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The interest shown by the two girls in the stranger whom they had noted with so much attention was not destined to meet with any immediate reward. Neither he, nor “the young lady in black,” whom he hurried across the street to meet, could be heard of, or was seen for full two days afterwards, to the great disappointment of the young Mays. Ursula, especially, who had been entertaining vague but dazzling thoughts of a companionship more interesting than Janey's, more novel and at the same time more equal than that which was extended to her by the Miss Griffiths in Grange Lane, who were so much better off and had so much less to do than she. Ursula did not recollect the name of the fortunate girl who was so much in the ascendant at Mr. Copperhead's ball, though Phœbe had been introduced to her; but she did recollect her popularity and general friendliness, and the number of partners she had, and all those delightful signs of greatness which impress a poorlittle stranger, to whom her first dance is not unmingled pleasure. She whispered to Janey about her even in the drawing-room when all the family were assembled.
“Do you think she will call?” said Ursula, asking counsel even of Janey's inexperience, of which she was so contemptuous on other occasions.
“Call! how can she, if she is a stranger?” said Janey.
“As if you knew anything about it!” Ursula retorted with great injustice.
“If I don't know, then why do you ask me?” complained Janey with reason. The room looked more cheerful since Ursula had come home. The fire, no longer choked with cinders, burned clear and red. The lamp, though it was a cheap one, and burned paraffin oil, did not smell. The old curtains were nicely drawn, and the old covers smoothed over the chairs. All this did not make them look less old; but it made their antiquity natural and becoming. Johnnie, the school-boy, was learning his lessons on the rug before the fire. Reginald sat writing, with a candle all to himself, at a writing-table in a corner. Ursula and Janey were working at the centre table by the light of the lamp. They had no time, you may imagine, for fancy-work. Janey, with many contortions of her person, especially of her mouth, with which she seemed to follow the movements of her needle, was stitching up a sleeve of her new frock which Miss Dorset had sent her, and which a poor dress-maker, who “went out,” was at this moment making up in the schoolroom; while Ursula was still busy with the basket of stockings which she had found awaiting her on their return. What Reginald was doing at the writing-table was probably a great deal less useful, but the girls respected his occupation as no one ever thought of respecting theirs, and carried on their conversation under their breath, not to interrupt him. The little children had gone to bed, tea was over, and several hours of the long winter evening still before them. Janey had given over lessons, partly because there was no one to insist upon her doing them. Once in a week or so her father gave her a lecture for her ignorance, and ordered her into his study to do a long sum in arithmetic out of the first old “Colenso” that could be picked up; and about once a week too, awakening suddenly to a sense of her own deficiencies, she would “practise” energetically on the old piano. This was all that was being done for Janey in the way of education. She was fifteen, and as Johnnie, and Amy, and Robin were at an age when school is a necessity, the only retrenchment possible was to keep Janey at home. Ursula had got what education she possessed in thesame irregular way. It was not much. Besides reading and writing, she had pretty manners, which came by nature like those other gifts. A girl is not so badly off who can read and write and has pretty manners. Janey possessed the two first faculties, but neither had nor apparently could acquire the third. The two dark brown heads were close together as they worked—Ursula's shining and neat, and carefully arranged, Janey's rough with elf-locks; but they were more interesting than Reginald, though he was so much better informed. As for Johnnie, he lay extended on the rug, his head slightly raised on his two hands, his book on a level with the rest of his person, saying over his lesson to himself with moving lips. And now and then, when the girls' whispered chatter was silent, the sound of Reginald's pen scratching across the paper would fill up the interval; it was a sound which filled them all with respect.
This peaceful domestic scene was broken in upon by the entry of Mr. May. From the moment that he closed the hall-door behind him, coming in, a little thrill ran through the family party. The girls looked at each other when they heard that sound, and Johnnie, without stopping his inward repetition, shifted himself and his book adroitly, with the cleverness of practice, to the side instead of the front of the fire. Reginald's pen stopped its scratching, and he wheeled round on his chair to give an appealing glance at his sisters.
“What is it now?” he said hurriedly. Every one knew that when the door was closed like that it meant something like a declaration of war. But they had not much time to wait and wonder. Mr. May came in, pushing the door wide open before him, and admitting a gust of chill air of the January night. He looked at the peaceable domestic scene with a “humph” of dissatisfaction, because there was nothing to find fault with, which is as great a grievance as another when one is in the mood for grievances. He had come in cross and out of sorts, with a private cause for his ill-temper, which he did not choose to reveal, and it would have been a relief to him had he found them all chattering or wasting their time, instead of being occupied in this perfectly dutiful way—even Johnnie at his lessons, repeating them over under his breath. What was the world coming to? Mr. May was disappointed. Instead of leading up to it gradually by a generalbattueof his children all round, he had to open upon his chief subject at once, which was not nearly so agreeable a way.
