Salem Chapel quotes

Ah, blessed Mr. Wentworth of St. Roque’s! The young Nonconformist sighed as he put on his slippers, and kicked his boots into a corner of his sitting-room.

Somehow he had come down in the world all at once, and without expecting it.

Such was Salem Chapel and its requirements: and such was Mr. Vincent’s first experience of social life in Carlingford.

“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.

“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;

He scarcely asked himself who was that beautiful vision? The fact of her existence was at the moment too overpowering for any secondary inquiries.

He had seen her⁠—and lo! the universe was changed.

The air tingled softly with the sound of prancing horses and rolling wheels, the air breathed an irresistible soft perfume, which could nevermore die out of it, the air rustled with the silken thrill of those womanly robes.

“We’ll not argue, though you do commit yourself by an assertion,” said Mrs. Hilyard; “but oh, you innocent young man, where is the comfort to come from?

Comfort will not let your seats and fill your chapel, even granting that you knew how to communicate it.

I prefer to be instructed, for my part. You are just at the age, and in the circumstances, to do that.”

and, with his paper before him, wrote three words, and sat three hours staring into the roseate air, and dreaming dreams as wild as any Arabian tale.

Such was the first effort of that chance encounter, in which the personages were not Lady Western and the poor Dissenting minister, but Beauty and Love, perennial hero and heroine of the romance that never ends.

Nobody wanted his help. They stared at him, and whispered questions who he was. When he at length nerved himself to speak to his next neighbour, he met with a courteous response and no more.

Society was not cruel, or repulsive, or severely exclusive, but simply did not know him, could not make out who he was

, and was busy talking that conversation of a limited sphere full of personal allusions into which no stranger could enter.

I am sorry to see you are not so sure about your work as you were then. Your sister is pretty, I suppose? and does your mother take great care of her and keep her out of harm’s way?

Lambs have a silly faculty of running directly in the wolf’s road.

Why don’t you take a holiday and go to see them, or have them here to live with you?”

but it is astonishing, when one is shut up in one’s self and knows nobody, how excited one gets over the sudden apparition of a person one has known in the other world.

Some people die two or three times in a lifetime, Mr. Vincent.

There is a real transmigration of souls, or bodies, or both if you please. This is my third life I am going through at present. I knew that man, as I was saying, in the other world.”

“More strongly than you can understand; I know that very well,” said Mrs. Hilyard; “but you perceive you are speaking to a woman who has died twice.

Coming to life is a bitter process, but one gets over it.

If you ever should have such a thing to go through with—and survive it,” she added, giving him a wistful glance, “I should like to tell you my experiences. However, I hope better things. You are very well looked after at Salem Chapel, Mr. Vincent.

“

Don’t sneer⁠—never sneer⁠—no gentleman does,

” said his companion. “I like you, though you are only a Dissenting minister. You know me to be very poor, and you have seen me in very odd circumstances tonight;

He opened the window in the vestry, which looked out upon the damp ground behind the chapel and the few gravestones, and threw himself down on the little sofa with a sensation of mingled self-reproach and amusement.

Somehow, even when one disapproves of one’s self for doing it, one has a certain enjoyment in bewildering the world.

Mr. Vincent was rather pleased with his success, although it was only a variety of “humbug.”

“you should not escape if you surrounded yourself with a king’s guards.

I swear to you, if you do what you say, that I will kill you somehow, by whatever means I can attain⁠—and I have never yet broken my word.

”

He looked back upon her before he shut the door, but she had no look to spare from that all-engrossing work; her thin fingers were more scarred than ever, and stained with the coarse blue stuff.

All his life after the young man never saw that colour without thinking of the stains on those poor hands.

He went about his work assiduously all that day, visiting sick people, poor people, men and women, “which were sinners.” That dark ocean of life with which he had frightened the Salem people last night, Mr.

… the work to which he had been trained to believe that Father had called him—who thought of weeping?—or for Her, whom his alarmed imagination could not but follow, going forth remorseless and silent to fulfil her promise, and kill the man who had wronged her?

Oh, the cheat of tears!⁠—falling sweet over the young sufferers whom sorrow blessed⁠—drying up from the horrible complex pathways where other souls, in undisclosed anguish, went farther and farther from God!

With such thoughts the mother and son hurried on upon their darkling journey. It was the middle of the night when they arrived in Lonsdale—a night starless, but piercing with cold.

Vincent threw down his book, and stared at her with something of that impatience and half-contempt which had before moved him.

“If the world were breaking up, I suppose women could still drink tea!”

he said, bitterly.

how did she endure to talk to the old servant about what was to be done tomorrow—and how the sick lady was next door—till the excited and shivering attendant could be despatched upstairs and got out of the way?

Woman’s weaker nature, that could mingle the common with the great; or woman’s strength, that could endure all things⁠—which was it?

