“Arthur, my dear boy! did you hear Susan call me?—hark! I fancied I heard her voice. Oh, Arthur dear, go and see, I am too weak to run myself. Say I am coming directly—hark! do you think it is Susan? Oh, Arthur, go and see!”
Startled by her earnestness, though declaring he heard nothing, the young man hastened away. Mrs. Vincent seized her opportunity without loss of time.
“Mr. Tozer,” said the widow, “I am just going to my sick child. Arthur and you will be able to talk of your business more freely when I am gone, and I hope you will be guided to give him good advice; what I am afraid of is, that he will throw it all up,” continued Mrs. Vincent, leaning her hand upon the table, and bending forward confidential and solemn to the startled butterman, “as so many talented young men in our connection do nowadays. Young men are so difficult to deal with; they will not put up with things that we know must be put up with,” said the minister’s mother, shaking her head with a sigh. “That is how we are losing all our young preachers;—an accomplished young man has so many ways of getting on now. Oh, Mr. Tozer, I rely upon you to give my son good advice—if he is aggravated, it is my terror that he will throw it all up! Good night. You have been our kind friend, and I have such trust in you!” Saying which the widow shook hands with him earnestly and went away, leaving the worthy deacon much shaken, and with a weight of responsibility upon him. Vincent met her at the door, assuring her that Susan had not called; but with a heroism which nobody suspected—trembling with anxiety, yet conscious of having struck a masterstroke—his mother glided away to the stillness of the sickroom, where she sat questioning her own wisdom all the evening after, and wondering whether, after all, at such a crisis, she had done right to come away.
When the minister and the deacon were left alone together, instead of returning with zest to their interrupted discussion, neither of them said anything for some minutes. Once more Vincent took up his position on the hearthrug, and Tozer gazed ruefully at the empty cup which he still covered with his hand, full of troubled thoughts. The responsibility was almost too much for Tozer. He could scarcely realise to himself what terrors lay involved in that threatened danger, or what might happen if the minister threw it all up! He held his breath at the awful thought. The widow’s Parthian arrow had gone straight to the butterman’s heart.
“I hope, sir, as you won’t think there’s anything but an anxious feelin’ in the flock to do you justice as our pastor,” said Tozer, with a certain solemnity, “or that we ain’t sensible of our blessin’s. I’ve said both to yourself and others, as you was a young man of great promise, and as good a preacher as I ever see in our connection, Mr. Vincent, and I’ll stand by what I’ve said; but you ain’t above taking a friend’s advice—not speaking with no authority,” added the good butterman, in a conciliatory tone; “it’s all along of the women, sir—it’s them as is at the bottom of all the mischief in a flock. It ain’t Pigeon, bless you, as is to blame. And even my missis, though she’s not to say unreasonable as women go—none of them can abide to hear of you a-going after Lady Western—that’s it, Mr. Vincent. She’s a lovely creature,” cried Tozer, with enthusiasm; “there ain’t one in Carlingford to compare with her, as I can see, and I wouldn’t be the one to blame a young man as was carried away. But there couldn’t no good come of it, and Salem folks is touchy and jealous,” continued the worthy deacon; “that was all as I meant to say.”
Thus the conference ended amicably after a little more talk, in which Pigeon and the other malcontents were made a sacrifice of and given up by the anxious butterman, upon whom Mrs. Vincent’s parting words had made so deep an impression. Tozer went home thereafter to overawe his angry wife, whom Vincent’s visit to Lady Western had utterly exasperated, with the dread responsibility now laid upon them. “What if he was to throw it all up!” said Tozer. That alarming possibility struck silence and dismay to the very heart of the household. Perhaps it was the dawn of a new era of affairs in Salem. The deacon’s very sleep was disturbed by recollections of the promising young men who, now he came to think of it, had been lost to the connection, as Mrs. Vincent suggested, and had thrown it all up. The fate of the chapel, and all the new sittings let under the ministry of the young Nonconformist, seemed to hang on Tozer’s hands. He thought of the weekly crowd, and his heart stirred. Not many deacons in the connection could boast of being crowded out of their own pews Sunday after Sunday by the influx of unexpected hearers. The enlightenment of Carlingford, as well as the filling of the chapel, was at stake. Clearly, in the history of Salem, a new era had begun.
XXXIV
That week passed on without much incident. To Vincent and his mother, in whose history days had, for some time past, been counting like years, it might have seemed a very grateful pause, but for the thunderous atmosphere of doubt and uncertainty which clouded over them on every side. Susan’s recovery did not progress; and Dr. Rider began to look as serious over her utter languor and apathy, which nothing seemed able to disturb, as he had done at her delirium. The Salem people stood aloof, as Mrs. Vincent perceived, with keen feminine observation. She could not