“What are you doing, Reginald?” he asked, roughly, pulling his chair to the other side of the fire, opposite the corner to which Johnnie had scuffled out of the way. “I have comein especially to speak to you. It is time this shilly-shallying was done with. Do you mean to accept the College chaplaincy or not? an answer must be given, and that at once. Are you so busy that you can't attend to what I say?”
“I am not busy at all, sir,” said Reginald, in a subdued voice, while his sisters cast sympathetic looks at him. Both the girls, it is true, thought him extremely foolish, but what of that? Necessarily they were on his side against papa.
“I thought as much; indeed it would be hard to say what you could find to be busy at. But look here, this must come to an end one way or another. You know my opinion on the subject.”
“And you know mine, sir,” said Reginald, rising and coming forward to the fire. “I don't say anything against the old College. For an old man it might be quite a justifiable arrangement—one who had already spent his strength in work—but for me—of course there is nothing in the world to do.”
“And two hundred and fifty a year for the doing of it—not to speak of the house, which you could let for fifty more.”
“Father! don't you see that is just the very thing that I object to, so much for nothing.”
“You prefer nothing for nothing,” said Mr. May, with a smile; “well, I suppose that is more fair, perhaps—to the public;—but how about me? A son of three-and-twenty depending upon me for everything, useless and bringing in nothing, does not suit me. You are all the same,” he said, “all taking from me, with a thousand wants, education, clothes, amusement—”
“I am sure,” said the irrepressible Janey, “it is not much clothes we get, and as for amusements—and education!”
“Hold your tongue,” cried her father. “Here are six of you, one more helpless than another, and the eldest the most helpless of all. I did not force you into the Church. You might have gone out to James if you had liked—but you chose an academical career, and then there was nothing else for it. I gave you a title to orders. You are my curate just now—so called; but you know I can't pay a curate, and you know I can't afford to keep you. Providence—” said Mr. May, sitting up in his chair, with a certain solemnity, “Providence itself has stepped in to make your path clear. Here is better than a living, a provision for you. I don't bid you take it for life; take it for a year or two till you can hear of something better. Now what on earth is your objection to this?”
The girls had both turned their faces towards their brother. Janey, always the first in action, repeated almost unconsciously.“Yes, what on earth, Reginald, can be your objection to this?”
Reginald stood in the middle of the room and looked helplessly at them. Against his father alone he might have made a stand—but when the united family thus gazed at him with inquiring and reproachful looks, what was he to say?
“Objection!” he faltered, “you know very well what my objection is. It is not honest work—it is no work. It is a waste of money that might be better employed; it is a sinecure.”
“And what do you call your nominal curateship,” said his father, “is not that a sinecure too?”
“If it is,” said Reginald, growing red, but feeling bolder, for here the family veered round, and placed itself on his side, “it is of a contrary kind. It issinepay. My work may be bad, though I hope not, but my pay is nothing. I don't see any resemblance between the two.”
“Your pay nothing!” cried the father, enraged; “what do you call your living, your food that you are so fastidious about, your floods of beer and all the rest of it—not to speak of tailors' bills much heavier than mine?”
“Which are never paid.”
“Whose fault is it that they are never paid? yours and the others who weigh me down to the ground, and never try to help or do anything for themselves. Never paid! how should I have gone on to this period and secured universal respect if they had never been paid? I have had to pay for all of you,” said Mr. May, bitterly, “and all your vagaries; education, till I have been nearly ruined; dresses and ribbons, and a hundred fooleries for these girls, who are of no use, who will never give me back a farthing.”
“Papa!” cried Ursula and Janey in one breath.
“Hold your tongues! useless impedimenta, not even able to scrub the floors, and make the beds, which is all you could ever be good for—and you must have a servant forsooth to do even that. But why should I speak of the girls?” he added, with a sarcastic smile, “they can do nothing better, poor creatures; but you! who call yourself a man—a University man, save the mark—a fine fellow with the Oxford stamp upon you, twenty-three your next birthday. It is a fine thing that I should still have to support you.”
Reginald began to walk up and down the room, stung beyond bearing—not that he had not heard it all before, but to get accustomed to such taunts is difficult, and it is still more difficult for a young and susceptible mind to contradict all that is seemly and becoming in nature, and to put forth its own statement in return. Reginald knew that his education had inreality cost his father very little, and that his father knew this. He was aware, too, much more distinctly than Mr. May knew, of James's remittances on his account; but what could he say? It was his father who insulted him, and the young man's lips were closed; but the effort was a hard one. He could not stand still there and face the man who had so little consideration for his feelings. All he could do was to keep his agitation and irritation down by that hurried promenade about the room, listening as little as he could, and answering not at all.
“Oh, papa! how can you?” cried Janey, seizing the first pause. Janey was not old enough to understand the delicacy that closed Reginald's lips, and the impulse of self-defence was stirring in her; “how dare you talk to Ursula so? I mayn't be much use, but Ursula! nice and comfortable you were when she was away! as if you didn't say so ten times in a morning; to be sure that was to make me feel uncomfortable. Scrub floors!” cried Janey, in the violence of her resentment. “I'll go out and be a maid-of-all-work whenever you please. I am sure it would be much happier than here.”
