into tea-parties of deacons’ wives, and singing-classes—into the complacent society of those good people who were conscious of doing so much for the chapel and supporting the minister—that was a downfall not to be lightly thought of. Salem itself, and the new pulpit, which had a short time ago represented to poor Vincent that tribune from which he was to influence the world, that point of vantage which was all a true man needed for the making of his career, dwindled into a miserable scene of trade before his disenchanted eyes—a preaching shop, where his success was to be measured by the seat-letting, and his soul decanted out into periodical issue under the seal of Tozer & Co. Such, alas! were the indignant thoughts with which, the old Adam rising bitter and strong within him, the young Nonconformist hastened home.

And She was Lady Western—the gayest and brightest and highest luminary in all the society of Carlingford. As well love the moon, who no longer descends to Endymion, as lift presumptuous eyes to that sweeter planet which was as much out of reach of the Dissenting minister. Poor fellow! his room did not receive a very cheerful inmate when he shut the door upon the world and sat down with his thoughts.

CHAPTER V.

IT was about this time, when Mr. Vincent was deeply cast down about his prospects, and saw little comfort before or around him, and when, consequently, an interest apart from himself, and which could detach his thoughts from Salem and its leading members, was of importance, that his mother’s letters began to grow specially interesting. Vincent could not quite explain how it was, but unquestionably those female epistles had expanded all at once; and instead of the limited household atmosphere hitherto breathing in them—an atmosphere confined by the strait cottage walls, shutting in the little picture which the absent son knew so well, and in which usually no figure appeared but those of his pretty sister Susan, and their little servant, and a feminine neighbour or two—instead of those strict household limits, the world, as we have said, had expanded round the widow’s pen; the cottage walls or windows seemed to have opened out to disclose the universe beyond: life itself, and words the symbols of life, seemed quickened and running in a fuller current; and the only apparent reason for all this revolution was that one new acquaintance had interrupted Mrs. Vincent’s seclusion,—one only visitor, who, from an unexpected call, recorded with some wonderment a month or two before, had gained possession of the house apparently, and was perpetually referred to—by Susan, in her gradually shortening letters, with a certain timidity and reluctance to pronounce his name; by the mother with growing frequency and confidence. Vincent, a little jealous of this new influence, had out of the depths of his own depression written with some impatience to ask who this Mr. Fordham was, and how he had managed to establish himself so confidentially in the cottage, when his mother’s letter astounded him with the following piece of news:—

“My dearest Boy,—Mr. Fordham is, or at least will be—or, if I must be cautious, as your poor dear papa always warned me I should—wishes very much, and I hope will succeed in being—your brother, my own Arthur. This is sudden news, but you know, and I have often told you, that a crisis always does seem to arrive suddenly; however much you may have been looking for it, or making up your mind to it, it does come like a blow at the time; and no doubt there is something in human nature to account for it, if I was a philosopher, like your dear papa and you. Yes, my dear boy, that is how it is. Of course, I have known for some time past that he must have had a motive—no mother could long remain ignorant of that; and I can’t say but what, liking Mr. Fordham so much, and seeing him every way so unexceptionable, except, perhaps, in the way of means, which we know nothing about, and which I have always thought a secondary consideration to character, as I always brought up my children to think, I was very much pleased. For you know, my dear boy, life is uncertain with the strongest; and I am becoming an old woman, and you will marry no doubt, and what is to become of Susan unless she does the same? So I confess I was pleased to see Mr. Fordham’s inclinations showing themselves. And now, dear Arthur, I’ve given them my blessing, and they are as happy as ever they can be, and nothing is wanting to Susan’s joy but your sympathy. I need not suggest to my dear boy to write a few words to his sister to make her feel that he shares our happiness; for Providence has blessed me in affectionate children, and I can trust the instincts of my Arthur’s heart; and oh! my dear son, how thankful I ought to be, and how deeply I ought to feel God’s blessings! He has been a father to the fatherless, and the strength of the widow. To think that before old age comes upon me, and while I am still able to enjoy the sight of your prosperity, I should have the happiness of seeing you comfortably settled, and in the way to do your Master’s work, and make yourself a good position, and Susan so happily provided for, and instead of losing her, a new son to love—indeed, I am overpowered, and can scarcely hold up my head under my blessings.

“Write immediately, my dearest boy, that we may have the comfort of your concurrence and sympathy, and I am always, with much love,

“My Arthur’s loving mother,

“E. S. Vincent.

“P. S.—Mr. Fordham’s account of his circumstances seems quite satisfactory. He is not in any profession, but has enough, he says, to live on very comfortably, and is to give me more particulars afterwards; which, indeed, I am ashamed to think he could imagine necessary, as it looks like want of trust, and as if Susan’s happiness was not the first thing with us—but indeed I must learn to be prudent and self-interested for your sakes.”

It was with no such joyful feelings as his mother’s that Vincent read this letter. Perhaps it was the jealousy with which he had heard of this unknown Mr. Fordham suddenly jumping into the friendship of the cottage, which made him contemplate with a most glum and suspicious aspect the stranger’s promotion into the love of Susan, and the motherly regard of Mrs. Vincent. Hang the fellow! who was he? the young minister murmured over his spoiled breakfast: and there appeared to him in a halo of sweet memories, as he had never seen them in reality, the simple graces of his pretty sister, who was as much above the region of the Phœbe Tozers as that ineffable beauty herself who had seized with a glance the vacant throne of poor Arthur Vincent’s heart. There was nothing ineffable about Susan—but her brother had seen no man even in Homerton whom he would willingly see master of her affections; and he was equally startled, dissatisfied, and alarmed by this information. Perhaps his mother’s unworldliness was excessive. He imagined that he would have exacted more positive information about the fortunes of a stranger who had suddenly appeared without any special business there, who had no profession, and who might disappear lightly as he came, breaking poor Susan’s heart. Mr. Vincent forgot entirely the natural process by which, doubtless, his mother’s affections had been wooed and won as well as Susan’s. To him it was a stranger who had crept into the house, and gained ascendancy there. Half in concern for Susan, half in jealousy for Susan’s brother eclipsed, but believing himself to be entirely actuated by the former sentiment, the young minister wrote his mother a hurried, anxious, not too good-tempered note, begging her to think how important a matter this was, and not to come to too rapid a conclusion; and after he had thus relieved his feelings, went out to his day’s work in a more than usually uncomfortable frame of mind. Mrs. Vincent congratulated herself upon her son’s happy settlement, as well as upon her daughter’s engagement. What if Mr. Fordham should turn out as unsatisfactory as Salem Chapel? His day’s work was a round of visits, which were not very particularly to Mr. Vincent’s mind. It was the day for his weekly call upon Mr. Tufton and various other members of the congregation not more attractive; and at Siloam Cottage he was reminded of Mrs. Hilyard, whom he had not seen again. Here at least was something to be found different from the ordinary level. He went up to Back Grove Street, not without a vague expectation in his mind, wondering if that singular stranger would look as unlike the rest of his flock to-day as she had done on the former occasion. But when Vincent emerged into the narrow street, what was that unexpected object which threw the young man into such sudden agitation? His step quickened unconsciously into the rapid silent stride of excitement. He was at the shabby door before any of the onlookers had so much as perceived him in the street. For once more the narrow pavement owned a little tattered crowd gazing at the pawing horses, the big footman, the heavenly chariot; and doubtless the celestial visitor must be within.

Mr. Vincent did not pause to think whether he ought to disturb the interview which, no doubt, was going on up-stairs. He left himself no time to consider punctilios, or even to think what was right in the matter. He went up with that swell of excitement somehow winging his feet and making his footsteps light. How sweet that low murmur of conversation within as he reached the door? Another moment, and Mrs. Hilyard herself opened it, looking out with some surprise, her dark thin head, in its black lace kerchief, standing out against the bit of shabby drab-coloured wall visible through the opening of the door. A look of surprise for one moment, then a gleam of something like mirth lighted in the dark eyes, and the thin lines about her mouth moved, though no smile came. “It is you, Mr. Vincent?—come in,” she said. “I should not have admitted any other visitor, but you shall come in, as you are my ghostly adviser. Sit down. My dear, this gentleman is my minister and spiritual guide.”

And She, sitting there in all her splendour, casting extraordinary lights of beauty round her upon the mean apartment, perfuming the air and making it musical with that rustle of woman’s robes which had never been out of poor Vincent’s ears since he saw her first;—She lifted her lovely face, smiled, and bowed her beautiful head to the young man, who could have liked to go down on his knees, not to ask anything, but simply to worship. As he dared not do that, he sat down awkwardly upon the chair Mrs. Hilyard pointed to, and said, with embarrassment, that he feared he had chosen a wrong time for his visit, and would return again—but nevertheless did not move from where he was.

“No, indeed; I am very glad to see you. My visitors are not so many, nowadays, that I can afford to turn one from the door because another chooses to come the same day. My dear, you understand Mr. Vincent has had the goodness to take charge of my spiritual affairs,” said the mistress of the room, sitting down, in her dark poor dress, beside her beautiful visitor, and laying her thin hands, still marked with traces of the coarse blue colour which rubbed off her work, and of the scars of the needle, upon the table where that work lay. “Thank heaven that’s a luxury the poorest of us needs not deny herself. I liked your sermon last Sunday, Mr. Vincent. That about the fashion of treating serious things with levity, was meant for me. Oh, I didn’t dislike it, thank you! One is pleased to think one’s self of so much consequence. There are more ways of keeping up one’s amour propre than your way, my lady. Now, don’t you mean to go? You see I cannot possibly unburden my mind to Mr. Vincent while you are here.”

“Did you ever hear anything so rude?” said the beauty, turning graciously to the young minister. “You call me a great lady, and all sorts of things, Rachel; but I never could be as rude as you are, and as you always were as long as I remember.”

“My dear, the height of good-breeding is to be perfectly ill-bred when one pleases,” said Mrs. Hilyard, taking her work upon her knee and putting on her thimble: “but though you are wonderfully pretty, you never had the makings of a thorough fine lady in you. You can’t help trying to please everybody—which, indeed, if there were no women in the world,” added that sharp observer, with a sudden glance at Vincent, who saw the thin lines again move about her mouth, “you might easily do without giving yourself much trouble. Mr. Vincent, if this lady won’t leave us, might I trouble you to talk? For two strains of thought, carried on at the same moment, now that I’m out of society, are too exhausting for me.”

With which speech she gravely pinned her work to her knee, threaded her needle with a long thread of blue cotton, and began her work with the utmost composure, leaving her two visitors in the awkward tête-à-tête position which the presence of a third person, entirely absorbed in her own employment, with eyes and face abstracted, naturally produces. Never in his life had Vincent been so anxious to appear to advantage—never had he been so totally deprived of the use of his faculties. His eager looks, his changing colour, perhaps interceded for him with the beautiful stranger, who was not ignorant of those signs of subjugation which she saw so often.

“I think it was you that were so good as to clear the way for me the last time I was here,” she said, with the sweetest grace, raising those lovely eyes, which put even Tozer beside himself, to the unfortunate pastor’s face. “I remember fancying you must be a stranger here, as I had not seen you anywhere in society. Those wonderful little wretches never seem to come to any harm. They always appear to me to be scrambling among the horses’ feet. Fancy, Rachel, one of those boys who flourish in the back streets, with such rags—oh, such rags!—you could not possibly make them, if you were to try, with scissors—such perfection must come of itself;—had just pushed in before me, and I don’t know what I should have done, if Mr. —— (I beg your pardon)—if you had not cleared the way.”

“Mr. Vincent,” said Mrs. Hilyard breaking in upon Vincent’s deprecation. “I am glad to hear you had somebody to help you in such a delicate distress. We poor women can’t afford to be so squeamish. What! are you going away? My dear, be sure you say down-stairs that you brought that poor creature some tea and sugar, and how grateful she was. That explains everything, you know, and does my lady credit at the same time. Good-bye. Well, I’ll kiss you if you insist upon it; but what can Mr. Vincent think to see such an operation performed between us? There! my love, you can make the men do what you like, but you know of old you never could conquer me.”

“Then you will refuse over and over again—and you don’t mind what I say—and you know he’s in Lonsdale, and why he’s there, and all about him——”

“Hush,” said the dark woman, looking all the darker as she stood in that bright creature’s shadow. “I know, and always will know, wherever he goes, and that he is after evil wherever he goes; and I refuse, and always will refuse—and my darling pretty Alice,” she cried, suddenly going up with rapid vehemence to the beautiful young woman beside her, and kissing once more the delicate rose-cheek to which her own made so great a contrast, “I don’t mind in the least what you say.”

“Ah, Rachel, I don’t understand you,” said Lady Western, looking at her wistfully.

“You never did, my dear; but don’t forget to mention about the tea and sugar as you go down-stairs,” said Mrs. Hilyard, subsiding immediately, not without the usual gleam in her eyes and movement of her mouth, “else it might be supposed you came to have your fortune told, or something like that; and I wish your ladyship bon voyage, and no encounter with ragged boys in your way. Mr. Vincent,” she continued, with great gravity, standing in the middle of the room, when Vincent, trembling with excitement, afraid, with the embarrassing timidity of inferior position, to offer his services, yet chafing in his heart to be obliged to stay, reluctantly closed the door, which he had opened for Lady Western’s exit, “tell me why a young man of your spirit loses such an opportunity of conducting the greatest beauty in Carlingford to her carriage? Suppose she should come across another ragged boy, and faint on the stairs?”

