“Look as if nothing had happened!—and why should I wish to stay in Carlingford, or—or anywhere?” cried Vincent, in a momentary outbreak of dejection. But he threw down his pen, and closed his blotting-book over the half-written letter. He was too wretched to have much resolution one way or another. To argue the matter was worse than to suffer any consequences, however hard they might be.
“I don’t deny it’s natural as you should feel strange,” admitted Tozer. “I do myself, as am only your friend, Mr. Vincent, when folks are a-talking in the shop, and going over one thing and another—asking if it’s true as she belongs to you, and how a minister’s daughter ever come to know the likes of him—”
“For heaven’s sake, no more, no more!—you will drive me mad!” cried Vincent, springing to his feet. Tozer, thus suddenly interrupted, stared a little, and then changed the subject, though without quite finding out how it was that he had startled his sensitive companion into such sudden impatience. “When I was only telling him the common talk!” as he said to his wife in the privacy of their own parlour. In the meantime he had other subjects equally interesting.
“If you’ll take my advice, you’ll begin your coorse all the same,” said Tozer; “it would have a good effect, that would. When folks are in a state of excitement, and a-looking for something, to come down upon them as before, and accordin’ to intimation, would have a wonderful effect, Mr. Vincent. You take my word, sir, it would be very telling—would that. Don’t lose no time, but begin your coorse as was intimated. It’s a providence, is the intimation. I wouldn’t say nothing about what’s happened—not plain out; but if you could bring in a kind of an inference like, nothing as had anything to do with the story in the papers, but just as might be understood—”
The butterman sat quite calmly and at his ease, but really anxious and interested, making his sober suggestions. The unfortunate minister, unable otherwise to subdue his impatience and wretchedness, fell to walking up and down the room, as was natural. When he could bear it no longer, he came back to the table at which Tozer sat in all the pomp of advice and management. He took his unfinished letter and tore it in little pieces, then stopped the calm flow of the deacon’s counsel by a sudden outburst.
“I will preach,” cried the young man, scattering the bits of paper out of his hand unawares. “Is not that enough? don’t tell me what I am to do—the evil is sufficient without that. I tell you I will preach. I would rather cut off my right hand, if that would do as well. I am speaking like a child or a fool: who cares for my right hand, I wonder, or my life, or my senses? No more of this. I will preach—don’t speak of it again. It will not matter a hundred years hence,” muttered the minister, with that sudden adoption of the philosophy of recklessness which misery sometimes plays with. He threw himself into his chair again, and covered his face with his hands. He was thinking of Salem, and all those rows of gazing eyes. He could see them all in their pews, imagination, with a cruel freak like a mocking spirit, depicting all the finery of Mrs. Pigeon and Mrs. Brown upon that vivid canvass. The minister groaned at the thought of them; but to put it down on paper, and record the pang of exasperation and intolerable wretchedness which was thus connected with the fine winter bonnets of the poulterer’s wife and the dairywoman would make a picture rather grotesque than terrible to unconcerned eyes. It was dreadful earnest to poor Vincent, thinking how he should stand before them on that inexorable Sunday, and preach “as if nothing had happened;” reading all the while, in case his own mind would let him forget them, the vulgarest horrors of all that had happened in all that crowd of eyes.
“And you’ll find a great consolation, take my word, sir, in the thought that you’re a-doing of your duty,” said Tozer, shaking his head solemnly, as he rose to go away; “that’s a wonderful consolation, Mr. Vincent, to all of us; and especially to a minister that knows he’s a-serving his Master and saving souls.”
Saving souls! Heaven help him! the words rang in his ears like mocking echoes long after the butterman had settled into his armchair, and confided to his wife and Phoebe that the pastor was a-coming to himself and taking to his duties, and that we’ll tide it over yet. “Saving souls!” the words came back and back to Vincent’s bewildered mind. They formed a measure and cadence in their constant repetition, haunting him like some spiritual suggestion, as he looked over, with senses confused and dizzy, his little stock of sermons, to make preparation for the duty which he could not escape. At last he tossed them all away in a heap, seized his pen, and poured forth his heart. Saving souls! what did it mean? He was not writing a sermon. Out of the depths of his troubled heart poured all the chaos of thought and wonder, which leapt into fiery life under that quickening touch of