“Hold your tongue,” said Mr. May, “you scolding and Ursula crying; that's the beauty of the feminine element in a house. I ought to be very thankful, oughtn't I, that I have girls to furnish this agreeable variety? But as for you, Reginald,” his father added, “mark my words, if you determine to reject this windfall that Providence has blown into your hands, it must be done at once. No further play of I would and I would not, if you please, here; and if it does not suit you, you will please to understand that I have no further need for a curate that suits me still less. I want your room. If nothing else can be done, I must try to take a pupil to add a little to the income which has so many claims upon it; and I don't mean to go on keeping you—this is plain enough, I hope.”
“Very plain, sir,” said Reginald, who had grown as pale as he was red before.
“I am glad to hear it; you will write to the Corporation at once, accepting or rejecting at your pleasure; but this must be done to-night. I must insist on its being done to-night; and if you find yourself sufficiently bold to reject an income,” said Mr. May with emphasis, “and go off into the world without a penny in your pocket, I wash my hands of it; it is nothing to me.”
Then there was a pause. The father of the family sat down in his chair, and looked round him with the happy consciousness that he had made everybody miserable. The girls were both crying, Reginald pale and desperate, coming and goingthrough the room. No one had escaped but Johnnie, who, happy in insignificance, lay all his length on the other side of the fire, and lifted his face from his book to watch the discomfiture of the others. Johnnie had no terrors on his own account. He had done nothing to call forth the paternal wrath. Mr. May could not resist this temptation.
“Is that a way to learn lessons as they ought to be learnt?” he cried suddenly, throwing one of his darts at the unthinking boy. “Get up this moment, and sit down to a table somewhere. Your own room, where there is nobody to disturb you, is better than amid the chit-chat here; do you hear me? get up, sir, and go.”
Johnnie stumbled to his feet appalled; he was too much startled to say anything. He took his books across the room to the writing-table which Reginald had abandoned in a similar way. But by the time he reached that haven, he came to himself, and recovering his courage muttered something about the hardship to which he was thus exposed, as boys have a way of doing; upon which Mr. May got suddenly up, seized him by the shoulders and turned him out of the drawing-room. “I said your own room, sir,” cried this impartial father, distributing to all alike an equal share of his urbanities. When he had accomplished this, he stood for a moment and looked at the rest of his confused and uncomfortable family. “There is not much cheerful society to be had here this evening, I perceive,” he said. “It is pleasant to come in from one's cares and find a reception like this, don't you think? Let some one bring me some coffee to my study. I am going to write.”
“Whose fault is it that he gets such a reception?” burst forth Janey, the moment her father had closed the door. “Who does it all, I wonder? Who treats us like a set of wretches without any feeling? I can't hush, I won't hush! Oh, shouldn't I be glad to go out as a housemaid, to do anything!”
“Oh, Janey, hush! we can't help ourselves, we are obliged to put up with it,” said Ursula; “but Reginald, he is not obliged, he can save himself when he likes. Oh, I know, I know papa is unreasonable; but, Reginald, aren't you a little bit unreasonable too?”
“Don't you begin to reproach me,” cried the young man, “I have had enough for one day. Have I been such a charge upon him, Ursula? What has he spent upon me? Next to nothing. That tailor's bill he spoke of, he knew as well as I do that I paid it by the tutorship I had in the vacation. It is his bill that is not paid, not mine. And then James's money—”
“Oh, never mind that, never mind the past,” cried Ursula, “think of the present, that's what you ought to do. Oh, Reginald, think; ifIhad the chance of two hundred and fifty pounds a year! there is nothing I would not do for it. I would scrub floors, as he said, I would do anything, the dirtiest work. You will be independent, able to do what you please, and never to ask papa for anything. Reginald, think! Oh, dear, dear, I wish I knew how to talk to you. To be independent, able to please yourself!”
“I shall be independent anyhow after to-night,” he said. “Ursula, you will help me to pack my things, won't you? It is leaving you here, you girls, with nobody to stand up for you; it is that I feel most.”
“Oh, Reginald, don't go and leave us,” cried Janey, leaning on the back of his chair; “what can we do without you? When he comes in, in a rage like to-night, as long as you are here one can bear it. Oh, Reginald, can't you, can't you take the chaplaincy? Think what it would be for us.”
“Yes, I will pack your things,” said Ursula, “I will help you to get out of it, though we must stay and put up with it all, and never, never escape. But where will you go? You have no money, not enough scarcely to pay your railway fare. You would have to take to teaching; and where are you to go?”