“I should have been only too happy; but as I am not so fortunate as to know Lady Western,” said the young minister, hesitating, “I feared to presume——”

With an entirely changed aspect his strange companion interrupted him. “Lady Western could not think that any man whom she met in my house presumed in offering her a common civility,” said Mrs. Hilyard, with the air of a duchess, and an imperious gleam out of her dark eyes. Then she recollected herself, gave her startled visitor a comical look, and dropped into her chair, before which that coarsest of poor needlewoman’s work was lying. “My house! it does look like a place to inspire respect, to be sure,” she continued, with a hearty perception of the ludicrous, which Vincent was much too preoccupied to notice. “What fools we all are! but, my dear Mr. Vincent, you are too modest. My Lady Western could not frown upon anybody who honoured her with such a rapt observation. Don’t fall in love with her, I beg of you. If she were merely a flirt, I shouldn’t mind, but out of her very goodness she’s dangerous. She can’t bear to give pain to anybody, which of course implies that she gives double and treble pain when the time comes. There! I’ve warned you; for of course you’ll meet again.”

“Small chance of that,” said Vincent, who had been compelling himself to remain quiet, and restraining his impulse, now that the vision had departed, to rush away out of the impoverished place. “Small chance of that,” he repeated, drawing a long breath, as he listened with intent ears to the roll of the carriage which carried Her away; “society in Carlingford has no room for a poor Dissenting minister.”

“All the better for him,” said Mrs. Hilyard, regarding him with curious looks, and discerning with female acuteness the haze of excitement and incipient passion which surrounded him. “Society’s all very well for people who have been brought up in it; but for a young recluse like you, that don’t know the world, it’s murder. Don’t look affronted. The reason is, you expect too much—twenty times more than anybody ever finds. But you don’t attend to my philosophy. Thinking of your sermon, Mr. Vincent? And how is our friend the butterman? I trust life begins to look more cheerful to you under his advice.”

“Life?” said the preoccupied minister, who was gazing at the spot where that lovely apparition had been; “I find it change its aspects perpetually. You spoke of Lonsdale just now, did you not? Is it possible that you know that little place? My mother and sister live there.”

“I am much interested to know that you have a mother and sister,” said the poor needlewoman before him, looking up with calm, fine-lady impertinence in his face. “But you did not hear me speak of Lonsdale; it was her ladyship who mentioned it. As for me, I interest myself in what is going on close by, Mr. Vincent. I am quite absorbed in the chapel; I want to know how you get on, and all about it. I took that you said on Sunday about levity deeply to heart. I entertain a fond hope that you will see me improve under your ministrations, even though I may never come up to the butterman’s standard. Some people have too high an ideal. If you are as much of an optimist as your respected deacon, I fear it will be ages before I can manage to make you approve of me.”

Vincent’s wandering thoughts were recalled a little by this attack. “I hope,” he said, rousing himself, “that you don’t think me so inexperienced as not to know that you are laughing at me? But indeed I should be glad to believe that the services at the chapel might sometimes perhaps be some comfort to you,” added the young pastor, assuming the dignity of his office. He met his penitent’s eyes at the moment, and faltered, moon-struck as he was, wondering if she saw through and through him, and knew that he was neither thinking of consolation nor of clerical duties, but only of those lingering echoes which, to any ears but his own, were out of hearing. There was little reason to doubt the acute perceptions of that half-amused, half-malicious glance.

“Comfort!” she cried; “what a very strange suggestion to make! Why, all the old churches in all the old ages have offered comfort. I thought you new people had something better to give us; enlightenment,” she said, with a gleam of secret mockery, throwing the word like a stone—“religious freedom, private judgment. Depend upon it, that is the rôle expected from you by the butterman. Comfort! one has that in Rome.”

“You never can have that but in conjunction with truth, and truth is not to be found in Rome,” said Vincent, pricking up his ears at so familiar a challenge.

“We’ll not argue, though you do commit yourself by an assertion,” said Mrs. Hilyard; “but oh, you innocent young man, where is the comfort to come from? Comfort will not let your seats and fill your chapel, even granting that you knew how to communicate it. I prefer to be instructed, for my part. You are just at the age, and in the circumstances, to do that.”

“I fear you still speak in jest,” said the minister, with some doubt, yet a little gratification; “but I shall be only too happy to have been the means of throwing any light to you upon the doctrines of our faith.”

For a moment the dark eyes gleamed with something like laughter. But there was nothing ill-natured in the amusement with which his strange new friend contemplated the young pastor in the depressions and confidences of his youth. She answered with a mock gravity which, at that moment, he was by no means clear-sighted enough to see through.

“Yes,” she said, demurely, “be sure you take advantage of your opportunities, and instruct us as long as you have any faith in instruction. Leave consolation to another time: but you don’t attend to me, Mr. Vincent; come another day: come on Monday, when I shall be able to criticise your sermons, and we shall have no Lady Western to put us out. These beauties are confusing, don’t you think? Only, I entreat you, whatever you do, don’t fall in love with her; and now, since I know you wish it, you may go away.”

Vincent stammered a faint protest as he accepted his dismissal, but rose promptly, glad to be released. Another thought, however, seemed to strike Mrs. Hilyard as she shook hands with him.

“Do your mother and sister in Lonsdale keep a school?” she said. “Nay, pray don’t look affronted. Clergymen’s widows and daughters very often do in the Church. I meant no impertinence in this case. They don’t? well, that is all I wanted to know. I daresay they are not likely to be in the way of dangerous strangers. Good-bye; and you must come again on Monday, when I shall be alone.”

“But—dangerous strangers—may I ask you to explain?” said Vincent, with a little alarm, instinctively recurring to his threatened brother-in-law, and the news which had disturbed his composure that morning before he came out.

“I can’t explain; and you would not be any the wiser,” said Mrs. Hilyard, peremptorily. “Now, good morning. I am glad they don’t keep a school; because, you know,” she added, looking full into his eyes, as if defying him to make any meaning out of her words, “it is very tiresome, tedious work, and wears poor ladies out. There!—good-bye; next day you come I shall be very glad to see you, and we’ll have no fine ladies to put us out.”

Vincent had no resource but to let himself out of the shabby little room which this strange woman inhabited as if it had been a palace. The momentary alarm roused by her last words, and the state of half offence, half interest, into which, notwithstanding his pre-occupation, she had managed to rouse him, died away, however, as he re-entered the poor little street, which was now a road in Fairyland instead of a lane in Carlingford, to his rapt eyes. Golden traces of those celestial wheels surely lingered still upon the way, they still went rolling and echoing over the poor young minister’s heart, which he voluntarily threw down before that heavenly car of Juggernaut. Every other impression faded out of his mind, and the infatuated young man made no effort of resistance, but hugged the enchanted chain. He had seen Her—spoken with Her—henceforward was of her acquaintance. He cast reason to the winds, and probability, and every convention of life. Did anybody suppose that all the world leagued against him could prevent him from seeing her again? He went home with an unspeakable elation, longing, and excitement, and at the same time with a vain floating idea in his mind that, thus inspired, no height of eloquence was impossible to him, and that triumph of every kind was inevitable. He went home, and got his writing-desk, and plunged into his lecture, nothing doubting that he could transfer to his work that glorious tumult of his thoughts; and, with his paper before him, wrote three words, and sat three hours staring into the roseate air, and dreaming dreams as wild as any Arabian tale. Such was the first effort of that chance encounter, in which the personages were not Lady Western and the poor Dissenting minister, but Beauty and Love, perennial hero and heroine of the romance that never ends.

CHAPTER VI.

IT was only two days after this eventful meeting that Vincent, idling and meditative as was natural in such a condition of mind, strayed into Masters’s shop to buy some books. It would have been difficult for him to have explained why he went there, except, perhaps, because it was the last place in the world which his masters at the chapel would have advised him to enter. For there was another bookseller in the town, an evangelical man, patronised by Mr. Bury, the whilom rector, where all the Tract Society’s publications were to be had, not to speak of a general range of literature quite wide enough for the minister of Salem. Masters’s was a branch of the London Master's, and, as might be supposed, was equally amazed and indignant at the intrusion of a Dissenter among its consecrated book-shelves. He was allowed to turn over all the varieties of the ‘Christian Year’ on a side-table before any of the attendants condescended to notice his presence; and it proved so difficult to find the books he wanted, and so much more difficult to find anybody who would take the trouble of looking for them, that the young Nonconformist, who was sufficiently ready to take offence, began to get hot and impatient, and had all but strode out of the shop, with a new mortification to record to the disadvantage of Carlingford. But just as he began to get very angry, the door swung softly open, and a voice became audible, lingering, talking to somebody before entering. Vincent stopped speaking, and stared in the shopman’s astonished face when these tones came to his ear. He fell back instantly upon the side-table and the ‘Christian Year,’ forgetting his own business, and what he had been saying—forgetting everything except that She was there, and that in another moment they would stand again within the same walls. He bent over the much-multiplied volume with a beating heart, poising in one hand a tiny miniature copy just made to slip within the pocket of an Anglican waistcoat, and in the other the big red-leaved and morocco-bound edition, as if weighing their respective merits—put beside himself, in fact, if the truth must be told, oblivious of his errand, his position—of everything but the fact that She was at the door. She came in with a sweet flutter and rustle of sound, a perfumed air entering with her, as the unsuspected enthusiast thought, and began to lavish smiles, for which he would have given half his life, upon the people of the place, who flew to serve her. She had her tablets in her hand, with a list of what she wanted, and held up a dainty forefinger as she stood reading the items. As one thing after another was mentioned, Masters and his men darted off in search of it. There were fortunately enough to give each of them a separate errand, and the principal ranged his shining wares upon the counter before her, and bathed in her smiles, while all his satellites kept close at hand, listening with all their ears for another commission. Blessed Masters! happy shopmen! that one who looked so blank when Vincent stopped short at the sound of her voice and stared at him, had forgotten all about Vincent. She was there; and if a little impromptu litany would have pleased her ladyship, it is probable that it could have been got up on the spot after the best models, and that even the Nonconformist would have waived his objections to liturgical worship and led the responses. But Masters’s establishment offered practical homage—only the poor Dissenting minister, divided between eagerness and fear, stood silent, flushed with excitement, turning wistful looks upon her, waiting till perhaps she might turn round and see him, and letting fall out of his trembling fingers those unregarded editions of the Anglican lyre.

“And two copies of the ‘Christian Year,’” said Lady Western, suddenly. “Oh, thank you so much! but I know they are all on the side-table, and I shall go and look at them. Not the very smallest copy, Mr. Masters, and not that solemn one with the red edges; something pretty, with a little ornament and gilding: they are for two little protegées of mine. Oh, here is exactly what I want! another one like this, please. How very obliging all your people are,” said her ladyship, benignly, as the nearest man dashed off headlong to bring what she wanted—“but I think it is universal in Carlingford; and indeed the manners of our country people in general have improved very much of late. Don’t you think so? oh, there can’t be a question about it!”

“I beg your ladyship’s pardon, I am sure; but perhaps, my lady, it is not safe to judge the general question from your ladyship’s point of view,” said the polite bookseller, with a bow.

“Oh, pray don’t say so; I should be wretched if I thought you took more trouble for me than for other people,” said the young Dowager, with a sweetness which filled Vincent’s heart with jealous pangs. She was close by his side—so close that those sacred robes rustled in his very ear, and her shawl brushed his sleeve. The poor young man took off his hat in a kind of ecstasy. If she did not notice him, what did it matter?—silent adoration, speechless homage, could not affront a queen.

And it was happily very far from affronting Lady Western. She turned round with a little curiosity, and looked up in his face. “Oh, Mr.—Mr. Vincent,” cried the beautiful creature, brightening in recognition. “How do you do? I suppose you are a resident in Carlingford now, are not you? Pardon me, that I did not see you when I came in. How very, very good it is of you to go and see my—my friend! Did you ever see anything so dreadful as the place where she lives? and isn’t she an extraordinary creature? Thank you, Mr. Masters; that’s exactly what I want. I do believe she might have been Lord Chancellor, or something, if she had not been a woman,” said the enchantress, once more lifting her lovely eyes with an expression of awe to Vincent’s face.

“She seems a very remarkable person,” said Vincent. “To see her where she is, makes one feel how insignificant are the circumstances of life.”

“Really! now, how do you make out that?” said Lady Western; “for, to tell the truth, I think, when I see her, oh, how important they are! and that I’d a great deal rather die than live so. But you clever people take such strange views of things. Now tell me how you make that out?”

“Nay,” said Vincent, lowering his voice with a delicious sense of having a subject to be confidential upon, “you know what conditions of existence all her surroundings imply; yet the most ignorant could not doubt for a moment her perfect superiority to them—a superiority so perfect,” he added, with a sudden insight which puzzled even himself, “that it is not necessary to assert it.”

“Oh, to be sure,” said Lady Western, colouring a little, and with a momentary hauteur, “of course a Russell—— I mean a gentlewoman—must always look the same to a certain extent; but, alas! I am only a very commonplace little woman,” continued the beauty, brightening into those smiles which perhaps might be distributed too liberally, but which intoxicated for the moment every man on whom they fell. “I think those circumstances which you speak of so disrespectfully are everything! I have not a great soul to triumph over them. I should break down, or they would overcome me—oh, you need not shake your head! I know I am right so far as I myself am concerned.”

“Indeed I cannot think so,” said the intoxicated young man; “you would make any circumstances—”

“What?”

But the bewildered youth made no direct reply. He only gazed at her, grew very red, and said, suddenly, “I beg your pardon,” stepping back in confusion, like the guilty man he was. The lady blushed, too, as her inquiring eyes met that unexpected response. Used as she was to adoration, she felt the silent force of the compliment withheld—it was a thousand times sweeter in its delicate suggestiveness and reserve of incense than any effusion of words. They were both a little confused for the moment, poor Vincent’s momentary betrayal of himself having somehow suddenly dissipated the array of circumstances which surrounded and separated two persons so far apart from each other in every conventional aspect. The first to regain her place and composure was of course Lady Western, who made him a pretty playful curtsy, and broke into a low, sweet ring of laughter.

