Dear me, I am very sorry! said Mrs. Tufton; some fever or something, I suppose something thats catching? Dear, dear me, I am so sorry! but there are some people that never take infection; a little camphor is such a nice thing to carry about it cant do any harm, you know. Mrs. Tozer tells me he is a very nice young man, Mr. Vincents friend from Omerton. I dont like to say such a thing of a girl, but I do believe your son could have that Phoebe any day for asking, Mrs. Vincent. I cant bear forward girls, for my part that is her just going into the pew, with the pink bonnet; oh, you know her! to be sure, Mrs. Pigeon remarked you were sure to go there; though I should have hoped we would have seen you as soon as any one in Carlingford.
Indeed, I have been much disappointed not to call. I I hope I shall tomorrow, said the widow, to whom tomorrow loomed dark like another world, and who could not help repeating over and over the dreaded name.
That is Maria Pigeon all in white to be only tradespeople they do dress more than I approve of, said Mrs. Tufton. My Adelaide, I am sure, never went like that. Many people think Maria a deal nicer-looking than Phœbe Tozer, but her mother is so particular more than particular what I call troublesome, you know. You cant turn round without giving her offence. Dear me, how my tongue is going! the minister would say I was just at my old imprudent tricks but you, that were a ministers wife, can understand. She is such a difficult woman to deal with. I am sure Mr. Tufton is always telling them to wait, and that Mr. Vincent is a young man yet, and experience is all he wants. I wish he had a good wife to keep him straight; but I dont know that that would be advisable either, because of Phœbe and the rest. Dear, dear, it is a difficult thing to know what to do!
but Mr. Tufton always says, If he had a little more experience Bless me, the young man is in the pulpit! said Mrs. Tufton, coming to a sudden standstill, growing very red, and picking up her hymn-book. Very seldom had the good woman such a chance of talk. She ran herself so out of breath that she could not join in that first hymn.
But Mrs. Vincent, who had a sensation that the pew, and indeed the whole chapel, trembled with the trembling that was in her own frame, but who felt at the same time that everybody was looking at her, and that Arthurs credit was involved, stood up steadfastly, holding her book firm in both her hands, and with an effort almost too much for her, the heroism of a martyr, added her soft voice, touched with age, yet still melodious and true, to the song of praise. The words choked her as she uttered them, yet with a kind of desperate courage she kept on. Praise! it happened to be a very effusive hymn that day, an utterance of unmitigated thanksgiving; fortunately she had not sufficient command of her mind or wits to see clearly what she was singing, or to enter into the wonderful bitter difference between the thanks she was uttering and the position in which she stood. Could she give God thanks for Susans ruin, or rejoice in the light He had given, when it revealed only misery? She was not called upon to answer that hard question. She stood up mechanically with her white face set in pale steadfastness, and was only aware that she was singing, keeping the tune, and making herself noways remarked among the crowd of strange people, many of whom turned curious eyes towards her. She stood with both her feet set firm on the floor, both her hands holding fast to the book, and over the ache of frightful suspense in her heart came the soft voice of her singing, which for once in her life meant nothing except a forlorn determination to keep up and hold herself erect and vigilant, sentinel over Arthurs fortunes and his peoples thoughts.
Mr. Beechers sermon was undeniably clever; the Salem folks pricked up their ears at the sound of it, recalling as it did that period of delightful excitation when they were hearing candidates, and felt themselves the dispensers of patronage. That was over now, and they were wedded to one; but the bond of union between themselves and their pastor was far from being indissoluble, and they contemplated this new aspirant to their favour with feelings stimulated and piquant, as a not inconsolable husband, likely to become a widower, might contemplate the general female public, out of which candidates for the problematically vacant place might arise. Mrs. Pigeon, who was the leader of the opposition, and whose daughter Mr. Vincent had not distinguished, whose house he had not specially frequented, and whom, most of all, he had passed in the street without recognition, made a note of this man from Omerton. If the painful necessity of dismissing the present pastor should occur as such things did occur, deplorable though they were it might be worth while sending for Mr. Beecher. She made a note of him privately in her mind, as she sat listening with ostentatious attention, nodding her head now and then by way of assent to his statements. Mrs. Vincent remarked her as she watched the congregation from the ministers pew, with her jealous mothers eyes. The Tozers were not so devoted in their listening. Mrs. Tozers brilliant cherry-coloured bonnet visibly drooped once or twice with a blessed irregularity of motion; all these signs Mrs. Vincent perceived as she sat in preternatural acute consciousness of everything round her, by Mrs. Tuftons side. She was even aware that the sermon was clever; she remembered expressions in it long after, which somehow got burned in, without any will of hers, upon her breaking heart. The subdued anguish that was in her collected fuel for its own silent consuming fire, even in the congregation of Salem, where, very upright, very watchful, afraid to relax her strained nerves even by leaning back or forward, she lived through the long service as if through a year of suffering.