Poor Vincent made a hasty effort to exculpate himself from the soft impeachment, but with no effect. Smiles, innuendoes, a succession of questions asked by Phoebe, who retired, whenever she had made her remark, with conscious looks and pink blushes, perpetually renewed this delightful subject. The unlucky young man retired upon Tozer. In desperation he laid himself open to the less troublesome infliction of the butterman’s advice. In the meantime the table was spread, and supper appeared in most substantial and savoury shape; the only drawback being, that whenever the door was opened, the odours of bacon and cheese from the shop came in like a musty shadow of the boiled ham and hot sausages within.
“I am very partial to your style, Mr. Vincent,” said the deacon; “there’s just one thing I’d like to observe, sir, if you’ll excuse me. I’d give ’em a coorse; there’s nothing takes like a coorse in our connection. Whether it’s on a chapter or a book of Scripture, or on a perticklar doctrine, I’d make a pint of giving ’em a coorse if it was me. There was Mr. Bailey, of Parson’s Green, as was so popular before he married—he had a historical coorse in the evenings, and a coorse upon the eighth of Romans in the morning; and it was astonishing to see how they took. I walked over many and many’s the summer evening myself, he kep’ up the interest so. There ain’t a cleverer man in our body, nor wasn’t a better liked as he was then.”
“And now I understand he’s gone away—what was the reason?” asked Mr. Vincent.
Tozer shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. “All along of the women: they didn’t like his wife; and my own opinion is, he fell off dreadful. Last time I heard him, I made up my mind I’d never go back again—me that was such an admirer of his; and the managers found the chapel was falling off, and a deputation waited on him; and, to be sure, he saw it his duty to go.”
“And, oh, she was so sweetly pretty!” cried Miss Phoebe: “but pray, pray, Mr. Vincent, don’t look so pale. If you marry a pretty lady, we’ll all be so kind to her! We shan’t grudge her our minister; we shall—”
Here Miss Phoebe paused, overcome by her emotions.
“I do declare there never was such a child,” said Mrs. Tozer: “it’s none of your business, Phoebe. She’s a great deal too feelin’, Mr. Vincent. But I don’t approve, for my part, of a minister marrying a lady as is too grand for her place, whatever Phoebe may say. It’s her that should teach suchlike as us humility and simple ways; and a fine lady isn’t no way suitable. Not to discourage you, Mr. Vincent, I haven’t a doubt, for my part, that you’ll make a nice choice.”
“I have not the least intention of trying the experiment,” said poor Vincent, with a faint smile; then, turning to his deacon, he plunged into the first subject that occurred to him. “Do you know a Mrs. Hilyard in Back Grove Street?” asked the young minister. “I went to see her the other day. Who is she, or where does she belong to, can you tell me?—and which of your great ladies in Carlingford is it,” he added, with a little catching of his breath after a momentary pause, “who visits that poor lady? I saw a carriage at her door.”
“Meaning the poor woman at the back of the chapel?” said Tozer—“I don’t know nothing of her, except that I visited there, sir, as you might do, in the way of dooty. Ah! I fear she’s in the gall of bitterness, Mr. Vincent; she didn’t take my ’umble advice, sir, not as a Christian ought. But she comes to the chapel regular enough; and you may be the means of putting better thoughts into her mind; and as for our great ladies in Carlingford,” continued Mr. Tozer, with the air of an authority, “never a one of them, I give you my word, would go out of her way a-visiting to one of the chapel folks. They’re a deal too bigoted for that, especially them at St. Roque’s.”
“Oh, Pa, how can you say so,” cried Phoebe, “when it’s very well known the ladies go everywhere, where the people are very, very poor? but then Mr. Vincent said a poor lady. Was it a nice carriage? The Miss Wodehouses always walk, and so does Mrs. Glen, and all the Strangeways. Oh, I know, it was the young Dowager—that pretty, pretty lady, you know, mamma, that gives the grand parties, and lives in Grange Lane. I saw her carriage going up the lane by the chapel once. Oh, Mr. Vincent, wasn’t she very, very pretty, with blue eyes and brown hair?”
“I could not tell you what kind of eyes and hair they were,” said Mr. Vincent, trying hard to speak indifferently, and quite succeeding so far as Phoebe Tozer was concerned; for who could venture to associate the minister of Salem, even as a victim, with the bright eyes of Lady Western? “I thought it strange to see her there, whoever she was.”
“Oh, how insensible you are!” murmured Phoebe, across the table. Perhaps, considering all things, it was not strange that Phoebe should imagine her own pink bloom to have dimmed the young pastor’s appreciation of other beauty.
“But it was Mrs. Hilyard I inquired about, and not this Lady—Lady what, Miss Phoebe?” asked the reverend hypocrite; “I don’t profess to be learned in titles, but hers is surely a strange one. I thought dowager was another word for an old woman.”
“She’s a beautiful young creature,” broke in the butterman. “I mayn’t approve of such goings-on, but I can’t shut my eyes. She deals with me regular, and I can tell you the shop looks like a different place when them eyes of hers are in it. She’s out of our line, and she’s out of your line,