“Now I shall never know whether you meant to be complimentary or contemptuous,” cried the young Dowager, “which is hard upon a creature with such a love of approbation as our friend says I have. However, I forgive you, if you meant to be very cutting, for her sake. It is so very kind of you to go to see her, and I am sure she enjoys your visits. Thank you, Mr. Masters, that is all. Have you got the two copies of the ‘Christian Year’? Put them into the carriage, please. Mr. Vincent, I am going to have the last of my summer-parties next Thursday—twelve o’clock; will you come?—only a cup of coffee, you know, or tea if you prefer it, and talk au discretion. I shall be happy to see you, and I have some nice friends, and one or two good pictures; so there you have an account of all the attractions my house can boast of. Do come: it will be my last party this season, and I rather want it to be a great success,” said the syren, looking up with her sweet eyes.

Vincent could not tell what answer he made in his rapture; but the next thing he was properly conscious of was the light touch of her hand upon his arm as he led her to her carriage, some sudden courageous impulse having prompted him to secure for himself that momentary blessedness. He walked forth in a dream, conducting that heavenly vision: and there, outside, stood the celestial chariot with those pawing horses, and the children standing round with open mouth to watch the lovely lady’s progress. It was he who put her in with such pride and humbleness as perhaps only a generous but inexperienced young man, suddenly surprised into passion, could be capable of—ready to kiss the hem of her garment, or do any other preposterous act of homage—and just as apt to blaze up into violent self-assertion should any man attempt to humble him who had been thus honoured. While he stood watching the carriage out of sight, Masters himself came out to tell the young Nonconformist, whose presence that dignified tradesman had been loftily unconscious of a few minutes before, that they had found the book he wanted; and Vincent, thrilling in every pulse with the unlooked-for blessedness which had befallen him, was not sorry, when he dropped out of the clouds at the bookseller’s accost, to re-enter that place where this enchantment still hovered, by way of calming himself down ere he returned to those prose regions which were his own lawful habitation. He saw vaguely the books that were placed on the counter before him—heard vaguely the polite purling of Masters’s voice, all-solicitous to make up for the momentary incivility with which he had treated a friend of Lady Western’s—and was conscious of taking out his purse and paying something for the volume, which he carried away with him. But the book might have been Sanscrit for anything Mr. Vincent cared—and he would have paid any fabulous price for it with the meekest resignation. His attempt to appear moderately interested, and to conduct this common transaction as if he had all his wits about him, was sufficient occupation just at this moment. His head was turned. There should have been roses blossoming all along the bare pavement of George Street to account for the sweet gleams of light which warmed the entire atmosphere as he traversed that commonplace way. Not only the interview just passed, but the meeting to come, bewildered him with an intoxicating delight. Here, then, was the society he had dreamed of, opening its perfumed doors to receive him. From Mrs. Tozer’s supper-table to the bowery gates of Grange Lane was a jump which, ten days ago, would of itself have made the young minister giddy with satisfaction and pleasure. Now these calm emotions had ceased to move him; for not society, but a sweeter syren, had thrown chains of gold round the unsuspecting Nonconformist. With Her, Back Grove Street was Paradise. Where her habitation was, or what he should see there, was indifferent to Vincent. He was again to meet Herself.

CHAPTER VII.

THE days which intervened between this meeting and Lady Western’s party were spent in a way which the managers of Salem would have been far from approving of. Mr. Vincent, indeed, was rapt out of himself, out of his work, out of all the ordinary regions of life and thought. When he sat down to his sermons, his pen hung idly in his hand, and his mind, wilfully cheating itself by that semblance of study, went off into long delicious reveries, indescribable, intangible—a secret sweet intoxication which forbade labour, yet nourished thought. Though he sometimes did not write a word in an hour, so deep was the aspect of studiousness displayed by the young pastor at his writing-desk, and so entire the silence he maintained in his room, shut up in that world of dreams which nobody knew anything of, that his landlady, who was one of his hearers, communicated the fact to Tozer, and expatiated everywhere upon the extreme devotion to study displayed by the new minister. Old Mr. Tufton, who had been in the habit of putting together the disjointed palaver which he called a sermon on the Saturday morning, shook his head over the information, and doubted that his young brother was resorting more to carnal than to spiritual means of filling his chapel; but the members of Salem generally heard the rumour with pride, and felt a certain distinction accrue to themselves from the possibility that their pastor might ruin his health by over-study. It was a new sensation in Salem; and the news, as it was whispered about, certainly came to the ears of a few of those young men and thinkers, principally poor lawyers’ clerks and drapers’ assistants, whom Tozer was so anxious to reach, and drew two or three doubtful, genteel hearers to the chapel, where Mr. Vincent’s sermon, though no better than usual, and in reality dashed off at the last moment in sheer desperation, when necessity momentarily thrust the dreams away, was listened to with a certain awe and devout attention, solely due to the toil it was reported to have cost. The young minister himself came out of the pulpit remorseful and ashamed, feeling that he had neglected his duty, and thoroughly disgusted with the superficial production, just lighted up with a few fiery sentences of that eloquence which belongs to excitement and passion, which he had just delivered. But Tozer and all the deacons buzzed approbation. They were penetrated with the conviction that he had worked hard at his sermon, and given them his best, and were not to be undeceived by the quality of the work itself, which was a secondary matter. More deeply disgusted and contemptuous than ever was the young pastor at the end of that Sunday—disgusted with himself to have done his work so poorly—contemptuous of those who were pleased with it—his heart swelling with mortified pride to think that what he thought so unworthy of him was more appreciated than his best efforts. For he did not know the report that had gone abroad; he did not know that, while brooding over his own rising passion, and absorbed in dreams with which Salem had nothing to do, the little world around him was complacently giving him credit for a purpose of wearing himself out in its behalf. The sermons so hastily written, thrust into a corner by the overpowering enchantment of those reveries, were not the only sin he had to charge against himself. He could not bring himself to bear the irksome society that surrounded him, in the state of elevation and excitement he was in. Tozer was unendurable, and Phœbe to be avoided at all costs. He did not even pay his promised visit to Mrs. Hilyard, nor go to Siloam Cottage as usual. In short, he spent the days in a kind of dream, avoiding all his duties, paying no visits, doing no pastoral work, neglecting the very sermon over which his landlady saw him hanging so many silent hours, without knowing that all the vacant atmosphere between him and that blank sheet of paper, in which she saw nothing, was peopled with fairy visitants and unreal scenes to the dreamy eyes of her lodger. Such were the first effects of Circe’s cup upon the young minister. He indulged himself consciously, with apologetic self-remonstrances, as Thursday approached. After that day, life was to go on as usual. No—not as usual—with a loftier aim and a higher inspiration; but the season of dreams was to be over when he had real admittance into that Eden garden, where the woman of all women wandered among her flowers. He thought what he was to say to her on that eventful day—how he should charm her into interest in his difficulties, and beautify his office, and the barren spot in which he exercised it, with her sympathy. He imagined himself possessed of her ear, certain of a place by her side, a special guest of her own election. He was not vain, nor deeply persuaded of his own importance; yet all this seemed only natural to his excited imagination. He saw himself by her side in that garden of beatitudes, disclosing to her all that was in his heart; instinctively he recalled all that the poets have said of woman the consoler—woman the inspirer. When he had gained that priceless sympathy, what glorious amends he should make for the few days’ indolence to which he now gave way! Thus in his inexperience he went on, preparing for himself, as any one a little wiser could have seen at a glance, one of the bitterest disappointments of early life.

Thursday came, a day of days—such a day as people reckon by, months after; a soft and bright autumnal morning, breathing like spring. As Vincent issued from his own door and took his way along George Street to Grange Lane, he saw the curate of St. Roque’s walking before him in the same direction; but Mr. Wentworth himself was not more orthodoxly clerical in every detail of his costume than was the young Nonconformist, who was going, not to Lady Western’s breakfast-party, but into the Bower of Bliss, the fool’s paradise of his youth. Mr. Wentworth, it is true, was to see Lucy Wodehouse there, and was a true lover; but he walked without excitement to the green gate which concealed from him no enchanted world of delights, but only a familiar garden, with every turn of which he was perfectly acquainted, and which, even when Lucy was by his side, contained nothing ineffable or ecstatic. It was, to tell the truth, an autumnal garden, bright enough still with scarlet gleams of geranium and verbena, with a lawn of velvet smoothness, and no great diminution as yet in the shade of the acacias and lime-trees, and everything in the most perfect order in the trim shrubberies, through the skilful mazes of which some bright groups were already wandering, when Vincent passed through to the sunny open door. At the open windows within he could see other figures in a pleasant flutter of gay colour and light drapery, as he advanced breathless to take his own place in that unknown world. He heard his own name announced, and went in, with a chill of momentary doubt upon his high expectations, into the airy sunshiny room, with its gay, brilliant, rustling crowd, the ladies all bright and fresh in their pretty morning-dresses, and the din of talk and laughter confusing his unaccustomed ears. For a moment the stranger stood embarrassed, looking round him, eagerly investigating the crowd for that one face, which was not only the sole face of woman in the world so far as he was concerned, but in reality the only face he knew in the gay party, where everybody except himself knew everybody else. Then he saw her, and his doubts were over. When she perceived him, she made a few steps forward to meet him and held out her hand.

“I am so glad to see you—how kind of you to come!” said Lady Western; “and such a beautiful day—just what I wanted for my last fête. Have you seen my friend again since I saw you, Mr. Vincent—quite well, I hope? Now, do have some coffee.—How do you do, Mr. Wentworth? You have been here full five minutes, and you have never paid your respects to me. Even under the circumstances, you know, one cannot overlook such neglect.”

“I am too deeply flattered that your ladyship should have observed my entrance to be able to make any defence,” said the curate of St. Roque’s, who could speak to her as to any ordinary woman; “but as for circumstances——”

“Oh dear, yes, we all know,” cried Lady Western, with her sweet laugh. “Was it you, Mr. Vincent, who were saying that circumstances were everything in life?—oh, no, I beg your pardon, quite the reverse. I remember it struck me as odd and clever. Now, I daresay, you two could quite settle that question. I am such an ignoramus. So kind of you to come!”

Vincent was about to protest his delight in coming, and to deprecate the imputation of kindness, but ere he had spoken three words, he suddenly came to a stop, perceiving that not only Lady Western’s attention but her ear was lost, and that already another candidate for her favour had possession of the field. He stepped back into the gay assembly, disturbing one group, the members of which all turned to look at him with well-bred curiosity. He stood quite alone and silent for some time, waiting if, perhaps, he could catch the eye of Lady Western. But she was surrounded, swept away, carried off even from his neighbourhood, while he stood gazing. And here was he left, out of the sunshine of her presence in the midst of Carlingford society, knowing nobody, while every face smiled and every tongue was busy but his own: talk au discretion! such there certainly was—but Vincent had never in his life felt so preposterously alone, so dismally silent, so shut up in himself. If he had come to woo society, doubtless he could have plucked up a spirit, and made a little effort for his object. But he had come to see Her, flattering himself with vain dreams of securing her to himself—of wandering by her side through those garden-paths, of keeping near her whenever she moved—and the dream had intoxicated him more deeply than even he himself was aware of. Now he woke to his sober wits with a chill of mortification and disappointment not to be expressed. He stood silent, following her with his eyes as she glided about from one corner to the other of the crowded room. He had neither eyes nor ears for anything else. Beautiful as she had always been, she was lovelier than ever to-day, with her fair head uncovered and unadorned, her beautiful hair glancing in the gleams of sunshine, her tiny hands ungloved. Poor Vincent drew near a window, when it dawned upon his troubled perception that he was standing amidst all those chattering, laughing people, a silent statue of disappointment and dismay, and from that little refuge watched her as she made her progress. And, alas! Lady Western assured everybody that they were “so kind” to come—she distributed her smiles, her kind words, everywhere. She beamed upon the old men and the young, the handsome and the stupid, with equal sweetness. After a while, as he stood watching, Vincent began to melt in his heart. She was hostess—she had the party’s pleasure to think of, not her own. If he could but help her, bring himself to her notice again in some other way! Vincent made another step out of his window, and looked out eagerly with shy scrutiny. Nobody wanted his help. They stared at him, and whispered questions who he was. When he at length nerved himself to speak to his next neighbour, he met with a courteous response and no more. Society was not cruel, or repulsive, or severely exclusive, but simply did not know him, could not make out who he was, and was busy talking that conversation of a limited sphere full of personal allusions into which no stranger could enter. Instead of the ineffable hour he expected, an embarrassing, unbearable tedium was the lot of the poor Dissenting minister by himself among the beauty, wit, and fashion of Carlingford. He would have stolen away but for the forlorn hope that things might mend—that Lady Western might return, and that the sunshine he had dreamed of would yet fall upon him. But no such happiness came to the unfortunate young minister. After a while, a perfectly undistinguished middle-aged individual charitably engaged Mr. Vincent in conversation; and as they talked, and while the young man’s eager wistful eyes followed into every new combination of the little crowd that one fair figure which had bewitched him, it became apparent that the company was flowing forth into the garden. At last Vincent stopped short in the languid answer he was making to his respectable interlocutor with a sudden start and access of impatience. The brilliant room had suddenly clouded over. She had joined her guests outside. With bitterness, and a sharp pang at his heart, Vincent looked round and wondered to find himself in the house, in the company, from which she had gone. What business had he there? No link of connection existed between him and this little world of unknown people except herself. She had brought him here; she alone knew even so much of him as his name. He had not an inch of ground to stand on in the little alien assembly when she was not there. He broke off his conversation with his unknown sympathiser abruptly, and rushed out, meaning to leave the place. But somehow, fascinated still, in a hundred different moods a minute, when he got outside, he too lingered about the paths, where he continually met with groups and stray couples who stared at him, and wondered again, sometimes not inaudibly, who he was. He met her at last under the shadow of the lime-trees with a train of girls about her, and a following of eager male attendants. When he came forward lonely to make his farewell, with a look in which he meant to unite a certain indignation and reproach with still chivalrous devotion, the unconscious beauty met him with unabated sweetness, held out her hand as before, and smiled the most radiant of smiles.

