XLIII
But the deputation and the increased salary and the silver salver were all ineffectual. Arthur would not hear reason, as his mother knew. It was with bitter restrained tears of disappointment and vexation that she heard from him, when he returned to that conference in Susan’s room, the events of the evening. It came hard upon the widow, who had invited her son to his sister’s bedside that they might for the first time talk together as of old over all their plans. But though her heart ached over the opportunity thus thrown away, and though she asked herself with terror, “What was Arthur to do now?” his mother knew he was not to be persuaded. She smiled on Tozer next morning, ready to cry with vexation and anxiety as she was. “When my son has made up his mind, it will be vain for anyone to try to move him,” said the widow, proud of him in spite of all, though her heart cried out against his imprudence and foolishness; and so it proved. The minister made his acknowledgments so heartily to the good butterman, that Tozer’s disclaimer of any special merit, and declaration that he had but tried to “do his dooty,” was made with great faltering and unsteadiness; but the Nonconformist himself never wavered in his resolve. Half of Carlingford sat in tears to hear Mr. Vincent’s last sermon. Such a discourse had never been heard in Salem. Scarcely one of the deacons could find a place in the crowded chapel to which all the world rushed; and Tozer himself listened to the last address of his minister from one of the doors of the gallery, where his face formed the apex and culminating point of the crowd to Mr. Vincent’s eyes. When Tozer brushed his red handkerchief across his face, as he was moved to do two or three times in the course of the sermon, the gleam seemed to the minister, who was himself somewhat excited, to redden over the entire throng. It was thus that Mr. Vincent ended his connection with Salem Chapel. It was a heavy blow to the congregation for the time—so heavy that the spirit of the butterman yielded; he was not seen in his familiar seat for three full Sundays after; but the place was mismanaged in Pigeon’s hands, and regard for the connection brought Tozer to the rescue. They had Mr. Beecher down from Homerton, who made a very good impression. The subsequent events are so well known in Carlingford, that it is hardly necessary to mention the marriage of the new minister, which took place about six months afterwards. Old Mr. Tufton blessed the union of his dear young brother with the blushing Phoebe, who made a most suitable minister’s wife in Salem after the first disagreeables were over; and Mr. Beecher proved a great deal more tractable than any man of genius. If he was not quite equal to Mr. Vincent in the pulpit, he was much more complaisant at all the tea-parties; and, after a year’s experience, was fully acknowledged, both by himself and others, to have made an ’it.
Vincent meanwhile plunged into that world of life which the young man did not know; not that matters looked badly for him when he left Carlingford—on the contrary, the connection in general thrilled to hear of his conduct and his speech. The enthusiasm in Homerton was too great to be kept within bounds. Such a demonstration of the rightful claims of the preacher had not been made before in the memory of man; and the enlightened Nonconforming community did honour to the martyr. Three vacant congregations at least wooed him to their pulpits; his fame spread over the country: but he did not accept any of these invitations; and after a while the eminent Dissenting families who invited him to dinner, found so many other independencies cropping out in the young man, that the light of their countenances dimmed upon him. It began to be popularly reported, that a man so apt to hold opinions of his own, and so convinced of the dignity of his office, had best have been in the Church where people knew no better. Such, perhaps, might have been the conclusion to which he came himself; but education and prejudice and Homerton stood invincible in the way. A Church of the Future—an ideal corporation, grand and primitive, not yet realised, but surely real, to be come at one day—shone before his eyes, as it shines before so many; but, in the meantime, the Nonconformist went into literature, as was natural, and was, it is believed in Carlingford, the founder of the Philosophical Review, that new organ of public opinion. He had his battle to fight, and fought it out in silence, saying little to anyone. Sundry old arrows were in his heart, still quivering by times as he fought with the devil and the world in his desert; but he thought himself almost prosperous, and perfectly composed and eased of all fanciful and sentimental sorrows, when he went, two or three years after these events, to Folkestone, to meet his mother and sister, who had been living abroad, away from him, with their charge, and to bring them to the little house he had prepared for them in London, and where he said to himself he was prepared, along with them—a contented but neutral-coloured household—to live out his life.
But when Mr. Vincent met his mother at Folkestone, not even the haze of the spring evening, nor the agitation of the meeting, which brought back again