“I have some friends left,” cried Reginald, his lips quivering, “some people care for me still and would hold out a hand. I am—not—quite so badly off as he thinks; I could go to town, or to Oxford—or—”
“You don't know where; and here is a nice old-fashioned house all ready for you to step into, and an income,” cried Ursula, her tone deepening to mark the capital letter; “an Income, quite sure and ready—without any difficulty, without any trouble, all if you say yes. Oh, only think what a comfort for us all to be able to rush to you when we are in trouble! Think of Johnnie and Robin; and that delightful wainscoted room for your study, with the book-cases all ready—and plenty of money to buy books.” This being the highest point to which Ursula could reach, she dropped down after it into an insinuating half whisper, “And plenty of work to do; dear Reginald, plenty of work in the parish, you may be sure, if you will only help the Rector; or here where you are working already, and where you may be sure nobody will think of paying you. Oh, Reginald, there is plenty, plenty of work.”
The young man was already beginning to melt. “Do you think so?” he said.
“Think!” cried Janey, “I am sure you may do all papa's work for him and welcome, if that is all. For my part I think you are very silly, both Ursula and you. Work! Pay is far better if you weren't such a pair of simpletons. After all, he has a little reason to be angry. Good gracious! why shouldn't you take it? Some one else will, if you won't. I would in a minute, and so would Ursula if we could. And why should you be so much grander than anybody else? I think it is quite childish for my part.”
“Reginald, never mind her, she is only a child and doesn't understand ('Child yourself,' cried Janey). I don't understand very well, but still I can see what you want. Oh, you might find such quantities of work, things nobody is ever found to do. What do the fellows do at Oxford that they get that money for? I have heard you say you would be very glad to get a fellowship—”
“That is different, that is a reward of scholarship.”
“Well, and so is this too,” said Ursula; “it is (I am sure) because the old men knew you were one that would be kind. You were always kind, Reginald, that is what it is for.”
“The old men have nothing to do with it,” he said, shaking his head, “it is the Corporation, and they are—”
“Very rich men, Reginald dear, a great many of them, very sensible! what does it matter about their education? And then you would be a really educated man, always ready to do anything that was wanted in Carlingford. Don't you see that was their meaning? They pay you for that which is not work, but they will find you plenty of work they don't pay for. That is what they mean; and oh, Reginald, to run over to you there in that pretty wainscoted room, and to have you coming in to us every day, and to know that you were there to stand by us!”
Here once more Ursula began to cry. As for Janey, she made a dash at the writing-table and brought him paper and pens and ink, “Say yes, say yes,” she cried; “oh, Reginald, if it was only to spite papa!”
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It seems difficult to imagine what connection there could be between Phœbe Beecham's appearance in Grange Lane and the interview which took place there between her and the “new gentleman,” and Mr. May's sudden onslaught upon his family, which ended in Reginald's acceptance of the chaplaincy. But yet the connection was very distinct. Not even the Mays, in their excitement over the appearance of a stranger in Carlingford, could be more surprised than Phœbe was when her solitary walk was interrupted by the apparition across the street of a known person, a face familiar to her in other regions. “Mr. Northcote!” she cried, with a little start of surprise. As for the stranger, he made but two steps across Grange Lane in his delight at the sight of her. Not that he was Phœbe's lover, or possessed by any previous enthusiasm for the girl whom he had met about half-a-dozen times in his life, and of whom he knew little more than that she was the daughter of a “brother clergyman;” for both Mr. Beecham and he were in the habit of using that word, whether appropriate or inappropriate. This was the explanation of the white necktie and the formal dress which had puzzled Ursula.
Horace Northcote was not of Mr. Beecham's class. He was not well-to-do and genial, bent upon keeping up his congregation and his popularity, and trying to ignore as much as he could the social superiority of the Church without making himself in any way offensive to her. He was a political Nonconformist, a vigorous champion of the Disestablishment Society, more successful on the platform than in the pulpit, and strenuously of opinion in his heart of hearts that the Church was the great drawback to all progress in England, an incubus of which the nation would gladly be rid. His dress was one of the signs of his character and meaning. Strong in a sense of his own clerical position, he believed in uniform as devoutly as any Ritualist, but he would not plagiarise the Anglican livery and walk about in a modified soutane and round hat like “our brethren in the Established Church,” as Mr. Beecham kindly called them. To young Northcote they were not brethren, but enemies, and though he smiled superiorat the folly which stigmatised an M.B. waistcoat, yet he scorned to copy. Accordingly his frock coat was not long, but of the extremest solemnity of cut and hue, his white tie was of the stiffest, his tall hat of the most uncompromising character. He would not veil for a day in easier and more ordinary habiliments the distinct position he assumed as clerical, yet not of the clergy; a teacher of men, though not a priest of the Anglican inspiration. He could not help feeling that his appearance, as he moved about the streets, was one which might well thrill Anglican bosoms with a flutter of terror. He was the Church's avowed enemy, and upon this he stood as his claim to the honour of those who thought with him. This was very different from the views held by the pastor of the Crescent Chapel, who was very willing to be on the best terms with the Church, and would have liked to glide into closer and closer amity, and perhaps finally to melt away altogether in her broad bosom, like a fat raindrop contributing noiselessly to swell the sea. It was not, however, any feeling of this difference which made Phœbe draw herself back instinctively after the first start of recognition. Across her mind, even while she held out her hand to the stranger, there flashed a sudden recollection of her grandmother and her grandfather, and all the homely belongings which he, a minister of the connection, could not be kept in ignorance of. It was but a momentary pang. Phœbe was not so foolish as to shrink before the inevitable, or to attempt by foolish expedients to stave off such a danger. She shrank for a second, then drew herself up and shook off all such ignoble cares. “I am myself whatever happens,” was her reflection; and she said with something like security:
“I am so glad to meet you, Mr. Northcote; what an unexpected pleasure to see you here!”