“Are you going to leave us already?” she said, in a tone which half persuaded the unlucky youth to stay till the last moment, and swallow all his mortifications. “So sorry you must go away so soon! and I wanted to show you my pictures too. Another time, I hope, we may have better fortune. When you come to me again, you must really be at leisure, and have no other engagements. Good-bye! It was so kind of you to come, and I am so sorry you can’t stay!”

In another minute the green door had opened and closed, the fairy vision was gone, and poor Vincent stood in Grange Lane between the two blank lines of garden-wall, come back to the common daylight after a week’s vain wandering in the enchanted grounds, half stupefied, half maddened by the disappointment and downfall. He made a momentary pause at the door, gulped down the big indignant sigh that rose in his throat, and, with a quickened step and a heightened colour, retraced his steps along a road which no longer gleamed with any rosy reflections, but was harder, more real, more matter-of-fact than ever it had looked before. What a fool he had been, to be led into such a false position!—to be cheated of his peace, and seduced from his duty, and intoxicated into such absurdities of hope, all by the gleam of a bright eye, and the sound of a sweet voice! He who had never known the weakness before, to cover himself with ridicule, and compromise his dignity so entirely for the sake of the first beautiful woman who smiled upon him! Poor Vincent! He hurried to his rooms thrilling with projects, schemes, and sudden vindictive ambition. That fair creature should learn that the young Nonconformist was worthy of her notice. Those self-engrossed simperers should yet be startled out of their follies by the new fame rising up amongst them. Who was he, did they ask? One day they should know.

That the young man should despise himself for this outbreak of injured feeling, as soon as he had cooled down, was inevitable; but it took some considerable time to cool down; and in the mean time his resolution rose and swelled into that heroic region which youth always attains so easily. He thought himself disenchanted for ever. That night, in bitter earnest, he burned the midnight oil—that night his pen flew over the paper with outbreaks, sometimes indignant, sometimes pathetic, on subjects as remote as possible from Lady Western’s breakfast-party; and with a sudden revulsion he bethought himself of Salem and its oligarchy, which just now prophesied so much good of their new minister. He accepted Salem with all the heat of passion at that moment. His be the task to raise it and its pastor into a common fame!

CHAPTER VIII.

THE events above narrated were all prefatory of the great success accomplished by Mr. Vincent in Carlingford. Indeed, the date of the young minister’s fame—fame which, as everybody acquainted with that town must be aware, was widely diffused beyond Carlingford itself, and even reached the metropolis, and gladdened his Alma Mater at Homerton—might almost be fixed by a reference to Lady Western’s housekeeping book, if she kept any, and the date of her last summer-party. That event threw the young Nonconformist into just the state of mind which was wanted to quicken all the prejudices of his education, and give individual force to all the hereditary limits of thought in which he had been born. An attempt on the part of the Government to repeal the Toleration Act, or reinstate the Test, could scarcely have produced a more permanent and rapid effect than Lady Western’s neglect, and the total ignorance of Mr. Vincent displayed by polite society in Carlingford. No shame to him. It was precisely the same thing in private life which the other would have been in public. Repeal of the Toleration Act, or re-enactment of the Test, are things totally impossible; and when persecution is not to be apprehended or hoped for, where but in the wrongs of a privileged class can the true zest of dissidence be found? Mr. Vincent, who had received his dissenting principles as matters of doctrine, took up the familiar instruments now with a rush of private feeling. He was not conscious of the power of that sentiment of injury and indignation which possessed him. He believed in his heart that he was but returning, after a temporary hallucination, to the true duties of his post; but the fact was, that this wound in the tenderest point—this general slight and indifference—pricked him forward in all that force of personal complaint which gives warmth and piquancy to a public grievance. The young man said nothing of Lady Western even to his dearest friend—tried not to think of her except by way of imagining how she should one day hear of him, and know his name when it possessed a distinction which neither the perpetual curate of St. Roque’s, nor any other figure in that local world, dared hope for. But with fiery zeal he flew to the question of Church and State, and set forth the wrongs which Christianity sustained from endowment, and the heinous evils of rich livings, episcopal palaces, and spiritual lords. It was no mean or ungenerous argument which the young Nonconformist pursued in his fervour of youth and wounded self-regard. It was the natural cry of a man who had entered life at disadvantage, and chafed, without knowing it, at all the phalanx of orders and classes above him, standing close in order to prevent his entrance. With eloquent fervour he expatiated upon the kingdom that was not of this world. If these words were true, what had the Church to do with worldly possessions, rank, dignities, power? Was his Grace of Lambeth more like Paul the tentmaker than his Holiness of Rome? Mr. Vincent went into the whole matter with genuine conviction, and confidence in his own statements. He believed and had been trained in it. In his heart he was persuaded that he himself, oft disgusted and much misunderstood in his elected place at Salem Chapel, ministered the gospel more closely to his Master’s appointment than the rector of Carlingford, who was nominated by a college; or the curate of St. Roque’s, who had his forty pounds a-year from a tiny ancient endowment, and was spending his own little fortune on his church and district. These men had joined God and mammon—they were in the pay of the State. Mr. Vincent thundered forth the lofty censures of an evangelist whom the State did not recognise, and with whom mammon had little enough to do. He brought forth all the weapons out of the Homerton armoury, new, bright, and dazzling; and he did not know any more than his audience that he never would have wielded them so heartily—perhaps would scarcely have taken them off the wall—but for the sudden sting with which his own inferior place, and the existence of a privileged class doubly shut against his entrance, had quickened his personal consciousness. Such, however, was the stimulus which woke the minister of Salem Chapel into action, and produced that series of lectures on Church and State which, as everybody knows, shook society in Carlingford to its very foundation.

“Now we’ve got a young man as is a credit to us,” said Tozer; “and now he’s warming to his work, as I was a little afraid of at first; for somehow I can’t say as I could see to my satisfaction, when he first come, that his heart was in it,—I say, now as we’ve got a pastor as does us credit, I am not the man to consider a bit of expense. My opinion is as we should take the Music Hall for them lectures. There’s folks might go to the Music Hall as would never come to Salem, and we’re responsible for our advantages. A clever young man like Mr. Vincent ain’t to be named along with Mr. Tufton; we’re the teachers of the community, that’s what we are. I am for being public-spirited—I always was; and I don’t mind standing my share. My opinion is as we should take the Music Hall.”

“If we was charging sixpence a-head or so——” said prudent Pigeon, the poulterer.

“That’s what I’ll never give my consent to—never!” said Tozer. “If we was amusin’ the people, we might charge sixpence a-head; but mark my words,” continued the butterman, “there ain’t twenty men in Carlingford, nor in no other place, as would give sixpence to have their minds enlightened. No, sir, we’re conferring of a boon; and let’s do it handsomely, I say—let’s do it handsomely; and here’s my name down for five pound to clear expenses: and if every man in Salem does as well, there ain’t no reason for hesitating. I’m a plain man, but I don’t make no account of a little bit of money when a principle’s at stake.”

This statement was conclusive. When it came to the sacrifice of a little bit of money, neither Mrs. Pigeon nor Mrs. Brown could have endured life had their husbands yielded the palm to Tozer. And the Music Hall was accordingly taken; and there, every Wednesday for six weeks, the young Nonconformist mounted his cheval de bataille, and broke his impetuous spear against the Church. Perhaps Carlingford was in want of a sensation at the moment; and the town was virgin soil, and had never yet been invaded by sight or sound of heresy. Anyhow, the fact was, that this fresh new voice attracted the ear of the public. That personal impetuosity and sense of wrong which gave fire to the discourse, roused the interest of the entire community. Mr. Vincent’s lectures became the fashion in Carlingford, where nobody in the higher levels of society had ever heard before of the amazing evils of a Church Establishment. Some of the weaker or more candid minds among the audience were even upset by the young minister’s arguments. Two or three young people of both sexes declared themselves converted, and were persecuted to their hearts’ desire when they intimated their intention of henceforward joining the congregation of Salem. The two Miss Hemmings were thrown into a state of great distress and perplexity, and wrung their hands, and looked at each other, as each new enormity was brought forth. A very animated interested audience filled the benches in the Music Hall for the three last lectures. It was Mr. Tozer’s conviction, whispered in confidence to all the functionaries at Salem, that the rector himself, in a muffler and blue spectacles, listened in a corner to the voice of rebellion; but no proof of this monstrous supposition ever came before the public. Notwithstanding, the excitement was evident. Miss Wodehouse took tremulous notes, her fingers quivering with anger, with the intention of calling upon Mr. Wentworth to answer and deny these assertions. Dr. Marjoribanks, the old Scotchman, who in his heart enjoyed a hit at the Episcopate, cried “Hear, hear,” with his sturdy northern r rattling through the hall, and clapped his large brown hands, with a broad grin at his daughter, who was “high,” and one of Mr. Wentworth’s sisters of mercy. But poor little Rose Lake, the drawing-master’s daughter, who was going up for confirmation next time the bishop came to Carlingford, turned very pale under Mr. Vincent’s teaching. All the different phases of conviction appeared in her eager little face—first indignation, then doubt, lastly horror and intense determination to flee out from Babylon. Her father laughed, and told her to attend to her needlework, when Rose confided to him her troubles. Her needlework! She who had just heard that the Church was rotten, and tottering on its foundations; that it was choked with filthy lucre and State support; that Church to which she had been about to give in her personal adhesion. Rose put away her catechism and confirmation good-books, and crossed to the other side of the street that she might not pass Masters’s, that emporium of evil. She looked wistfully after the young Nonconformist as he passed her on the streets, wondering what high martyr-thoughts must be in the apostolic mind which entertained so high a contempt for all the honours and distinctions of this world. Meanwhile Mr. Vincent pursued his own way, entirely convinced, as was natural for a young man, that he was “doing a great work” in Carlingford. He was still in that stage of life when people imagine that you have only to state the truth clearly to have it believed, and that to convince a man of what is right is all that is necessary to his immediate reformation. But it was not with any very distinct hopes or wishes of emptying the church in Carlingford, and crowding Salem Chapel, that the young man proceeded. Such expectations, high visions of a day to come when not a sitting could be had in Salem for love or money, did indeed glance into the souls of Tozer and his brother deacons; but the minister did not stand up and deliver his blow at the world—his outcry against things in general—his warm youthful assertion that he too had a right to all the joys and privileges of humanity,—as, by means of sermons, lectures, poems, or what not, youth and poverty, wherever they have a chance, do proclaim their protest against the world.

On the last night of the lectures, just as Vincent had taken his place upon his platform, a rustle, as of some one of importance entering, thrilled the audience. Looking over the sea of heads before him, the breath almost left the young minister’s lips when he saw the young Dowager, in all the glory of full-dress, threading her way through the crowd, which opened to let her pass. Mr. Vincent stood watching her progress, unaware that it was time for him to begin, and that his hearers, less absorbed than he, were asking each other what it was which had so suddenly paled his face and checked his utterance. He watched Lady Western and her companion come slowly forward; he saw Tozer, in a delighted bustle, leading the way to one of the raised seats of the orchestra close to the platform. When they were seated, and not till then, the lecturer, drawing a long gasping breath, turned to his audience. But the crowd was hazy to his eyes. He began, half mechanically, to speak—then made a sudden pause, his mind occupied with other things. On the very skirts of the crowd, far back at the door, stood his friend of Back Grove Street. In that momentary pause, he saw her standing alone, with the air of a person who had risen up unconsciously in sudden surprise and consternation. Her pale dark face looked not less confused and startled than Vincent himself was conscious of looking, and her eyes were turned in the same direction as his had been the previous moment. The crowd of Carlingford hearers died off from the scene for the instant, so far as the young Nonconformist was concerned. He knew but of that fair creature in all her sweet bloom and blush of beauty—the man who accompanied her—Mrs. Hilyard, a thin, dark, eager shadow in the distance—and himself standing, as it were, between them, connecting all together. What could that visionary link be which distinguished and separated these four, so unlike each other, from all the rest of the world? But Mr. Vincent had no leisure to follow out the question, even had his mind been sufficiently clear to do it. He saw the pale woman at the end of the hall suddenly drop into her seat, and draw a thick black veil over her face; and the confused murmur of impatience in the crowd before him roused the young man to his own position. He opened the eyes which had been hazing over with clouds of imagination and excitement. He delivered his lecture. Though he never was himself aware what he had said, it was received with just as much attention and applause as usual. He got through it somehow; and, sitting down at last, with parched lips and a helpless feeling of excitement, watched the audience dispersing, as if they were so many enemies from whom he had escaped. Who was this man with Her? Why did She come to bewilder him in the midst of his work? It did not occur to the poor young fellow that Lady Western came to his lecture simply as to a “distraction.” He thought she had a purpose in it. He pretended not to look as she descended daintily from her seat in the orchestra, drawing her white cloak with a pretty shiver over her white shoulders. He pretended to start when her voice sounded in his expectant ear.

“Oh, Mr. Vincent, how very clever and wicked of you!” cried Lady Western. “I am so horrified, and charmed. To think of you attacking the poor dear old Church, that we all ought to support through everything! And I am such a stanch churchwoman, and so shocked to hear all this; but you won’t do it any more.”

