speak.
"You have something on your mind, Mrs. Holt?" he said, at last.
"Indeed I have, sir, else I shouldn't be here."
"Speak freely."
"It's well known to you, Mr. Lyon, that my husband, Mr. Holt, came from the north, and was a member in Malthouse Yard long before you began to be pastor of it, which was seven year ago last Michaelmas. It's the truth, Mr. Lyon, and I'm not that woman to sit here and say it if it wasn't true."
"Certainly, it is true."
"And if my husband had been alive when you'd come to preach upon trial, he'd have been as good a judge of your gifts as Mr. Nuttwood or Mr. Muscat, though whether he'd have agreed with some that your doctrine wasn't high enough, I can't say. For myself, I've my opinion about high doctrine."
"Was it my preaching you came to speak about?" said the minister, hurrying in the question.
"No, Mr. Lyon, I'm not that woman. But this I will say, for my husband died before your time, that he had a wonderful gift in prayer, as the old members well know, if anybody likes to ask 'em, not believing my words, and he believed himself that the receipt for the Cancer Cure, which I've sent out in bottles till this very last April before September as now is, and have bottles standing by me – he believed it was sent to him in answer to prayer; and nobody can deny it, for he prayed most regular, and read out of the green baize Bible."
Mrs. Holt paused, appearing to think that Mr. Lyon had been successfully confuted, and should show himself convinced.
"Has any one been aspersing your husband's character?" said Mr. Lyon, with a slight initiative toward that relief of groaning for which he had reproved Lyddy.
"Sir, they daredn't. For though he was a man of prayer, he didn't want skill and knowledge to find things out for himself; and that's what I used to say to my friends when they wondered at my marrying a man from Lancashire, with no trade nor fortune, but what he'd got in his head. But my husband's tongue 'ud have been a fortune to anybody, and there was many a one said it was as good as a dose of physic to hear him talk; not but what that got him into trouble in Lancashire, but he always said, if the worst came to the worst, he could go and preach to the blacks. But he did better than that, Mr. Lyon, for he married me; and this I will say, that for age, and conduct, and managing – "
"Mistress Holt," interrupted the minister, "these are not the things whereby we may edify one another. Let me beg of you to be as brief as you can. My time is not my own."
"Well, Mr. Lyon, I've a right to my own character; and I'm one of your congregation, though I'm not a church member, for I was born in the General Baptist connection: and as for being saved without works, there's a many, I dare say, can't do without that doctrine; but I thank the Lord I never needed to put myself on a level with the thief on the cross. I've done my duty, and more, if anybody comes to that; for I've gone without my bit of meat to make broth for a sick neighbor: and if there's any of the church members say they've done the same, I'd ask them if they had the sinking at the stomach as I have; for I've ever strove to do the right thing, and more, for good-natured I always was; and I little thought, after being respected by everybody, I should come to be reproached by my own son. And my husband said, when he was a-dying – 'Mary,' he said, 'the Elixir, and the Pills, and the Cure will support you, for they've a great name in all the country round, and you'll pray for a blessing on them.' And so I've done, Mr. Lyon; and to say they're not good medicines, when they've been taken for fifty miles round by high and low, rich and poor, and nobody speaking against 'em but Dr. Lukin, it seems to me it's a flying in the face of Heaven; for if it was wrong to take the medicines, couldn't the blessed Lord have stopped it?"
Mrs. Holt was not given to tears; she was much sustained by conscious unimpeachableness, and by an argumentative tendency which usually checks the too great activity of the lachrymal gland; nevertheless her eyes had become moist, her fingers played on her knee in an agitated manner, and she finally plucked a bit of her gown and held it with great nicety between her thumb and finger. Mr. Lyon, however, by listening attentively, had begun partly to divine the source of her trouble.
"Am I wrong in gathering from what you say, Mistress Holt, that your son has objected in some way to your sale of your late husband's medicines?"
"Mr. Lyon, he's masterful beyond everything, and he talks more than his father did. I've got my reason, Mr. Lyon, and if anybody talks sense I can follow him; but Felix talks so wild, and contradicts his mother. And what do you think he says, after giving up his 'prenticeship, and going off to study at Glasgow, and getting through all the bit of money his father saved for his bringing-up – what has all his learning come to? He says I'd better never open my Bible, for it's as bad poison to me as the pills are to half the people as swallow 'em. You'll not speak of this again, Mr. Lyon – I don't think ill enough of you to believe that. For I suppose a Christian can understand the word o' God without going to Glasgow, and there's texts upon texts about ointment and medicine, and there's one as might have been for a receipt of my husband's – it's just as if it was a riddle, and Holt's Elixir was the answer."
"Your son uses rash words, Mistress Holt," said the minister, "but it is quite true that we may err in giving a too private interpretation to the Scripture. The word of God has to satisfy the larger needs of His people, like the rain and the sunshine – which no man must think to be meant for his own patch of seed-ground solely. Will it not be well that I should see your son, and talk with him on these matters? He was at chapel, I observe, and I suppose I am to be his pastor."
"That was what I wanted to ask you, Mr. Lyon. For perhaps he'll listen to you, and not talk you down as he does his poor mother. For after we'd been to chapel, he spoke better of you than he does of most: he said you was a fine old fellow, and an old-fashioned Puritan – he uses dreadful language, Mr. Lyon; but I saw he didn't mean you ill, for all that. He calls most folks's religion rottenness; and yet another time he'll tell me I ought to feel myself a sinner, and do God's will and not my own. But it's my belief he says first one thing and then another only to abuse his mother. Or else he's going off his head, and must be sent to a 'sylum. But if he writes to the North Loamshire Herald first, to tell everybody the medicines are good for nothing, how can I ever keep him and myself?"
"Tell him I shall feel favored if he will come and see me this evening," said Mr. Lyon, not without a little prejudice in favor of the young man, whose language about the preacher in Malthouse Yard did not seem to him to be altogether dreadful. "Meanwhile, my friend, I counsel you to send up a supplication, which I shall not fail to offer also, that you may receive a spirit of humility and submission, so that you may not be hindered from seeing and following the Divine guidance in this matter by any false lights of pride and obstinacy. Of this more when I have spoken with your son."
"I'm not proud or obstinate, Mr. Lyon. I never did say I was everything that was bad, and I never will. And why this trouble should be sent on me above everybody else – for I haven't told you all. He's made himself a journeyman to Mr. Prowd the watchmaker – after all this learning – and he says he'll go with patches on his knees, and he shall like himself the better. And as for him having little boys to teach, they'll come in all weathers with dirty shoes. If it's madness, Mr. Lyon, it's no use your talking to him."
"We shall see. Perhaps it may even be the disguised working of grace within him. We must not judge rashly. Many eminent servants of God have been led by ways as strange."
"Then I'm sorry for their mothers, that's all, Mr. Lyon; and all the more if they'd been well-spoken-on women. For not my biggest enemy, whether it's he or she, if they'll speak the truth, can turn round and say I've deserved this trouble. And when everybody gets their due, and people's doings are spoke of on the house-tops, as the Bible says they will be, it'll be known what I've gone through with those medicines – the pounding and the pouring, and the