“It is a most unexpected pleasure for me, I assure you,” he said, “and a very great one.” He spoke with unaffected honesty; for indeed his plunge into the society of Salem Chapel had given him a shock not easily got over, and the appearance of a being of his own species, among all these excellent poulterers and grocers, was a relief unspeakable; and then he added, “May I walk with you, if you are going to walk?”
“Surely,” said Phœbe with momentary hesitation, and it was just at this moment that she perceived Ursula on the other side of the road, and, glad of the diversion, waved her hand to her, and said, “How do you do?”
“A friend of yours?” said Mr. Northcote, following her gesture with his eyes, and feeling more and more glad that he had met her. “I passed those young ladies just now, andheard some of their conversation, which amused me. Do they belong to our people? If you will not be angry, Miss Beecham, I must say that I should be glad to meet somebody belonging to us, who is not—who is more like—the people one meets elsewhere.”
“Well,” said Phœbe, “we are always talking of wanting something original; I think on the whole I am of your opinion; still there is nothing very great or striking about most of the people one meets anywhere.”
“Yes; society is flat enough,” said the young man. “But—it is strange and rather painful, though perhaps it is wrong to say so—why, I wonder, are all our people of one class? Perhaps you have not seen much of them here? All of one class, and that—”
“Not an attractive class,” said Phœbe, with a little sigh. “Yes, I know.”
“Anything but an attractive class; not the so-called working men and such like. One can get on with them. It is very unpleasant to have to say it; buying and selling now as we have it in Manchester does not contract the mind. I suppose we all buy and sell more and less. How is it? When it is tea and sugar—”
“Or butter and cheese,” said Phœbe with a laugh, which she could not quite keep from embarrassment. “I must be honest and tell you before you go any further. You don't know that I belong to the Tozers, Mr. Northcote, who are in that line of business. Don't look so dreadfully distressed. Perhaps I shouldn't have told you, had you not been sure to find out. Old Mr. Tozer is my grandfather, and I am staying there. It is quite simple. Papa came to Carlingford when he was a young clergyman, newly ordained. He was pastor at Salem Chapel, and married mamma, who was the daughter of one of the chief members. I did not know myself when I came to Carlingford that they actually kept a shop, and I did not like it. Don't apologize, please. It is a very difficult question,” said Phœbe philosophically, partly to ease herself, partly to set him at his ease, “what is best to do in such a case. To be educated in another sphere and brought down to this, is hard. One cannot feel the same for one's relations; and yet one's poor little bit of education, one's petty manners, what are these to interfere with blood relationships? And to keep everybody down to the condition they were born, why, that is the old way—”
“Miss Beecham, I don't know what to say. I never meant—I could not tell. There are excellent, most excellent people in all classes.”
“Exactly so,” said Phœbe, with a laugh. “We all know that; one man is as good as another—if not better. A butterman is as good as a lord; but—” she added, with a little elevation of her eyebrows and shrug of her shoulders, “not so pleasant to be connected with. And you don't say anything about my difficulty, Mr. Northcote. You don't realize it perhaps, as I do. Which is best: for everybody to continue in the position he was born in, or for an honest shopkeeper to educate his children and push them up higher until they come to feel themselves members of a different class, and to be ashamed of him? Either way, you know, it is hard.”
Northcote was at his wit's end. He had no fellow-feeling for this difficulty. His friends were all much better off than he was as a poor minister. They were Manchester people, with two or three generations of wealth behind them, relations of whom nobody need be ashamed; and he was himself deeply humiliated and distressed to have said anything which could humiliate Phœbe, who rose immeasurably in his estimation in consequence of her bold avowal, though he himself would have sacrificed a great deal rather than put himself on the Tozer level. He did not know what to say.
“Miss Beecham, you know as well as I do, how falsely our opinions are formed in this respect, how conventional we are. What is position after all? To a grand Seigneur, for instance, the difference between his steward and his laquais seems nothing, but to the steward it is a great gulf. I—I mean—the whole question is conventional—position, or station, or rank—”
Phœbe smiled. “I don't think that is quite the question,” she said, “but never mind. I suppose you are here on some mission? You would not come to Carlingford for pleasure.”