Saying this, Lady Western leaned her beautiful hand upon Mr. Vincent’s table, and looked in his face with a beseeching insinuating smile. The poor minister did all he could to preserve his virtue. He looked aside at Lady Western’s companion to fortify himself, and escape the enervating influence of that smile.

“I cannot pretend to yield the matter to your ladyship,” said Vincent, “for it had been previously arranged that this was to be the last of my lectures at present. I am sorry it did not please you.”

“But it did please me,” said the young Dowager; “only that it was so very wicked and wrong. Where did you learn such dreadful sentiments? I am so sorry I shan’t hear you again, and so glad you are finished. You never came to see me after my little fête. I am afraid you thought us stupid. Good-night: but you really must come to me, and I shall convert you. I am sure you never can have looked at the Church in the right way: why, what would become of us if we were all Dissenters? What a frightful idea! Thank you for such a charming evening. Good-night.”

And Lady Western held out that “treasured splendour, her hand,” to the bewildered Nonconformist, who only dared touch it, and let it fall, drawing back from the smile with which the syren beguiled him back again into her toils. But Mr. Vincent turned round hastily as he heard a muttered exclamation, “By Jove!” behind him, and fixed the gaze of angry and instinctive repugnance upon the tall figure which brushed past. “Make haste, Alice—do you mean to stay here all night?” said this wrathful individual, fixing his eyes with a defiant stare upon the minister; and he drew the beauty’s arm almost roughly into his own, and hurried her away, evidently remonstrating in the freest and boldest manner upon her civility. “By Jove! the fellow will think you are in love with him,” Vincent, with his quickened and suspicious ears, could hear the stranger say, with that delightful indifference to being overheard which characterises some Englishmen of the exalted classes; and the strain of reproof evidently continued as they made their way to the door. Vincent, for his part, when he had watched them out of sight, dropped into his chair, and sat there in the empty hall, looking over the vacant benches with the strangest mixture of feelings. Was it possible that his eager fervour and revolutionary warmth were diminished by these few words and that smile?—that the wrongs of Church and State looked less grievous all at once, and that it was an effort to return to the lofty state of feeling with which he had entered the place two hours ago? As he sat there in his reverie of discomfiture, he could see Tozer, a single black figure, come slowly up the hall, an emissary from the group at the door of “chapel people,” who had been enjoying the defeat of the enemy, and were now waiting for the conqueror. “Mr. Vincent,” shouted Tozer, “shall we turn off the gas, and leave you to think it all over till the morning, sir? They’re all as pleased as Punch and as curious as women down below here, and my Phœbe will have it you’re tired. I must say as it is peculiar to see you a-sitting up there all by yourself, and the lights going out, and not another soul in the place,” added the butterman, looking round with a sober grin; and in reality the lights diminished every moment as Mr. Vincent rose and stumbled down from his platform into the great empty hall with its skeleton benches. If they had left him there till the morning, it would have been a blessed exchange from that walk home with the party, that invitation to supper, and all the applauses and inquiries that followed. They had the Pigeons to supper that night at the butter-shop, and the whole matter was discussed in all its bearings—the flutter of the “Church folks,” the new sittings let during the week, the triumphant conviction of the two deacons that Salem would soon be overflowing.

“Oh, why were ‘deacons’ made so coarse,
Or parsons made so fine?”

Mr. Vincent did not bethink himself of that touching ditty. He could not see the serio-comic lights in which the whole business abounded. It was all the saddest earnest to the young pastor, who found so little encouragement or support even in the enthusiasm of his flock.

“And, oh, Mr. Vincent,” said the engaging Phœbe, in a half-whisper aside, “how did you come to be so friendly with Lady Western? How she did listen, to be sure! and smiled at you so sweetly. Ah, I don’t wonder now that you can’t see anything in the Carlingford young ladies; but do tell us, please, how you came to know her so well?”

Insensibly to himself, a gleam of gratification lighted up Mr. Vincent’s face. He was gracious to Phœbe. “I can’t pretend to know her well,” he said, with a little mock humility; whereupon the matrons of the party took up their weapons immediately.

“And all the better, Mr. Vincent—all the better!” cried Mrs. Tozer; “she didn’t come there for no good, you may be sure. Them great ladies, when they’re pretty-looking, as I don’t deny she’s pretty-looking——”

“Oh, mamma, beautiful!” exclaimed Phœbe.

“When they’re pretty-looking, as I say,” continued Mrs. Tozer, “they’re no better nor evil spirits—that’s what I tell you, Phœbe. They’ll go out o’ their way, they will, for to lay hold on a poor silly young man (which was not meaning you, Mr. Vincent, that knows better, being a minister), and when they’ve got him fast, they’ll laugh at him—that’s their sport. A minister of our connection as was well acquainted among them sort of folks would be out o’ nature. My boy shall never make no such acquaintances as long as I’m here.”

“I saw her a-speaking to the minister,” said Mrs. Pigeon, “and the thought crossed my mind as it wasn’t just what I expected of Mr. Vincent. Painted ladies, that come out of a night with low necks and flowers in their hair, to have all Carlingford a-staring at them, ain’t fit company for a good pastor. Them’s not the lambs of the flock—not so far as I understand; they’re not friends as Salem folks would approve of, Mr. Vincent. I’m always known for a plain speaker, and I don’t deceive you. It’s a deal better to draw back in time.”

“I have not the least reason to believe that Lady Western means to honour me with her friendship,” said Vincent, haughtily—“so it is premature to discuss the matter. As I feel rather tired, perhaps you’ll excuse me to-night. Come over to my rooms, Mr. Tozer, to-morrow, if you can spare a little time and we will discuss our business there. I hope Mrs. Tozer will pardon me withdrawing so early, but I am not very well—rather tired—out of sorts a little to-night.”

So saying, the young pastor extricated himself from the table, shook hands, regardless of all remonstrances, and made his way out with some difficulty from the little room, which was choke-full, and scarcely permitted egress. When he was gone, the three ladies looked at each other in dumb amazement. Phœbe, who felt herself aggrieved, was the first to break silence.

“Ma and Mrs. Pigeon,” cried the aggravated girl, “you’ve been and hurt his feelings. I knew you would. He’s gone home angry and disappointed; he thinks none of us understand him; he thinks we’re trying to humble him and keep him down, when, to tell the truth——”

Here Phœbe burst into tears.

“Upon my word,” said Mrs. Pigeon, “dear, deary me! It’s just what I said whenever I knew you had made up your minds to a young minister. He’ll come a-dangling after our girls, says I, and a-trifling with their affections. Bless my heart, Phœbe! if it had been my Maria now that’s always a-crying about something—but you! Don’t take on, dear—fretting’s no good—it’ll spoil your colour and take away your appetite, and that ain’t the way to mend matters: and to think of his lifting his eyes to my Lady Dowager! Upon my word! but there ain’t no accounting for young men’s ways no more than for girls—and being a minister don’t make a bit of difference, so far as I can see.”

“Why, what’s the matter?” cried Tozer: “the pastor’s gone off in a huff, and Phœbe crying. What’s wrong? You’ve been saying somethin’—you women with your sharp tongues.”

“It’s Phœbe and Mr. Vincent have had some words. Be quiet, Tozer—don’t you see the child’s hurt in her feelings?” said his wife.

Mr. and Mrs. Pigeon exchanged looks. “I’ll tell you what it is,” said the latter lady, solemnly. “It’s turned his head. I never approved of the Music Hall myself. It’s a deal of money to throw away, and it’s not like as if it was mercy to poor souls. And such a crush, and the cheering, and my Lady Western to shake hands with him, has turned the minister’s head. Now, just you mark my words. He hasn’t been here three month yet, and he’s a-getting high already. You men’ll have your own adoes with him. Afore a year’s over our heads, he’ll be a deal too high for Salem. His head’s turned—that’s what it is.”

“Oh, Mrs. Pigeon, how unkind of you!” cried Phœbe, “when he’s as good as good—and not a bit proud, nor ever was—and always such a gentleman!—and never neglects the very poorest whenever he’s sent for—oh, it’s so unkind of you.”

“I can’t see as his head isn’t straight enough on his shoulders,” said Tozer himself, with authority. “He’s tired, that’s what it is—and excited a bit, I shouldn’t wonder: a man can’t study like he does, and make hisself agreeable at the same time—no, no—by a year’s time he’ll be settling down, and we’ll know where we are; and as for Salem and our connection, they never had a chance, I can tell you, like what they’re a-going to have now.”

But Mrs. Pigeon shook her head. It was the first cloud that had risen on the firmament of Salem Chapel, so far as Mr. Vincent was concerned.

CHAPTER IX.

IT was a January night on which Vincent emerged abruptly from Tozer’s door, the evening of that lecture—a winter night, not very cold, but very dark, the skies looking not blue, but black overhead, and the light of the lamps gleaming dismally on the pavement, which had received a certain squalid power of reflection from the recent rain; for a sharp, sudden shower had fallen while Vincent had been seated at the hospitable table of the butterman, which had chased everybody from the darkling streets. All the shops were closed, a policeman marched along with heavy tread, and the wet pavement glimmered round his solitary figure. Nothing more uncomfortable could be supposed after the warmth and light of a snug interior, however humble; and the minister turned his face hastily in the direction of his lodging. But the next moment he turned back again, and looked wistfully in the other direction. It was not to gaze along the dark length of street to where the garden-walls of Grange Lane, undiscernible in the darkness, added a far-withdrawing perspective of gentility and aristocratic seclusion to the vulgar pretensions of George Street; it was to look at a female figure which came slowly up, dimming out the reflection on the wet stones as it crossed one streak of lamplight after another. Vincent was excited and curious, and had enough in his own mind to make him wistful for sympathy, if it were to be had from any understanding heart. He recognised Mrs. Hilyard instinctively as she came forward, not conscious of him, walking, strange woman as she was, with the air of a person walking by choice at that melancholy hour in that dismal night. She was evidently not going anywhere: her step was firm and distinct, like the step of a person thoroughly self-possessed and afraid of nothing—but it lingered with a certain meditative sound in the steady firm footfall. Vincent felt a kind of conviction that she had come out here to think over some problem of that mysterious life into which he could not penetrate, and he connected this strange walk involuntarily with the appearance of Lady Western and her careless companion. To his roused fancy, some incomprehensible link existed between himself and the equally incomprehensible woman before him. He turned back almost in spite of himself, and went to meet her. Mrs. Hilyard looked up when she heard his step. She recognised him also on the spot. They approached each other much as if they had arranged a meeting at eleven o’clock of that wet January night in the gleaming, deserted streets.

“It is you, Mr. Vincent!” she said. “I wonder why I happen to meet you, of all persons in the world, to-night. It is very odd. What, I wonder, can have brought us both together at such an hour and in such a place? You never came to see me that Monday—nor any Monday. You went to see my beauty instead, and you were so lucky as to be affronted with the syren at the first glance. Had you been less fortunate, I think I might have partly taken you into my confidence to-night.”

“Perhaps I am less fortunate, if that is all that hinders,” said Vincent; “but it is strange to see you out here so late in such a dismal night. Let me go with you, and see you safe home.”

“Thank you. I am perfectly safe—nobody can possibly be safer than such a woman as I am, in poverty and middle age,” said his strange acquaintance. “It is an immunity that women don’t often prize, Mr. Vincent, but it is very valuable in its way. If anybody saw you talking to an equivocal female figure at eleven o’clock in George Street, think what the butterman would say; but a single glimpse of my face would explain matters better than a volume. I am going down towards Grange Lane, principally because I am restless to-night, and don’t know what to do with myself. I shall tell you what I thought of your lecture if you will walk with me to the end of the street.”

“Ah, my lecture?—never mind,” said the hapless young minister; “I forget all about that. What is it that brings you here, and me to your side?—what is there in that dark-veiled house yonder that draws your steps and mine to it? It is not accidental, our meeting here.”

“You are talking romance and nonsense, quite inconceivable in a man who has just come from the society of deacons,” said Mrs. Hilyard, glancing up at him with that habitual gleam of her eyes. “We have met, my dear Mr. Vincent, because, after refreshing my mind with your lecture, I thought of refreshing my body by a walk this fresh night. One saves candles, you know, when one does one’s exercise at night: whereas walking by day one wastes everything—time, tissue, daylight, invaluable treasures: the only light that hurts nobody’s eyes, and costs nobody money, is the light of day. That illustration of yours about the clouds and the sun was very pretty. I assure you I thought the whole exceedingly effective. I should not wonder if it made a revolution in Carlingford.”

“Why do you speak to me so? I know you did not go to listen to my lecture,” said the young minister, to whom sundry gleams of enlightenment had come since his last interview with the poor needle-woman of Back Grove Street.

“Ah! how can you tell that?” she said, sharply, looking at him in the streak of lamplight. “But to tell the truth,” she continued, “I did actually go to hear you, and to look at other people’s faces, just to see whether the world at large—so far as that exists in Carlingford—was like what it used to be; and if I confess I saw something there more interesting than the lecture, I say no more than the lecturer could agree in, Mr. Vincent. You, too, saw something that made you forget the vexed question of Church and State.”

“Tell me,” said Vincent, with an earnestness he was himself surprised at, “who was that man?”

His companion started as if she had received a blow, turned round upon him with a glance in her dark eyes such as he had never seen there before, and in a sudden momentary passion drew her breath hard, and stopped short on the way. But the spark of intense and passionate emotion was as shortlived as it was vivid. “I do not suppose he is anything to interest you,” she answered the next moment, with a movement of her thin mouth, letting the hands that she had clasped together drop to her side. “Nay, make yourself quite easy; he is not a lover of my lady’s. He is only a near relation:—and,” she continued, lingering on the words with a force of subdued scorn and rage, which Vincent dimly apprehended, but could not understand, “a very fascinating fine gentleman—a man who can twist a woman round his fingers when he likes, and break all her heartstrings—if she has any—so daintily afterwards, that it would be a pleasure to see him do it. Ah, a wonderful man!”