The young man, sitting by in a sullen, intolerable suspense, waiting till it was practicable to rush away through the creeping gloom of night after the fugitives, could no more understand these phenomena of love and woe, than he could translate the distant mysteries of …

“You flatter me,” she said, steadily, with the old habitual movement of her mouth. “It is years since anybody has taken the trouble to read any intention in my eyes.

But don’t you understand yet that a woman’s intention is the last thing she is likely to perform in this world?

We do have meanings now and then, we poor creatures, but they seldom come to much. Goodbye, goodbye!”

“I once remarked upon your high-breeding,” said the strange woman. “A prince could not have shown finer manners than you did in Carlingford, Mr. Vincent. Don’t disappoint me now. If I see ghosts behind you, what then?

Most people that have lived long enough, come to see ghosts before they die.

But this is not exactly the time for conversation, however interesting it may be. If you and I ever see each other again, things will have happened before then; you too, perhaps, may have found the ghosts out.

When she raised her pale face again, it was to entreat him once more to eat. “Try to take something, if it were only a mouthful, for Susan’s sake,” pleaded the widow. Her son made a dismal attempt as she told him.

Happy are the houses that have not seen such dreadful pretences of meals where tears were the only possible food!

When she saw him fairly engaged in this desperate effort to take “some support,” the poor mother went away and wrote a crafty female letter, which she brought to him to read. He would have smiled at it had the occasion been less tragic.

He took the crumpled paper out of her hand, put some money into it, and in few words directed her to go to his mother at Carlingford. What though the sight of her would break his mother’s heart—what did it matter?

Hearts were made to be broken, trodden on, killed⁠—so be it!

Pale and fierce, with eyes burning red in his throbbing head, he too went on, a second Murder, after the first which had preceded him in the shape of the Carlingford needlewoman. The criminal who escaped two such avengers must bear a charmed life.

She could not have let this pretendant to her son’s affections off without transfixing her with a passing arrow.

Human endurance has its limits.

Mrs. Vincent could bear anything for Arthur except this pretence of a special interest in him.

After he had ordered some refreshment, of which, indeed, he stood as much in need, the young man threw himself upon a sofa, and there fell into a deep sleep of utter weariness. He could do no more.

He slept as youth must sleep, were it on the edge of a precipice, were it at the deathbed of its dearest friend.

The very waiter who brought in the food he had ordered, took pity upon the worn-out slumberer. The man heaped up the fire, and covered Vincent with his railway wrapper before he withdrew;

He threw himself down in momentary despair. The worst, it appeared, had happened—the horror had travelled before him. He gave up everything in the anguish of that moment. There seemed to be no use for any further struggle.

To this sensitive, spotless, inexperienced household, suspicion was worse than death.

Vincent stood aside in breathless attention like the rest, before he had been many minutes in the room.

We say to each other how strange it is that no heart can ever fully communicate itself to another; but when that revelation does take place, awful is the spectacle.

All unawares, in her dread distraction, Susan opened up her heart.

Vincent; do you expect us to keep them? Yes, yes; I know I am talking wildly. Is it strange, do you think? But what if I give you my word, and nobody sends me any further news—nothing about my child?

Women are only wild animals when their children are taken from them.

I will forget it, and go away for news—news! That is what I want. Escape!” she repeated, with a miserable cry; “who can escape? I do not understand what it means.”

and just then the joy-bells burst out once more from St. Roque’s. Poor Vincent drew back from the door as the sudden sound stung him to the heart.

Nothing had any pity for him⁠—all the world, and every voice and breath therein, sided with the others in their joy.

He went on blindly, without thinking where he was going, with a kind of dull, stubborn determination in his heart, not to turn back in his wretchedness even from the sight of the happy procession which he knew must be advancing to meet him.

The bells rang on his heart, with echoes from the wheels and the horses’ feet coming up in superb pride and triumph.

Heaven and earth were glad for her in her joy. He, in his great trouble, stood dark in the sunshine and looked on.

It was only a moment, and no more.

All her treasured looks and smiles—the touch of her hand—her words, of which he had scarcely forgotten one—did they mean nothing after all? nothing but kindness?

He had laid his heart at her feet; if she had trodden on it he could have forgiven her; but she only went on smiling, and never saw the treasure in her way.

And this was the end. The unfortunate young man could not give way to any outbreak of the passion that consumed him; he could but go on hotly—on past St.

he could but go on hotly—on past St. Roque’s, where flowers still lay in the porch, and the open doors invited strangers, to the silent country, where the fields lay callow under the touch of spring.

Spring! everlasting mockery of human trouble!

Here were the hedgerows stirring, the secret grain beginning to throb conscious in the old furrows; but life itself standing still—coming to a sudden end in this heart which filled the young man’s entire frame with pulsations of anguish.