“Nay,” said Northcote, with a reproachful tone. “I should have thought you must have heard of our Meeting. It is for to-night. I have come from the Disestablishment Society with some other friends; but it has been my fate to come on before to make the arrangements. The others come to-day.”
“A hard fate, Mr. Northcote.”
“I thought so this morning. I have not been much in the way of the country congregations. I was confounded; but, Miss Beecham, I no longer think my fate hard since I have met you. Your noble simplicity and frankness have taught me a lesson.”
“It is not noble at all,” said Phœbe; “if I had not been sure you must find out I should have said nothing about it. Now I fear I must turn back.”
“But you will come to the Meeting,” he said, turning with her. He felt it necessary to be obsequious to Phœbe, after the terrible mistake he had made.
“Not unless grandpapa insists. I should like to hear your speech,” said Phœbe; “but I don't object to the Established Church as you do, neither does papa when you push him hard. I don't think England would be much nicer if we were all Dissenters. To be sure we might be more civil to each other.”
“If there were no Dissenters, you mean.”
“It comes to much the same thing; congregations are not pleasant masters, are they, Mr. Northcote? I know some people—one at least,” said Phœbe, “who is often very insolent to papa; and we have to put up with it—for the sake of peace, papa says. I don't think in the Church that any leading member could be so insolent to a clergyman.”
“That is perhaps rather—forgive me—a narrow, personal view.”
“Wait till you get a charge, and have to please the congregation and the leading members!” cried Phœbe. “I know what you are thinking: it is just like a woman to look at a public question so. Very well; after all women are half the world, and their opinion is as good as another.”
“I have the greatest respect for your opinion,” said young Northcote; “but we must not think of individual grievances. The system, with all its wrongs, is what occupies me. I have heard something—even here—this very day—What is it, my good friend? I am busy now—another time; or if you want me, my lodgings are—”
A glance, half of pain, half of fun, came into Phœbe's eyes. “It is grandpapa!” she said.
“You shouldn't speak in that tone, sir, not to your elders, and maybe your betters,” said Tozer, in his greasy old coat. “Ministers take a deal upon them; but an old member like me, and one as has stood by the connection through thick and thin, ain't the one to be called your good friend. Well, if you begs pardon, of course there ain't no more to be said; and if you know our Phœbe—Phœbe, junior, as I calls her. What of the meeting, Mr. Northcote? I hope you'll give it them Church folks 'ot and strong, sir. They do give themselves airs, to be sure, in Carlingford. Most of our folks is timid, seeing for one thing as their best customers belong to the Church. That don't touch me, not now-a-days,” said Tozer, with a laugh, “not that I was ever one as concealed my convictions. I hope you'll give it 'em 'ot and strong.”
“I shall say what I think,” said the young man bewildered.He was by no means broken into the ways of the connection, and his pride rebelled at the idea of being schooled by this old shopkeeper; but the sight of Phœbe standing by not only checked his rebellious sentiments, but filled him with a sympathetic thrill of feeling. What it must be for that girl to own this old man, to live with him, and feel herself shut into his society and friends of his choosing—to hear herself spoken of as Phœbe, junior! The idea made him shiver, and this caught old Tozer's always hospitable eye.
“You're chilly,” he said, “and I don't wonder after the dreadful weather we've had. Few passes my door without a bite or a sup, specially at tea-time, Mr. Nor'cote, which is sociable time, as I always says. Come in and warm yourself and have a cup of tea. There is nothing as pleases my old woman so much as to get out her best tea-things for a minister; she 'as a great respect for ministers, has Mrs. Tozer, sir; and now she's got Phœbe to show off as well as the chiney. Come along, sir, I can't take no refusal. It's just our time for tea.”
Northcote made an unavailing attempt to get away, but partly it appeared to him that to refuse the invitation might look to Phœbe like a pretence of superiority on his part, and partly he was interested in herself, and was very well aware he should get no company so good in Carlingford, even with the drawback of the old shop-people among whom she lived. How strange it was to see her in the dress of which Mrs. Sam Hurst had raved, and of which even the young Nonconformist vaguely divined the excellence, putting her daintily-gloved hand upon old Tozer's greasy sleeve, walking home with the shuffling old man, about whose social position no one could make the least mistake! He turned with them, with a sensation of thankfulness that it was in Grange Lane, Carlingford, where nobody knew him. As for Phœbe, no such comfort was in her mind; everybody knew her here, or rather, everybody knew old Tozer. No disguise was possible to her. The only way to redeem the position was to carry it with a high hand, as she did, holding her head erect, and playing her part so that all the world might see and wonder. “I think you had better come, Mr. Northcote, and have some tea,” she said graciously, when the awe-stricken young man was floundering in efforts to excuse himself. Old Tozer chuckled and rubbed his hands.