“You know him then? I saw you knew him,” said the young man, surprised and disturbed, thrusting the first commonplace words he could think of into the silence, which seemed to tingle with the restrained meaning of this brief speech.

“I don’t think we are lucky in choosing our subjects to-night,” said the strange woman. “How about the ladies in Lonsdale, Mr. Vincent? They don’t keep a school? I am glad they don’t keep a school. Teaching, you know, unless when one has a vocation for it, as you had a few weeks ago, is uphill work. I am sorry to see you are not so sure about your work as you were then. Your sister is pretty, I suppose? and does your mother take great care of her and keep her out of harm’s way? Lambs have a silly faculty of running directly in the wolf’s road. Why don’t you take a holiday and go to see them, or have them here to live with you?”

“You know something about them,” said Vincent, alarmed. “What has happened?—tell me. It will be the greatest kindness to say it out at once.”

“Hush,” said Mrs. Hilyard; “now you are absurd. I speak out of my own thoughts, as most persons do, and you, like all young people, make personal applications. How can I possibly know about them? I am not a fanciful woman, but there are some things that wake one’s imagination. In such a dark night as this, with such wet gleams about the streets, when I think of people at a distance, I always think of something uncomfortable happening. Misfortune seems to lie in wait about those black corners. I think of women wandering along dismal solitary roads with babies in their shameful arms—and of dreadful messengers of evil approaching unconscious houses, and looking in at peaceful windows upon the comfort they are about to destroy; and I think,” she continued, crossing the road so rapidly (they were now opposite Lady Western’s house) that Vincent, who had not anticipated the movement, had to quicken his pace suddenly to keep up with her, “of evil creatures pondering in the dark vile schemes against the innocent——” Here she broke off all at once, and, looking up in Vincent’s face with that gleam of secret mockery in her eyes and movement of her mouth to which he was accustomed, added, suddenly changing her tone, “Or of fine gentlemen, Mr. Vincent, profoundly bored with their own society, promenading in a dreary garden and smoking a disconsolate cigar. Look there!”

The young minister, much startled and rather nervous, mechanically looked, as she bade him, through the little grated loophole in Lady Western’s garden-door. He saw the lights shining in the windows, and a red spark moving about before the house, as, with a little shame for his undignified position, he withdrew his eyes from that point of vantage. But Mrs. Hilyard was moved by no such sentiment. She planted herself opposite the door, and, bending her head to the little grating, gazed long and steadfastly. In the deep silence of the night, standing with some uneasiness at her side, and not insensible to the fact that his position, if he were seen by anybody who knew him, would be rather absurd and slightly equivocal, Vincent heard the footsteps of the man inside, the fragrance of whose cigar faintly penetrated the damp air. The stranger was evidently walking up and down before the house in enjoyment of that luxury which the feminine arrangements of the young Dowager’s household would not permit indoors; but the steady eagerness with which this strange woman gazed—the way in which she had managed to interweave Mrs. Vincent and pretty Susan at Lonsdale into the conversation—the suggestions of coming danger and evil with which her words had invested the very night, all heightened by the instinctive repugnance and alarm of which the young man had himself been conscious whenever he met the eye of Lady Western’s companion—filled him with discomfort and dread. His mind, which had been lately too much occupied in his own concerns to think much of Susan, reverted now with sudden uneasiness to his mother’s cottage, from which Susan’s betrothed had lately departed to arrange matters for their speedy marriage. But how Lady Western’s “near relation”—this man whom Mrs. Hilyard watched with an intense regard which looked like hatred, but might be dead love—could be connected with Lonsdale, or Susan, or himself, or the poor needlewoman in Back Grove Street, Vincent could not form the remotest idea. He stood growing more and more impatient by that dark closed door, which had once looked a gate of paradise—which, he felt in his heart, half-a-dozen words or a single smile could any day make again a gate of the paradise of fools to his bewildered feet—the steps of the unseen stranger within, and the quick breath of agitation from the watcher by his side, being the only sounds audible in the silence of the night. At last some restless movement he made disturbed Mrs. Hilyard in her watch. She left the door noiselessly and rapidly, and turned to recross the wet road. Vincent accompanied her without saying a word. The two walked along together half the length of Grange Lane without breaking silence, without even looking at each other, till they came to the large placid white lamp at Dr. Marjoribanks’s gate, which cleared a little oasis of light out of the heart of the gloom. There she looked up at him with a face full of agitated life and motion—kindled eyes, elevated head, nostril and lips swelling with feelings which were totally undecipherable to Vincent; her whole aspect changed by an indescribable inspiration which awoke remnants of what might have been beauty in that thin, dark, middle-aged face.

“You are surprised at me and my curiosity,” she said, “and indeed you have good reason; but it is astonishing, when one is shut up in one’s self and knows nobody, how excited one gets over the sudden apparition of a person one has known in the other world. Some people die two or three times in a lifetime, Mr. Vincent. There is a real transmigration of souls, or bodies, or both if you please. This is my third life I am going through at present. I knew that man, as I was saying, in the other world.”

“The world does change strangely,” said Vincent, who could not tell what to say; “but you put it very strongly—more strongly than I——”

“More strongly than you can understand; I know that very well,” said Mrs. Hilyard; “but you perceive you are speaking to a woman who has died twice. Coming to life is a bitter process, but one gets over it. If you ever should have such a thing to go through with—and survive it,” she added, giving him a wistful glance, “I should like to tell you my experiences. However, I hope better things. You are very well looked after at Salem Chapel, Mr. Vincent. I think of you sometimes when I look out of my window and see your tabernacle. It is not so pretty as Mr. Wentworth’s at St. Roque’s, but you have the advantage of the curate otherwise. So far as I can see, he never occupies himself with anything higher than his prayer-book and his poor people. I doubt much whether he would ever dream of replying to what you told us to-night.”

“Probably he holds a Dissenting minister in too much contempt,” said Vincent, with an uncomfortable smile on his lips.

“Don’t sneer—never sneer—no gentleman does,” said his companion. “I like you, though you are only a Dissenting minister. You know me to be very poor, and you have seen me in very odd circumstances to-night; yet you walk home with me—I perceive you are steering towards Back Grove Street, Mr. Vincent—without an illusion which could make me feel myself an equivocal person, and just as if this was the most reasonable thing in the world which I have been doing to-night. Thank you. You are a paladin in some things, though in others only a Dissenting minister. If I were a fairy, the gift I would endow you with would be just that same unconsciousness of your own disadvantages, which courtesy makes you show of mine.”

“Indeed,” said Vincent, with natural gratification, “it required no discrimination on my part to recognise at once that I was addressing——”

“Hush! you have never even insinuated that an explanation was necessary, which is the very height and climax of fine manners,” said Mrs. Hilyard; “and I speak who am, or used to be, an authority in such matters. I don’t mean to give you any explanation either. Now, you must turn back and go home. Good-night. One thing I may tell you, however,” she continued, with a little warmth; “don’t mistake me. There is no reason in this world why you might not introduce me to the ladies in Lonsdale, if any accident brought it about that we should meet. I say this to make your mind easy about your penitent; and now, my good young father in the faith, good-night.”

“Let me see you to your door first,” said the wondering young man.

“No—no farther. Good-night,” she said, hastily, shaking hands, and leaving him. The parting was so sudden that it took Vincent a minute to stop short, under way and walking quickly as he was. When she had made one or two rapid steps in advance, Mrs. Hilyard turned back, as if with a sudden impulse.

“Do you know I have an uneasiness about these ladies in Lonsdale?” she said; “I know nothing whatever about them—not so much as their names; but you are their natural protector; and it does not do for women to be as magnanimous and generous in the reception of strangers as you are. There! don’t be alarmed. I told you I knew nothing. They may be as safe, and as middle-aged, and as ugly as I am; instead of a guileless widow and a pretty little girl, they may be hardened old campaigners like myself; but they come into my mind, I cannot tell why. Have them here to live beside you, and they will do you good.”

“My sister is about to be married,” said Vincent, more and more surprised, and looking very sharply into her face in the lamplight, to see whether she really did not know anything more than she said.

A certain expression of relief came over her face.

“Then all is well,” she said, with strange cordiality, and again held out her hand to him. Then they parted, and pursued their several ways through the perfectly silent and dimly-lighted streets. Vincent walked home with the most singular agitation in his mind. Whether to give any weight to such vague but alarming suggestions—whether to act immediately upon the indefinite terror thus insinuated into his thoughts—or to write, and wait till he heard whether any real danger existed—or to cast it from him altogether as a fantastic trick of imagination, he could not tell. Eventful and exciting as the evening had been, he postponed the other matters to this. If any danger threatened Susan, his simple mother could suffer with her, but was ill qualified to protect her: but what danger could threaten Susan? He consoled himself with the thought that these were not the days of abductions or violent love-making. To think of an innocent English girl in her mother’s house as threatened with mysterious danger, such as might have surrounded a heroine of the last century, was impossible. If there are Squire Thornhills nowadays, their operations are of a different character. Walking rapidly home, with now and then a blast of chill rain in his face, and the lamplight gleaming in the wet streets, Vincent found less and less reason for attaching any importance to Mrs. Hilyard’s hints and alarms. It was the sentiment of the night, and her own thoughts, which had suggested such fears to her mind—a mind evidently experienced in paths more crooked than any which Vincent himself, much less simple Susan, had ever known. When he reached home, he found his little fire burning brightly, his room arranged with careful nicety, which was his landlady’s appropriate and sensible manner of showing her appreciation of the night’s lecture, and her devotion to the minister; and, lastly, on the table a letter from that little house in Lonsdale, round which such fanciful fears had gathered. Never was there a letter which breathed more of the peaceful security and tranquillity of home. Mrs. Vincent wrote to her Arthur in mingled rejoicing and admonition, curious and delighted to hear of his lectures, but not more anxious about his fame and success than about his flannels and precautions against wet feet; while Susan’s postscript—a half longer than the letter to which it was appended—furnished her affectionate brother with sundry details, totally incomprehensible to him, of her wedding preparations, and, more shyly, of her perfect girlish happiness. Vincent laughed aloud as he folded up that woman’s letter. No mysterious horror, no whispering doubtful gloom, surrounded that house from which the pure, full daylight atmosphere, untouched by any darkness, breathed fresh upon him out of these simple pages. Here, in this humble virtuous world, were no mysteries. It was a deliverance to a heart which had begun to falter. Wherever fate might be lingering in the wild darkness of that January night, it was not on the threshold of his mother’s house.

CHAPTER X.

ON the next evening after this there was a tea-meeting in Salem Chapel. In the back premises behind the chapel were all needful accommodations for the provision of that popular refreshment—boilers, tea-urns, unlimited crockery and pewter. In fact, it was one of Mr. Tozer’s boasts, that owing to the liberality of the “connection” in Carlingford, Salem was fully equipped in this respect, and did not need to borrow so much as a spoon or teapot, a very important matter under the circumstances. This, however, was the first tea-meeting which had taken place since that one at which Mr. Tufton’s purse had been presented to him, and the old pastor had taken leave of his flock. The young pastor, indeed, had set his face against tea-meetings. He was so far behind his age as to doubt their utility, and declared himself totally unqualified to preside over such assemblies; but, in the heat of his recent disappointment, when, stung by other people’s neglect, he had taken up Salem and all belonging to it into his bosom, a cruel use had been made of the young minister’s compliance. They had wrung a reluctant consent from him in that unguarded moment, and the walls of Carlingford had been for some days blazing with placards of the tea-meeting, at which the now famous (in Carlingford) lecturer on Church and State was to speak. Not Tozer, with all his eloquence, had been able to persuade the pastor to preside; but at least he was to appear, to take tea at that table elevated on the platform, where Phœbe Tozer, under the matronly care of Mrs. Brown (for it was necessary to divide these honours, and guard against jealousy), dispensed the fragrant lymph, and to address the meeting. There had been thoughts of a grand celebration in the Music Hall to do more honour to the occasion; but as that might have neutralised the advantages of having all the needful utensils within themselves, convenience and economy carried the day, and the scene of these festivities, as of all the previous festivities of Salem, was the large low room underneath the chapel, once intended for a school, but never used, except on Sundays, in that capacity. Thither for two or three days all the “young ladies” of the chapel had streamed to and fro, engaged in decorations. Some manufactured festoons of evergreens, some concocted pink and white roses in paper to embellish the same. The printed texts of the Sunday school were framed, and in some cases obliterated, in Christmas garlands. Christmas, indeed, was past, but there were still holly and red berries and green smooth laurel leaves. The Pigeon girls, Phœbe Tozer, Mrs. Brown’s niece from the country, and the other young people in Salem who were of sufficiently advanced position, enjoyed the preparations greatly—entering into them with even greater heartiness than Lucy Wodehouse exhibited in the adornment of St. Roque’s, and taking as much pleasure in the task as if they had been picturesque Italians adorning the shrine of their favourite saint. Catterina and Francesca with their flower-garlands are figures worthy of any picture, and so is Lucy Wodehouse under the chancel arch at St. Roque’s; but how shall we venture to ask anybody’s sympathy for Phœbe and Maria Pigeon as they put up their festoons round the four square walls of the low schoolroom in preparation for the Salem tea-party? Nevertheless it is a fact that the two last mentioned had very much the same intentions and sensations, and amid the coils of fresh ivy and laurel did not look amiss in their cheerful labour—a fact which, before the work was completed, had become perceptible to various individuals of the Carlingford public. But Mr. Vincent was, on this point, as on several others, unequal to the requirements of his position. When he did glance in for a moment of the afternoon of the eventful day, it was in company with Tozer and the Rev. Mr. Raffles of Shoebury, who was to take the chair. Mr. Raffles was very popular in Carlingford, as everywhere. To secure him for a tea-meeting was to secure its success. He examined into all the preparations, tasted the cake, pricked his fingers with the garlands to the immense delight of the young ladies, and complimented them on their skill with beaming cheerfulness; while the minister of Salem, on the contrary, stalked about by his side pale and preoccupied, with difficulty keeping himself from that contempt of the actual things around to which youth is so often tempted. His mind wandered off to the companion of his last night’s walk—to the stranger pacing up and down that damp garden with inscrutable unknown thoughts—to the beautiful creature within those lighted windows, so near and yet so overwhelmingly distant—as if somehow they had abstracted life and got it among themselves. Mr. Vincent had little patience for what he considered the mean details of existence nearer at hand. As soon as he could possibly manage it, he escaped, regarding with a certain hopeless disgust the appearance he had to make in the evening, and without finding a single civil thing to say to the fair decorators. “My young brother looks sadly low and out of spirits,” said jolly Mr. Raffles. “What do you mean by being so unkind to the minister, Miss Phœbe, eh?” Poor Phœbe blushed pinker than ever, while the rest laughed. It was pleasant to be supposed “unkind” to the minister; and Phœbe resolved to do what she could to cheer him when she sat by his elbow at the platform table making tea for the visitors of the evening.

