Vincent did not hear the audible hum and buzz of surprise and excitement which ran through his startled flock. He did not pay much attention to what Tozer said to him when all was over. He lingered in his vestry, taking off his gown, until he could hear Lady Western’s carriage drive off after an interval of lingering. The young Dowager had gone out slowly, thinking to see him, and comfort him with a compliment about his sermon, concerning the quality of which she was not critical. She was sorry in her kind heart to perceive his troubled looks, and to discover that somehow, she could not quite understand how, something annoying and unexpected had occurred to him. And then this uneasy companion, to whom he had bound her, and whose strange agitation and wonderful change of aspect Lady Western could in no way account for—But the carriage rolled away at last, not without reluctance, while the minister still remained in his vestry. Then he hurried home, speaking to no one. Mrs. Vincent did not understand her son all day, nor even next morning, when he might have been supposed to have time to calm down. He was very silent, but no longer dreamy or languid, or lost in the vague discontent and dejection with which she was familiar. On the contrary, the minister had woke up out of that abstraction. He was wonderfully alert, open-eyed, full of occupation. When he sat down to his writing-table it was not to muse, with his pen in his languid fingers, now and then putting down a sentence, but to write straight forward with evident fire and emphasis. He was very tender to herself, but he did not tell her anything. Some new cloud had doubtless appeared on the firmament where there was little need for any further clouds. The widow rose on the Monday morning with a presentiment of calamity on her mind—rose from the bed in Susan’s room which she occupied for two or three hours in the night, sometimes snatching a momentary sleep, which Susan’s smallest movement interrupted. Her heart was rent in two between her children. She went from Susan’s bedside, where her daughter lay in dumb apathy, not to be roused by anything that could be said or done, to minister wistfully at Arthur’s breakfast, which, with her heart in her throat, the widow made a pitiful pretence of sharing. She could not ask him questions. She was silent, too, in her great love and sorrow. Seeing some new trouble approaching—wistfully gazing into the blank skies before her, to discover, if that were possible, without annoying Arthur, or compromising him, what it was; but rather than compromise or annoy him, contenting herself not to know—the greatest stretch of endurance to which as yet she had constrained her spirit.
Arthur did not go out all that Monday. Even in the house a certain excitement was visible to Mrs. Vincent’s keen observation. The landlady herself made her appearance in tears to clear away the remains of the minister’s dinner. “I hope, sir, as you don’t think what’s past and gone has made no difference on me,” said that tearful woman in Mrs. Vincent’s hearing; “it ain’t me as would ever give my support to such doings.” When the widow asked, “What doings?” Arthur only smiled and made some half articulate remark about gossip, which his mother of course treated at its true value. As the dark wintry afternoon closed in, Mrs. Vincent’s anxiety increased under the influence of the landlady’s Sunday dress, in which she was visible progressing about the passages, and warning her husband to mind he wasn’t late. At last Mrs. Tufton called, and the minister’s mother came to a true understanding of the state of affairs. Mrs. Tufton was unsettled and nervous, filled with a not unexhilarating excitement, and all the heat of partisanship. “Don’t you take on,” said the good little woman; “Mr. Tufton is going to the meeting to tell them his sentiments about his young brother. My dear, they will never go against what Mr. Tufton says: and if I should mount upon the platform and make a speech myself, there shan’t be anything done that could vex you; for we always said he was a precious young man, and a credit to the connection; and it would be a disgrace to us all to let the Pigeons, or such people, have it all their own way.” Mrs. Vincent managed to ascertain all the particulars from the old minister’s wife. When she was gone, the widow sat down a little with a very desolate heart to