“Take Phœbe's advice,” he said, “Phœbe's the sensiblest girl I know; so was her mother before her, as married one of the most popular preachers in the connection, though I say it as shouldn't. My old woman always said as our Phœbe wascut out for a minister's wife. And Phœbe junior's just such another,” cried the admiring grandfather. Heavens above! did this mean traps and snares for himself, or did the old shopkeeper think of him, Horace Northcote, as another possible victim? If he had but known with what sincere compassionate toleration Phœbe regarded him, as a young man whom she might be kind to, he might have been saved all alarm on this point. The idea that a small undistinguished Dissenting minister should think her capable of marrying him, was a humiliation which did not enter into Phœbe's head.
Top
Phœbe's philosophy, however, was put to the test when, after the young pastor had taken tea and got himself away from the pressing hospitalities of the Tozers, her grandfather also disappeared to put on his best coat in order to attend the Meeting. Mrs. Tozer, left alone with her granddaughter, immediately proceeded to evolve her views as to what Phœbe was expected to do.
“I never see you out o' that brown thing, Phœbe,” she said; “ain't you got a silk dress, child, or something that looks a bit younger-looking? I'd have thought your mother would have took more pride in you. Surely you've got a silk dress.”
“Oh, yes, more than one,” said Phœbe, “but this is considered in better taste.”
“Taste, whose taste?” cried the old lady; “my Phœbe didn't ought to care for them dingy things, for I'm sure she never got no such example from me. I've always liked what was bright-looking, if it was only a print. A nice blue silk now, or a bright green, is what you'd look pretty in with your complexion. Go now, there's a dear, and put on something very nice, something as will show a bit; you're going with your grandfather to this Meeting.”
“To the Meeting? oh, I hope not,” said Phœbe with fervour.
“And why should you hope not? isn't it natural as a young creature like you should get out a bit when she can, and see what's to be seen? I don't hold with girls moping in a house. Besides, it's very instructive, as I've always heard: and you as is clever, of course you'll understand every word. Mr. Northcoteis a nicish-looking sort of young man. Ministers mayn't be much,” said Mrs. Tozer, “though just see how your papa has got on, my dear. Nobody else as Phœbe could have married would have got up in the world like that; you may make a deal more money in trade, but it ain't so genteel, there's always that to be said. Now it's just as well as you should have your chance with the rest and let yourself be seen, Phœbe. Run, there's a darling, and put on something bright, and a nice lace collar. You can have mine if you like. I shouldn't grudge nothing, not a single thing I've got, to see you looking as nice as the best there; and so you will if you take a little pains. I'd do up my hair a bit higher if I was you; why, Phœbe, I declare! you haven't got a single pad. Now what is the use of neglecting yourself, and letting others get ahead of you like that?”
“Pads are going out of fashion, grandmamma,” said Phœbe gravely, “so are bright colours for dresses. You can't think what funny shades we wear in town. But must I go to this Meeting? I should not like to leave you alone. It is so much nicer for me to be here.”
“Youarea good girl, you are,” said Mrs. Tozer admiringly, “and me as was frightened for a fine lady from London! But Tozer would say as it was my doing. He would say as it wasn't natural for a young creature; and, bless you, they'll all be there in their best—that Pigeon and the others, and Mrs. Tom. I just wish I could go too, to see you outshine 'em all, which you'll do if you take pains. Take a little more pains with your hair, Phœbe, mount it up a bit higher, and if you want anything like a bit of lace or a brooch or that, just you come to me. I should like Mrs. Tom to see you with that brooch as she's always wanting for Minnie. Now why should I give my brooch to Minnie? I don't see no reason for it, for my part.”
“Certainly not, grandmamma,” said Phœbe, “you must wear your brooches yourself, that is what I like a great deal better than giving them either to Minnie or me.”
“Ah, but there ain't a many like you, my sweet,” cried the old woman, wiping her eyes. “You're my Phœbe's own daughter, but you're a touch above her, my darling, and us too, that's what you are. Run now and dress, or I don't know what Tozer will say to me. He's set his heart on showing you off to-night.”
Thus adjured, Phœbe went away reluctantly. It is unnecessary to say that her disinterestedness about her grandmother's brooch was not perhaps so noble as it appeared on the outside.The article in question was a kind of small warming-pan in a very fine solid gold mount, set with large pink topazes, and enclosing little wavy curls of hair, one from the head of each young Tozer of the last generation. It was a piece of jewelry very well known in Carlingford, and the panic which rose in Phœbe's bosom when it was offered for her own personal adornment is more easily imagined than described. She went upstairs feeling that she had escaped, and took out a black silk dress at which she looked lovingly.