The evening came, and there was not a ticket to be had anywhere in Carlingford: the schoolroom, with its blazing gas, its festoons, and its mottoes, its tables groaning with dark-complexioned plumcake and heavy buns, was crowded quite beyond its accommodation; and the edifying sight might be seen of Tozer and his brother deacons, and indeed all who were sufficiently interested in the success of Salem to sacrifice themselves on its behalf, making an erratic but not unsubstantial tea in corners, to make room for the crowd. And in the highest good-humour was the crowd which surrounded all the narrow tables. The urns were well filled, the cake abundant, the company in its best attire. The ladies had bonnets, it is true, but these bonnets were worthy the occasion. At the table on the platform sat Mr. Raffles, in the chair, beaming upon the assembled party, with cheerful little Mrs. Tufton and Mrs. Brown at one side of him, and Phœbe looking very pink and pretty, shaded from the too enthusiastic admiration of the crowd below by the tea-urn at which she officiated. Next to her, the minister cast abstracted looks upon the assembly. He was, oh, so interesting in his silence and pallor!—he spoke little; and when any one addressed him, he had to come back as if from a distance to hear. If anybody could imagine that Mr. Raffles contrasted dangerously with Mr. Vincent in that reserve and quietness, it would be a mistake unworthy a philosophic observer. On the contrary, the Salem people were all doubly proud of their pastor. It was not to be expected that such a man as he should unbend as the reverend chairman did. They preferred that he should continue on his stilts. It would have been a personal humiliation to the real partisans of the chapel, had he really woke up and come down from that elevation. The more commonplace the ordinary “connection” was, the more proud they felt of their student and scholar. So Mr. Vincent leaned his head upon his hands and gazed unmolested over the lively company, taking in all the particulars of the scene, the busy groups engaged in mere tea-making and tea-consuming—the flutter of enjoyment among humble girls and womankind who knew no pleasure more exciting—the whispers which pointed out himself to strangers among the party—the triumphant face of Tozer at the end of the room, jammed against the wall, drinking tea out of an empty sugar-basin. If the scene woke any movement of human sympathy in the bosom of the young Nonconformist, he was half ashamed of himself for it. What had the high mission of an evangelist—the lofty ambition of a man trained to enlighten his country—the warm assurance of talent which felt itself entitled to the highest sphere,—what had these great things to do in a Salem Chapel tea-meeting? So the lofty spirit held apart, gazing down from a mental elevation much higher than the platform; and all the people who had heard his lectures pointed him out to each other, and congratulated themselves on that studious and separated aspect which was so unlike other men. In fact, the fine superiority of Mr. Vincent was at the present moment the very thing that was wanted to rivet their chains. Even Mrs. Pigeon looked on with silent admiration. He was “high”—never before had Salem known a minister who did not condescend to be gracious at a tea-meeting—and the leader of the opposition honoured him in her heart.

And even when at last the social meal was over, when the urns were cleared away, and with a rustle and flutter the assembly composed itself to the intellectual regale about to follow, Mr. Vincent did not change his position. Mr. Raffles made quite one of his best speeches; he kept his audience in a perpetual flutter of laughter and applause; he set forth all the excellencies of the new minister with such detail and fulness as only the vainest could have swallowed. But the pleased congregation still applauded. He praised Mr. Tufton, the venerable father of the community, he praised the admirable deacons; he praised the arrangements. In short, Mr. Raffles applauded everybody, and everybody applauded Mr. Raffles. After the chairman had concluded his speech, the hero of the evening gathered himself up dreamily, and rose from Phœbe Tozer’s side. He told them he had been gazing at them this hour past, studying the scene before him; how strangely they appeared to him, standing on this little bright gaslighted perch amid the dark sea of life that surged round them; that now he and they were face to face with each other, it was not their social pleasure he was thinking of, but that dark unknown existence that throbbed and echoed around: he bade them remember the dark night which enclosed that town of Carlingford, without betraying the secret of its existence even to the nearest village; of those dark streets and houses which hid so many lives and hearts and tragic histories; he enlarged upon Mrs. Hilyard’s idea of the sentiment of “such a night,” till timid people threw glances behind them, and some sensitive mothers paused to wonder whether the minister could have heard that Tommy had fallen into the fire, or Mary scalded herself, and took this way to break the news. The speech was the strangest that ever was listened to at a tea-party. It was the wayward capricious pouring forth of a fanciful young mind under an unquiet influence, having no connection whatever with the “object,” the place, or the listeners. The consequence was, that it was listened to with breathless interest—that the faces grew pale and the eyes bright, and shivers of restrained emotion ran through the astonished audience. Mr. Vincent perceived the effect of his eloquence, as a nursery story-teller perceives the rising sob of her little hearers. When he saw it, he awoke, as the same nursery minstrel does sometimes, to feel how unreal was the sentiment in his own breast which had produced this genuine feeling in others, and with a sudden amusement proceeded to deepen his colours and make bolder strokes of effect. His success was perfect; before he concluded, he had in imagination dismissed the harmless Salem people out of their very innocent recreation to the dark streets which thrilled round them—to the world of unknown life, of which each man for himself had some knowledge—to the tragedies that might be going on side by side with them, for aught they knew. His hearers drew a long breath when it was over. They were startled, frightened, enchanted. If they had been witnessing a melodrama, they scarcely could have been more excited. He had put the most dreadful suggestions in their mind of all sorts of possible trouble; he sat down with the consciousness of having done his duty by Salem for this night at least.

But when Tozer got up after him to tell about the prosperity of the congregation, the anticlimax was felt even by the people of Salem. Some said, “No, no,” audibly, some laughed, not a few rose up and went away. Vincent himself, feeling the room very hot, and not disliking the little commotion of interest which arose on his departure, withdrew himself from the platform, and made his way to the little vestry, where a breath of air was to be had; for, January night as it was, the crowd and the tea had established a very high temperature in the under-regions of Salem. He opened the window in the vestry, which looked out upon the damp ground behind the chapel and the few gravestones, and threw himself down on the little sofa with a sensation of mingled self-reproach and amusement. Somehow, even when one disapproves of one’s self for doing it, one has a certain enjoyment in bewildering the world. Mr. Vincent was rather pleased with his success, although it was only a variety of “humbug.” He entertained with Christian satisfaction the thought that he had succeeded in introducing a certain visionary uneasiness into the lively atmosphere of the tea-meeting—and he was delighted with his own cleverness in spite of himself.

While he lay back on his sofa, and pondered this gratifying thought, he heard a subdued sound of voices outside—voices and steps that fell with but little sound upon the damp grass. A languid momentary wonder touched the mind of the minister: who could have chosen so doleful a retirement? It was about the last place in the world for a lover’s interview, which was the first thing that suggested itself to the young man; the next moment he started bolt upright, and listened with undisguised curiosity. That voice so different from the careless voices of Salem, the delicate refined intonations which had startled him in the shabby little room in Back Grove Street, awoke an interest in his mind which no youthful accents in Carlingford could have excited. He sat upright on the instant, and edged towards the open window. The gas burned low in the little vestry, which nobody had been expected to enter, and the illumination from all the schoolroom windows, and sounds of cheering and commotion there, had doubtless made the absolute darkness and silence behind seem perfectly safe to the two invisible people now meeting under the cloud of night. Mr. Vincent was not startled into eavesdropping unawares, nor did he engage in any sophistical argument to justify himself for listening. On the contrary, he listened honestly, with the full intention of hearing all he could—suddenly changed from the languid sentimentalist, painful and self-conscious, which the influences of the evening had made him, into a spectator very wide awake and anxious, straining his ear to catch some knowledge of a history, in which a crowd of presentiments warned him that he himself should yet be concerned.

“If you must speak, speak here,” said that voice which Vincent had recognised: “it is scarcely the atmosphere for a man of your fine taste, to be sure; but considering the subject of the conference, it will do. What do you want with me?”

“By Jove, it looks dangerous!—what do you mean to suggest by this sweet rendezvous—murder?” said the man, whoever he was, who had accompanied Mrs. Hilyard to the damp yard of Salem Chapel, with its scattered graves.

“My nerves are strong,” she answered. “It is a pity you should take the trouble to be melodramatic. Do you think I am vain enough to imagine that you could subject yourself to all the unpleasant accessories of being hanged on my account? Fancy a rough hempen rope, and the dirty fingers that would adjust it. Pah! you would not risk it for me.”

Her companion swore a muttered oath. “By Jove! I believe you’d be content to be murdered, to make such an end of me,” he answered, in the baffled tone of rage which a man naturally sinks into when engaged in unequal conflict of recrimination with a woman.

“This is too conjugal,” said Mrs. Hilyard; “it reminds me of former experiences: come to the point, I beg of you. You did not come here and seek me out that we might have an amusing conversation—what do you want with me?”

“Don’t tempt me too far with your confounded impertinence,” exclaimed the man, “or there is no telling what may happen. I want to know where that child is; you know I do. I mean to reclaim my rights so far as she is concerned. If she had been a ward in Chancery, a man might have submitted. But I am a reformed individual—my life is of the most exemplary description—no court in Christendom would keep her from my custody now. I want the girl for her own good—she shall marry brilliantly, which she never could do with you. I know she’s grown up as lovely as I expected——”

“How do you know?” interrupted Mrs. Hilyard, with a certain hoarseness in her voice.

“Ah! I have touched you at last. Remembering what her mother was,” he went on, in a mocking tone, “though I am grieved to see how much you have gone off in late years—and having a humble consciousness of her father’s personal advantages, and, in short, of her relatives in general, I know she’s a little beauty—and, by Jove, she shall be a duchess yet.”

There was a pause—something like a hard sob thrilled in the air, rather a vibration than a sound; and Vincent, making a desperate gesture of rage towards the school-room, from which a burst of applause at that moment sounded, approached closer to the window. Then the woman’s voice burst forth passionate, but subdued.

“You have seen her! you!—you that blasted her life before she was born, and confused her sweet mind for ever—how did you dare to look at my child? And I,” cried the passionate voice, forgetting even caution—“I, that would give my life drop by drop to restore what never can be restored to that victim of your sin and my weakness—I do not see her. I refuse myself that comfort. I leave it to others to do all that love and pity can do for my baby. You speak of murder—man! if I had a knife, I could find it in my heart to put an end to your horrid career; and, look you, I will—Coward! I will! I will kill you before you shall lay your vile hands on my child.”

“She-wolf!” cried the man, grinding his teeth, “do you know how much it would be to my advantage if you never left this lonely spot you have brought me to? By Jove, I have the greatest mind——”

Another momentary silence. Vincent, wound up to a high state of excitement, sprang noiselessly to his feet, and was rushing to the window to proclaim his presence, when Mrs. Hilyard’s voice, perfectly calm, and in its usual tone, brought him back to himself.

“Second thoughts are best. It would compromise you horribly, and put a stop to many pleasures—not to speak of those dreadful dirty fingers arranging that rough rope round your neck, which, pardon me, I can’t help thinking of when you associate your own name with such a vulgar suggestion as murder. I should not mind these little details, but you! However, I excited myself unreasonably, you have not seen her. That skilful inference of yours was only a lie. She was not at Lonsdale, you know.”

“How the devil do you know I was at Lonsdale?” said her companion.

“I keep myself informed of the movements of so interesting a person. She was not there.”

“No,” replied the man, “she was not there; but I need not suggest to your clear wits that there are other Lonsdales in England. What if Miss Mildmay were in her father’s lawful guardianship now?”

Here the air palpitated with a cry, the cry as of a wild creature in sudden blind anguish. It was echoed by a laugh of mockery and exultation. “Should you like me to tell you which of the Lonsdales you honoured with your patronage?” continued the mocking voice: “that in Derbyshire, or that in Devonshire, or that in Cumberland? I am afflicted to have defeated your skilful scheme so easily. Now that you see I am a match for you, perhaps you will perceive that it is better to yield peaceably, and unite with me in securing the girl’s good. She needs only to be seen to——”

“Who do you imagine you are addressing, Colonel Mildmay?” said Mrs. Hilyard, haughtily; “there has been enough of this: you are mistaken if you think you can deceive me for more than a moment: my child is not in your hands, and never will be, please God. But mark what I say,” she continued, drawing a fierce, hard breath, “if you should ever succeed in tracing her—if you should ever be able to snatch her from me—then confess your sins, and say your last prayers, for as sure as I live you shall die in a week.”

