“I almost wonder,” said Vincent, with a little natural impatience, “that you did not struggle on with Mr. Tufton for a little longer, till your son’s education was finished.”
Mrs. Tozer held up her head with gratified pride. “He’ll be two years before he’s ready, and there’s never no telling what may happen in that time,” said the pleased mother, forgetting how little favourable to her guest was any anticipated contingency. The words were very innocently spoken, but they had their effect upon Vincent. He made haste to extricate himself from the urgent hospitality which surrounded him. He was deafer than ever to Miss Phoebe’s remarks, and listened with a little impatience to Tozer’s wisdom. As soon as he could manage it, he left them, with abundant material for his thoughts. “There’s never no telling what may happen in that time,” rang in his ears as he crossed George Street to his lodging, and the young minister could scarcely check the disgust and impatience which were rising in his mind. In all the pride of his young intellect, to be advised by Tozer—to have warning stories told him of that unfortunate brother in Parson’s Green, whose pretty wife made herself obnoxious to the deacons’ wives—to have the support afforded by the butterman to the chapel thrown in his face with such an undisguised claim upon his gratitude—oh heaven, was this what Homerton was to come to? Perhaps he had been brought here, in all the young flush of his hopes, only to have the life crushed out of him by those remorseless chapel-managers, and room made over his tarnished fame and mortified expectations—over his body, as the young man said to himself in unconscious heroics—for young Tozer’s triumphant entrance. On the whole, it was not to be supposed that to see himself at the mercy of such a limited and jealous coterie—people proud of their liberality to the chapel, and altogether unable to comprehend the feelings of a sensitive and cultivated mind—could be an agreeable prospect to the young man. Their very approbation chafed him; and if he went beyond their level, or exceeded their narrow limit, what mercy was he to expect, what justice, what measure of comprehension? He went home with a bitterness of disgust in his mind far more intense and tragical than appeared to be at all necessary in the circumstances, and which only the fact that this was his first beginning in real life, and that his imagination had never contemplated the prominent position of the butter-shop and the Devonshire Dairy, in what he fondly called his new sphere, could have justified. Perhaps no new sphere ever came up to the expectations of the neophyte; but to come, if not with too much gospel, yet with an intellectual Christian mission, an evangelist of refined nonconformity, an apostle of thought and religious opinion, and to sink suddenly into “coorses” of sermons and statistics of seat-letting in Salem—into tea-parties of deacons’ wives, and singing-classes—into the complacent society of those good people who were conscious of doing so much for the chapel and supporting the minister—that was a downfall not to be lightly thought of. Salem itself, and the new pulpit, which had a short time ago represented to poor Vincent that tribune from which he was to influence the world, that point of vantage which was all a true man needed for the making of his career, dwindled into a miserable scene of trade before his disenchanted eyes—a preaching shop, where his success was to be measured by the seat-letting, and his soul decanted out into periodical issue under the seal of Tozer & Co. Such, alas! were the indignant thoughts with which, the old Adam rising bitter and strong within him, the young Nonconformist hastened home.
And She was Lady Western—the gayest and brightest and highest luminary in all the society of Carlingford. As well love the moon, who no longer descends to Endymion, as lift presumptuous eyes to that sweeter planet which was as much out of reach of the Dissenting minister. Poor fellow! his room did not receive a very cheerful inmate when he shut the door upon the world and sat down with his thoughts.
V
It was about this time, when Mr. Vincent was deeply cast down about his prospects, and saw little comfort before or around him, and when, consequently, an interest apart from himself, and which could detach his thoughts from Salem and its leading members, was of importance, that his mother’s letters began to grow specially interesting. Vincent could not quite explain how it was, but unquestionably those female epistles had expanded all at once; and instead of the limited household atmosphere hitherto breathing in them—an atmosphere confined by the strait cottage walls, shutting in the little picture which the absent son knew so well, and in which usually no figure appeared but those of his pretty sister Susan, and their little servant, and a feminine neighbour or two—instead of those strict household limits, the world, as we have said, had expanded round the widow’s pen; the cottage walls or windows seemed to have opened out to disclose the universe beyond:
