Salem Chapel. Volume 1/2. Oliphant Margaret
was that on which the young man suddenly lighted as he went in, somewhat indifferent, it must be confessed, and expecting to find nothing that could interest him. She was seated in a shabby room, only half-carpeted, up two pair of stairs, which looked out upon no more lively view than the back of Salem Chapel itself, with its few dismal scattered graves – and was working busily at men’s clothing of the coarsest kind, blue stuff which had transferred its colour to her thin fingers. Meagre as were her surroundings, however, Mr. Vincent, stumbling listlessly up the narrow bare stair of the poor lodging-house, suddenly came to himself as he stood within this humble apartment. If this was to be his penitent, the story she had to tell might be not unworthy of serious listening. He stammered forth a half apology and explanation of his errand, as he gazed surprised at so unexpected a figure, wondering within himself what intense strain and wear of life could have worn to so thin a tissue the outer garment of this keen and sharp-edged soul.
“Come in,” said the stranger, “I am glad to see you. I know you, Mr. Vincent, though I can’t suppose you’ve observed me. Take a seat. I have heard you preach ever since you came – so, knowing in a manner how your thoughts run, I’ve a kind of acquaintance with you: which, to be sure, isn’t the same on your side. I daresay the woman at the Dairy sent you to me?”
“I understood – from Mrs. Brown certainly – that you wanted to see me,” said the puzzled pastor.
“Yes, it was quite true. I have resources in myself, to be sure, as much as most people,” said his new acquaintance, whom he had been directed to ask for as Mrs. Hilyard, “but still human relations are necessary; and as I don’t know anybody here, I thought I’d join the Chapel. Queer set of people, rather, don’t you think?” she continued, glancing up from her rapid stitching to catch Vincent’s conscious eye; “they thought I was in spiritual distress, I suppose, and sent me the butterman. Lord bless us! if I had been, what could he have done for me, does anybody imagine? and when he didn’t succeed, there came the Dairy person, who, I daresay, would have understood what I wanted had I been a cow. Now I can make out what I’m doing when I have you, Mr. Vincent. I know your line a little from your sermons. That was wonderfully clever on Sunday morning about confirmation. I belong to the Church myself by rights, and was confirmed, of course, at the proper time, like other people, but I am a person of impartial mind. That was a famous downright blow. I liked you there.”
“I am glad to have your approbation,” said the young minister, rather stiffly; “but excuse me – I was quite in earnest in my argument.”
“Yes, yes; that was the beauty of it,” said his eager interlocutor, who went on without ever raising her eyes, intent upon the rough work which he could not help observing sometimes made her scarred fingers bleed as it passed rapidly through them. “No argument is ever worth listening to if it isn’t used in earnest. I’ve led a wandering life, and heard an infinity of sermons of late years. When there are any brains in them at all, you know, they are about the only kind of mental stimulant a poor woman in my position can come by, for I’ve no time for reading lately. Down here, in these regions, where the butterman comes to inquire after your spiritual interests, and is a superior being,” added this singular new adherent of Salem, looking full for a single moment in her visitor’s eyes, with a slight movement of the muscles of her thin face, and making a significant pause, “the air’s a trifle heavy. It isn’t pure oxygen we breathe in Back Grove Street, by any means.”
“I assure you it surprises me more than I can explain, to find,” said Vincent, hesitating for a proper expression, “to find – ”
“Such a person as I am in Back Grove Street,” interrupted his companion, quickly; “yes – and thereby hangs a tale. But I did not send for you to tell it. I sent for you for no particular reason, but a kind of yearning to talk to somebody. I beg your pardon sincerely – but you know,” she said, once more with a direct sudden glance and that half-visible movement in her face which meant mischief, “you are a minister, and are bound to have no inclinations of your own, but to give yourself up to the comfort of the poor.”
“Without any irony, that is the aim I propose to myself,” said Vincent; “but I fear you are disposed to take rather a satirical view of such matters. It is fashionable to talk lightly on those subjects; but I find life and its affairs sufficiently serious, I assure you – ”
Here she stopped her work suddenly, and looked up at him, her dark sharp eyes lighting up her thin sallow face with an expression which it was beyond his power to fathom. The black eyelashes widened, the dark eyebrows rose, with a full gaze of the profoundest tragic sadness, on the surface of which a certain gleam of amusement seemed to hover. The worn woman looked over the dark world of her own experience, of which she was conscious in every nerve, but of which he knew nothing, and smiled at his youth out of the abysses of her own life, where volcanoes had been, and earthquakes. He perceived it dimly, without understanding how, and faltered and blushed, yet grew angry with all the self-assertion of youth.
“I don’t doubt you know that as well as I do – perhaps better; but notwithstanding, I find my life leaves little room for laughter,” said the young pastor, not without a slight touch of heroics.
“Mr. Vincent,” said Mrs. Hilyard, with a gleam of mirth in her eye, “in inferring that I perhaps know better, you infer also that I am older than you, which is uncivil to a lady. But for my part, I don’t object to laughter. Generally it’s better than crying, which in a great many cases I find the only alternative. I doubt, however, much whether life, from the butterman’s point of view, wears the same aspect. I should be inclined to say not; and I daresay your views will brighten with your company,” added the aggravating woman, again resuming, with eyes fixed upon it, her laborious work.
“I perceive you see already what is likely to be my great trial in Carlingford,” said young Vincent. “I confess that the society of my office-bearers, which I suppose I must always consider myself bound to – ”
“That was a very sad sigh,” said the rapid observer beside him; “but don’t confide in me, lest I should be tempted to tell somebody. I can speak my mind without prejudice to anybody; and if you agree with me, it may be a partial relief to your feelings. I shall be glad to see you when you can spare me half an hour. I can’t look at you while I talk, for that would lose me so much time, but at my age it doesn’t matter. Come and see me. It’s your business to do me good – and it’s possible I might even do some good to you.”
“Thank you. I shall certainly come,” said the minister, rising with the feeling that he had received his dismissal for to-day. She rose, too, quickly, and but for a moment, and held out her hand to him.
“Be sure you don’t betray to the dairywoman what I had on my mind, and wanted to tell you, though she is dying to know,” said his singular new acquaintance, without a smile, but with again a momentary movement in her thin cheeks. When she had shaken hands with him, she seated herself again immediately, and without a moment’s pause proceeded with her work, apparently concentrating all her faculties upon it, and neither hearing nor seeing more of her visitor, though he still stood within two steps of her, overshadowing the table. The young man turned and left the room with involuntary quietness, as if he had been dismissed from the presence of a princess. He went straight down-stairs without ever pausing, and hastened through the narrow back-street with still the impulse communicated by that dismissal upon him. When he drew breath, it was with a curious mixture of feelings. Who she was or what she was – how she came there, working at those “slops” till the colour came off upon her hands, and her poor thin fingers bled – she so strangely superior to her surroundings, yet not despising or quarrelling with them, or even complaining of them, so far as he could make out – infinitely perplexed the inexperienced minister. He came away excited and bewildered from the interview, which had turned out so different from his expectations. Whether she had done him good, was extremely doubtful; but she had changed the current of his thoughts, which was in its way an immediate benefit. Marvelling over such a mysterious apparition, and not so sure as in the morning that nothing out of the most vulgar routine ever could occur in Carlingford, Mr. Vincent turned with meditative steps towards the little house at the extreme end of Grove Street, where his predecessor still lingered. A visit to old Mr. Tufton was a periodical once a-week duty, to be performed with the utmost