“I did not see him;—I mean I am sorry I was not able to call on Pigeon today,” said Vincent, hastily; “I was unexpectedly detained,” he added, growing rather red, and looking Tozer in the face. “Indeed, I am not sure that I ought to call on Pigeon,” continued the minister, after a pause; “I have done nothing to offend him. If he chooses to take an affront which was never intended, I can’t help it. Why should I go and court every man who is sulky or ill-tempered in the congregation? Look here, Tozer—you are a sensible man—you have been very kind, as my mother says. I set out today intending to go and see this man for your sake; but you know very well this is not what I came to Carlingford for. If I had known the sort of thing that was required of me!” cried Vincent, rising up and resuming his place on the hearthrug—“to go with my hat in my hand, and beg this one and the other to forgive me, and receive me into favour:—why, what have I ever done to Pigeon? if he has anything to find fault with, he had much better come to me, and have it out.”
“Mr. Vincent, sir,” said Tozer solemnly, pushing away his empty teacup, and leaning forward over the table on his folded arms, “them ain’t the sentiments for a pastor in our connection. That’s a style of thing as may do among fine folks, or in the church where there’s no freedom; but them as chooses their own pastor, and pays their own pastor, and don’t spare no pains to make him comfortable, has a right to expect different. Them ain’t the sentiments, sir, for Salem folks. I don’t say if they’re wrong or right—I don’t make myself a judge of no man; but I’ve seen a deal of our connection and human nature in general, and this I know, that a minister as has to please his flock, has got to please his flock whatever happens, and neither me nor no other man can make it different; and that Mrs. Vincent, as has seen life, can tell you as well as I can. Pigeon ain’t neither here nor there. It’s the flock as has to be considered—and it ain’t preaching alone as will do that; and that your good mother, sir, as knows the world, will tell you as well as me.”
“But Arthur is well aware of it,” said the alarmed mother, interposing hastily, conscious that to be thus appealed to was the greatest danger which could threaten her. “His dear father always told him so; yet, after all, Mr. Vincent used to say,” added the anxious diplomatist, “that nothing was to be depended on in the end but the pulpit. I have heard him talking of it with the leading people in the connection, Mr. Tozer. They all used to say that, though visiting was very good, and a pastor’s duty, it was the pulpit, after all, that was to be most trusted to; and I have always seen in my experience—I don’t know if the same has occurred to you—that both gifts are very rarely to be met with. Of course, we should all strive after perfection,” continued the minister’s mother, with a tremulous smile—“but it is so seldom met with that anyone has both gifts! Arthur, my dear boy, I wish you would eat something; and Mr. Tozer, let me give you another cup of tea.”
“No more for me, ma’am, thankye,” said Tozer, laying his hand over his cup. “I don’t deny as there’s truth in what you say. I don’t deny as a family here and there in a flock may be aggravating like them Pigeons, I’m not the man to be hard on a minister, if that ain’t his turn. A pastor may have a weakness, and not feel himself as equal to one part of his work as to another; but to go for to say as visiting and keeping the flock pleased, ain’t his duty—it’s that, ma’am, as goes to my heart.”
Tozer’s pathos touched a lighter chord in the bosom of the minister. He came back to his seat with a passing sense of amusement. “If Pigeon has anything to find fault with, let him come and have it out,” said Vincent, bringing, as his mother instantly perceived, a less clouded countenance into the light of the lamp. “You, who are a much better judge than Pigeon, were not displeased on Sunday,” added the minister, not without a certain complacency. Looking back upon the performances of that day, the young Nonconformist himself was not displeased. He knew now—though he was unconscious at the time—that he had made a great appearance in the pulpit of Salem, and that once more the eyes of Carlingford, unused to oratory, and still more unused to great and passionate emotion, were turned upon him.
“Well, sir, if it come to be a question of that,” said the mollified deacon; “but no—it ain’t that—I can’t, whatever my feelings is, be forgetful of my dooty!” cried Tozer, in sudden excitement. “It ain’t that, Mr. Vincent; it’s for your good I’m a-speaking up and letting you know my mind. It ain’t the pulpit, sir. I’ll not say as I ever had a word to say against your sermons: but when the minister goes out of my house, a-saying as he’s going to visit the flock, and when he’s to be seen the next moment, Mrs. Vincent, not going to the flock, but a-spending his precious time in Grange Lane with them as don’t know nothing, and don’t care nothing for Salem, nor understand the ways of folks like us—”
Here Tozer was interrupted suddenly by the minister, who once more rose from his chair with an angry exclamation. What he might have said in the hasty impulse of the moment nobody could tell; but Mrs. Vincent,