“She-devil! murderess!” cried her companion, not without a certain shade of alarm in his voice; “if your power were equal to your will——”

“In that case my power should be equal to my will,” said the steady, delicate woman’s voice, as clear in very fine articulation as if it were some peaceful arrangement of daily life for which she declared herself capable: “you should not escape if you surrounded yourself with a king’s guards. I swear to you, if you do what you say, that I will kill you somehow, by whatever means I can attain—and I have never yet broken my word.”

An unsteady defiant laugh was the only reply. The man was evidently more impressed with the sincerity, and power to execute her intentions, of the woman than she with his. Apparently they stood regarding each other for another momentary interval in silence. Again Mrs. Hilyard was the first to speak.

“I presume our conference is over now,” she said, calmly; “how you could think of seeking it is more than I can understand. I suppose poor pretty Alice, who thinks every woman can be persuaded, induced you to attempt this. Don’t let me keep you any longer in a place so repugnant to your taste. I am going to the tea-meeting at Salem Chapel to hear my young friend the minister speak: perhaps this unprofitable discussion has lost me that advantage. You heard him the other night, and were pleased, I trust. Good-night. I suppose, before leaving you, I should thank you for having spared my life.”

Vincent heard the curse upon her and her stinging tongue, which burst in a growl of rage from the lips of the other, but he did not see the satirical curtsy with which this strange woman swept past, nor the scarcely controllable impulse which made the man lift his stick and clench it in his hand as she turned away from him those keen eyes, out of which even the gloom of night could not quench the light. But even Mrs. Hilyard herself never knew how near, how very near, she was at that moment to the unseen world. Had her step been less habitually firm and rapid,—had she lingered on her way—the temptation might have been too strong for the man, maddened by many memories. He made one stride after her, clenching his stick. It was perfectly dark in that narrow passage which led out to the front of the chapel. She might have been stunned in a moment, and left there to die, without any man being the wiser. It was not virtue, nor hatred of bloodshed, nor repugnance to harm her, which restrained Colonel Mildmay’s hand: it was half the rapidity of her movements, and half the instinct of a gentleman, which vice itself could not entirely obliterate. Perhaps he was glad when he saw her disappear from before him down the lighted steps into the Salem schoolroom. He stood in the darkness and watched her out of sight, himself unseen by any one, and then departed on his way, a splendid figure, all unlike the population of Grove Street. Some of the Salem people, dispersing at the moment, saw him sauntering down the street grand and leisurely, and recognised the gentleman who had been seen in the Music Hall with Lady Western. They thought he must have come privately once more to listen to their minister’s eloquence. Probably Lady Western herself, the leader of fashion in Carlingford, would appear next Sunday to do Mr. Vincent honour. The sight of this very fine gentleman picking his leisurely way along the dark pavement of Grove Street, leaning confidingly upon that stick over which his tall person swayed with fashionable languor, gave a climax to the evening in the excited imaginations of Mr. Vincent’s admirers. Nobody but the minister and one utterly unnoted individual in the crowd knew what had brought the Colonel and his stick to such a place. Nobody but the Colonel himself, and the watchful heavens above, knew how little had prevented him from leaving a silent, awful witness of that secret interview upon the chapel steps.

When Mr. Vincent returned to the platform, which he did hurriedly, Mr. Pigeon was addressing the meeting. In the flutter of inquiries whether he was better, and gentle hopes from Phœbe that his studies had not been too much for him, nobody appeared to mark the eagerness of his eyes, and the curiosity in his face. He sat down in his old place, and pretended to listen to Mr. Pigeon. Anxiously from under the shadow of his hands he inspected the crowd before him, who had recovered their spirits. In a corner close to the door he at last found the face he was in search of. Mrs. Hilyard sat at the end of a table, leaning her face on her hand. She had her eyes fixed upon the speaker, and there passed now and then across the corners of her close-shut mouth that momentary movement which was her symbol for a smile. She was not pretending to listen, but giving her entire attention to the honest poulterer. Now and then she turned her eyes from Pigeon, and perused the room and the company with rapid glances of amusement and keen observation. Perhaps her eyes gleamed keener, and her dark cheek owned a slight flush—that was all. Out of her mysterious life—out of that interview, so full of violence and passion—the strange woman came, without a moment’s interval, to amuse herself by looking at and listening to all those homely innocent people. Could it be that she was taking notes of Pigeon’s speech? Suddenly, all at once, she had taken a pencil out of her pocket and began to write, glancing up now and then towards the speaker. Mr. Vincent’s head swam with the wonder he was contemplating—was she flesh and blood after all, or some wonderful skeleton living a galvanic life? But when he asked himself the question, her cry of sudden anguish, her wild, wicked promise to kill the man who stole her daughter, came over his mind, and arrested his thoughts. He, dallying as he was on the verge of life, full of fantastic hopes and disappointment, could only pretend to listen to Pigeon; but the good poulterer turned gratified eyes towards Mrs. Hilyard. He recognised her real attention and interest; was it the height of voluntary sham and deception?—or was she really taking notes?

The mystery was solved after the meeting was over. There was some music, in the first place—anthems in which all the strength of Salem united, Tozer taking a heavy bass, while Phœbe exerted herself so in the soprano that Mr. Vincent’s attention was forcibly called off his own meditations, in terror lest something should break in the throat so hardly strained. Then there were some oranges, another speech, a hymn, and a benediction; and then Mr. Raffles sprang joyfully up, and leaned over the platform to shake hands with his friends. This last process was trying. Mr. Vincent, who could no longer take refuge in silence, descended into the retiring throng. He was complimented on his speech, and even by some superior people, who had a mind to be fashionable, upon the delightful evening they had enjoyed. When they were all gone, there were still the Tozers, the Browns, the Pigeons, Mrs. Tufton, and Mr. Raffles. He was turning back to them disconsolate, when he was suddenly confronted by Mrs. Hilyard out of her corner with the fly-leaf of the hymn-book the unscrupulous woman had been writing in, torn out in her hand.

“Stop a minute!” she cried; “I want to speak to you. I want your help, if you will give it me. Don’t be surprised at what I ask. Is your mother a good woman—was it she that trained you to act to the forlorn as you did to me last night? I have been too hasty—I take away your breath;—never mind, there is no time to choose one’s words. The butterman is looking at us, Mr. Vincent. The ladies are alarmed; they think I want spiritual consolation at this unsuitable moment. Make haste—answer my question. Would she do an act of Christian charity to a woman in distress?”

“My mother is—yes, I know she would, what do you want of her?—my mother is the best and tenderest of women,” cried Vincent, in utter amazement.

“I want to send a child to her—a persecuted, helpless child, whom it is the object of my life to keep out of evil hands,” said Mrs. Hilyard, her dark thin face growing darker and more pallid, her eyes softening with tears. “She will be safe at Lonsdale now, and I cannot go in my own person at present to take her anywhere. Here is a message for the telegraph,” she added, holding up the paper which Vincent had supposed to be notes of Mr. Pigeon’s speech; “take it for me—send it off to-night—you will? and write to your mother; she shall suffer no loss, and I will thank her on my knees. It is life or death.”

“I know—I am aware!” cried Vincent, not knowing what he said. “There is no time to be lost.”

She put the paper into his hand, and clasped it tight between both of hers, not knowing in the excitement which she was so well trained to repress, that he had betrayed any special knowledge of her distress. It seemed natural, in that strain of desperation, that everybody should understand her. “Come to-morrow and tell me,” she said, hurriedly, and then hastened away, leaving him with the paper folded close into his hand as her hard grasp had left it. He turned away from the group which awaited his coming with some curiosity and impatience, and read the message by the light of one of the garlanded and festive lamps. “Rachel Russell to Miss Smith, Lonsdale, Devonshire. Immediately on receiving this, take the child to Lonsdale, near Peterborough—to Mrs. Vincent’s; leave the train at some station near town, and drive to a corresponding station on the Great Northern; don’t enter London. Blue veil—care—not to be left for an instant. I trust all to you.” Mr. Vincent put the message in his pocketbook, took it out again—tried it in his purse, his waistcoat pocket, everywhere he could think of—finally, closed his hand over it as at first, and in a high state of excitement went up to the chattering group at the little platform, the only thought in his mind being how to get rid of them, that he might hasten upon his mission before the telegraph office was closed for the night.

And, as was to be expected, Mr. Vincent found it no easy matter to get rid of the Tozers and Pigeons, who were all overflowing about the tea-party, its provisions, its speeches, and its success. He stood with that bit of paper clenched in his hand, and endured the jokes of his reverend brother, the remarks of Mrs. Tufton, the blushes of Phœbe. He stood for half an hour at least perforce in unwilling and constrained civility—at last he became desperate;—with a wild promise to return presently, he rushed out into the night. The station was about half a mile out of Carlingford, at the new end, a long way past Dr. Rider’s. When Vincent reached it, the telegraph clerk was putting on his hat to go away, and did not relish the momentary detention; when the message was received and despatched, the young minister drew breath—he went out of the office, wiping his hot forehead, to the railway platform, where the last train for town was just starting. As Vincent stood recovering himself and regaining his breath, the sudden flash of a match struck in one of the carriages attracted his attention. He looked, and saw by the light of the lamp inside a man stooping to light his cigar. The action brought the face, bending down close to the window, clearly out against the dark-blue background of the empty carriage; hair light, fine, and thin, in long but scanty locks—a high-featured eagle-face, too sharp for beauty now, but bearing all the traces of superior good looks departed—a light beard, so light that it did not count for its due in the aspect of that remarkable countenance—a figure full of ease and haughty grace: all these particulars Vincent noted with a keen rapid inspection. In another moment the long leash of carriages had plunged into the darkness. With a strange flush of triumph he watched them disappear, and turned away with a smile on his lips. The message of warning was already tingling along the sensitive wires, and must outspeed the slow human traveller. This face, which so stamped itself upon his memory, which he fancied he could see pictured on the air as he returned along the dark road, was the face of the man who had been Lady Western’s companion at the lecture. That it was the same face which had confronted Mrs. Hilyard in the dark graveyard behind Salem Chapel he never doubted. With a thrill of active hatred and fierce enmity which it was difficult to account for, and still more difficult for a man of his profession to excuse, the young man looked forward to the unknown future with a certainty of meeting that face again.

We drop a charitable veil over the conclusion of the night. Mr. Raffles and Mr. Vincent supped at Pigeon’s, along with the Browns and Tozers; and Phœbe’s testimony is on record that it was a feast of reason and a flow of soul.

CHAPTER XI.

THE next morning Vincent awoke with a sense of personal occupation and business, which perhaps is only possible to a man engaged with the actual occurrences of individual life. Professional duties and the general necessities of existing, do not give that thrill of sensible importance and use which a man feels who is busy with affairs which concern his own or other people’s very heart and being. The young Nonconformist was no longer the sentimentalist who had made the gaping assembly at Salem Chapel uneasy over their tea-drinking. That dark and secret ocean of life which he had apostrophised, opened up to him immediately thereafter one of its most mysterious scenes. This had shaken Vincent rudely out of his own youthful vagaries. Perhaps the most true of philosophers, contemplating, however profoundly, the secrets of nature or thought, would come to a sudden standstill over a visible abyss of human guilt, wretchedness, heroic self-restraint, and courage, yawning apparent in the meditative way. What, then, were the poor dialectics of Church and State controversy, or the fluctuations of an uncertain young mind feeling itself superior to its work, to such a spectacle of passionate life, full of evil and of noble qualities—of guilt and suffering more intense than anything philosophy dreams of? The thin veil which youthful ignorance, believing in the supremacy of thought and superior charm of intellectual concerns, lays over the world, shrivelled up under the fiery lurid light of that passionate scene. Two people clearly, who had once loved each other, hating each other to the death, struggling desperately over a lesser thread of life proceeding from them both—the mother, driven to the lowest extremities of existence, standing up like a wild creature to defend her offspring—what could philosophy say to such phenomena? A wild circle of passion sprang into conscious being under the young man’s half-frightened eyes—wild figures that filled the world, leaving small space for the calm suggestions of thought, and even to truth itself so little vantage-ground. Love, Hatred, Anger, Jealousy, Revenge—how many more? Vincent, who was no longer the lofty reasoning Vincent of Homerton, found life look different under the light of those torch-bearers. But he had no leisure on this particular morning to survey the subject. He had to carry his report and explanation to the strange woman who had so seized upon and involved him in her concerns.

Mrs. Hilyard was seated in her room, just as he had seen her before, working with flying needle and nervous fingers at her coarsest needlework. She said, “Come in,” and did not rise when he entered. She gave him an eager, inquiring look, more importunate and commanding than any words, but never stopped working, moving her thin fingers as if there was some spell in the continuance of her labour. She was impatient of his silence before he had closed the door—desperate when he said the usual greeting. She opened her pale lips and spoke, but Vincent heard nothing. She was beyond speech.

“The message went off last night, and I wrote to my mother,” said Vincent; “don’t fear. She will do what you wish, and everything will be well.”

It was some time before Mrs. Hilyard quite conquered her agitation; when she succeeded, she spoke so entirely in her usual tone that Vincent started, being inexperienced in such changes. He contemplated her with tragic eyes in her living martyrdom; she, on the contrary, more conscious of her own powers, her own strength of resistance and activity of life, than of any sacrifice, had nothing about her the least tragical, and spoke according to nature. Instead of any passionate burst of self-revelation, this is what she said—