“Pa has some business people with him in the parlour,” explained Phoebe, who was very tender and sympathetic, as might be expected; but it did not require a very brilliant intelligence to divine that the business under discussion was the minister, even if Mrs. Tozer’s solemnity, and the anxious care with which he was conveyed past the closed door of the parlour, had not already filled the mind of the pastor with suspicion.
“Go down and let your pa know as Mr. Vincent’s here,” said Mrs. Tozer, after this uncomfortable séance had lasted half an hour; “and he’s not to keep them men no longer than he can help; and presently we’ll have a bit of supper—that’s what I enjoy, that is, Mr. Vincent; no ceremony like there must be at a party, but just to take us as we are; and we can’t be took amiss, Tozer and me. There’s always a bit of something comfortable for supper; and no friend as could be made so welcome as the minister,” added the good woman, growing more and more civil as she came to her wits’ end; for had not Pigeon and Brown been asked to share that something comfortable? For the first time it was a relief to the butterman’s household when the pastor declined the impromptu invitation, and went resolutely away. His ears, sharpened by suspicion, recognised the familiar voices in the parlour, where the door was ajar when he went out again. Vincent could not have imagined that to feel himself unwelcome at Tozer’s would have had any effect whatever upon his preoccupied mind, or that to pass almost within hearing of one of the discussions which must inevitably be going on about him among the managers of Salem, could quicken his pulse or disturb his composure. But it was so notwithstanding. He had come out at the entreaty of his mother, half unwillingly, anticipating, with the liveliest realisation of all its attendant circumstances, an evening spent at that big table in the back parlour, and something comfortable to supper. He came back again tingling with curiosity, indignation, and suppressed defiance. The something comfortable had not this time been prepared for him. He was being discussed, not entertained, in the parlour; and Mrs. Tozer and Phoebe, in the chill fine drawing-room upstairs, where the gas was blazing in a vain attempt to make up for the want of the fire—shivering with cold and civility—had been as much disconcerted by his appearance as if they too were plotting against him. Mr. Vincent returned to his sermon not without some additional fire. He had spent a great deal of time over his sermon that week; it was rather learned and very elaborate, and a little—dull. The poor minister felt very conscious of the fact, but could not help it. He was tempted to put it in the fire, and begin again, when he returned that Friday evening, smarting with those little stinging arrows of slight and injury; but it was too late: and this was the beginning of the “coorse” which Tozer had laid so much store by. Vincent concluded the elaborate production by a few sharp sentences, which he was perfectly well aware did not redeem it, and explained to his mother, with a little ill-temper, as she thought, that he had changed his mind about visiting the Tozers that night. Mrs. Vincent did Arthur injustice as she returned to Susan’s room, where again matters looked very sadly; and so the troubled week came to a close.
XXXV
Sunday! It came again, the inevitable morning. There are pathetic stories current in the world about most of the other professions that claim the ear of the public; how lawyers prepare great speeches, which are to open for them the gates of the future, in the midst of the killing anxieties of life and poverty—how mimes and players of all descriptions keep the world in laughter while their hearts are breaking. But few people think of the sufferings of the priest, whom, let trouble or anxiety come as they please, necessity will have in the inexorable pulpit Sunday after Sunday. So Vincent thought as he put on his Geneva gown in his little vestry, with the raw February air coming in at the open window, and his sermon, which was dull, lying on the table beside him. It was dull—he knew it in his heart; but after all the strain of passion he had been held at, what was to preserve him any more than another from the unavoidable lassitude and blank that followed? Still it was not agreeable to know that Salem was crowded to the door, and that this sermon, upon which the minister looked ruefully, was laboured and feeble, without any divine spark to enlighten it, or power to touch the hearts of other men. The consciousness that it was dull would, the preacher knew, make it duller still—its heaviness would affect himself as well as his audience. Still that was not to be helped now, there it lay, ready for utterance; and here in his Geneva gown, with the sound in his ears of all the stream of entering worshippers who were then arranging themselves in the pews of Salem, stood the minister prepared to speak. There was, as Vincent divined, a great crowd—so great a crowd that various groups stood during the whole service,