“But grandmamma would think it was no better than this,” she said to herself, and after much searchings of heart she chose a costume of Venetian blue, one soft tint dying into another like the lustre on a piece of old glass, which in her own opinion was a great deal too good for the occasion. “Some one will tread on it to a certainty, and the colours don't show in candle-light; but I must try to please grandmamma,” she said heroically. When it was put on with puffings of lace such as Mrs. Tozer had never seen, and was entirely ignorant of the value of, at the throat and sleeves, Phœbe wrapt a shawl round her in something of the same dim gorgeous hue, covered with embroidery, an Indian rarity which somebody had bestowed upon Mrs. Beecham, and which no one had used or thought of till Phœbe's artistic eye fell upon it. It was a great deal too fine for Carlingford. An opera-cloak bought in Oxford Street for a pound or two would have much more impressed the assembly to which Phœbe was bound. Mrs. Tozer inspected her when she went downstairs, with awe, yet dissatisfaction.
“I dare say as it's all very fine, and it ain't like other folks, anybody can see; but I'd dress you different, my dear, if you was in my hands,” said the old woman, walking round and round her. As for Tozer, he too showed less admiration than if he had known better.
“I got a fly, thinking as you'd have some fallal or other on you; but, bless my heart, you could have walked in that gown,” he said. So that Phœbe's toilette, which would have been mightily admired in a London drawing-room, could not be said to be a success. She was somewhat discouraged by this, notwithstanding that she knew so very much better; and accordingly set out in the fly with her grandfather in his best coat, feeling, generally, in a depressed condition.
“It is clear that I must take to the pinks and blues to please them,” she said to herself with a sigh. She could triumph over the slight that might be shown to herself in consequence of her relations; but those sneers at her dress went to Phœbe's heart.
The Music Hall was full of a miscellaneous crowd when Phœbe, following her grandfather, went in; and the seats allotted to these important people were on the platform, where, at least, Tozer's unacknowledged object of showing her off could be amply gratified. This arrangement did not, on the whole, displease Phœbe. Since she must be exhibited, it seemed better, on the whole, to be exhibited there, than in a less distinguished place; and all the speakers knew her, which was something. She sat down with some complaisance, and let her Indian scarf droop from her shoulders, and her pretty dress show itself.
“I declare if that isn't Phœbe, junior,” said Mrs. Tom audibly, in the middle of the hall, “making a show of herself; but, Lord bless us, for all their grandeur, how she do dress, to be sure. A bit of a rag of an old shawl, and a hat on! the same as she wears every day. I've got more respect for them as comes to instruct us than that.”
And, indeed, Mrs. Tom was resplendent in a redsortie de bal, with a brooch almost as big as that envied one of Mrs. Tozer's stuck into her gown, and a cap covered with flowers upon her head. This was the usual fashion of the Salem ladies on such rare occasions. The meeting of the Disestablishment Society was to them what a ball is to worldly-minded persons who frequent such vanities. The leading families came outen masseto see and to be seen. It would be wrong to say that they did not enter into all the arguments and recognise the intellectual feast set before them; no doubt they did this just as well as if they had come in their commonest attire; but still the seriousness of the occasion was, no doubt, modified by being thus made into a dissipation. The men were not so fine, perhaps, because it is more difficult for men to be fine—but they were all in their Sunday clothes; and the younger ones were in full bloom of coloured satin cravats and fine waistcoats. Some of them were almost as fine a sight as the ladies in their ribbons and flowers.
“I suppose by the look of them this must be an influential community—people of some pretensions,” said an obese elderly minister, who had seated himself by Phœbe, and whose eyes were dazzled by the display. “I never expected all this dress in a quiet country place.”
“Oh, yes! they are people of much pretension,” said Phœbe gravely.
And then the proceedings began. Old Mr. Green, the grocer, whose son had married Maria Pigeon, and who had longbeen retired from business, occupying a house in the country and “driving his carriage,” was in the chair; and the proceedings went on according to the routine of such assemblies, with differing degrees of earnestness on the part of the speakers. To most of these gentlemen it was the ordinary occupation of their lives; and they made their hearers laugh at well-known stories, and enjoyed their own wit, and elicited familiar cheers, and made hits such as they had made for years on the same subject, which was a comfortablecheval de bataille, not at all exciting to themselves, though they were quite willing to excite their audience, if that audience would allow itself to be excited. Things jogged on thus for the first hour very pleasantly! the Meeting was not excited, but it was amused and enjoyed itself. It was an intellectual treat, as Pigeon said to Brown, and if the younger people did not like it so well as they would have liked a ball, the elder people liked it a great deal better, and the hall rang with applause and with laughter as one speaker succeeded another. It was pleasant to know how unstable “the Church” was on her foundation; that aristocratical Church which looked down upon Dissent, and of which the poorest adherent gave himself airs much above Chapel folks; and how much loftier a position the Nonconformist held, who would have nothing to say to State support.
“For my part,” said one of the speakers, “I would rather abandon my sacred calling to-morrow, or make tents as St. Paul did in its exercise, than put on the gilded fetters of the State, and pray or preach as an Archbishop told me; nay, as a Cabinet Council of godless worldlings directed. There are many good men among the clergy of the Church of England; but they are slaves, my friends, nothing but slaves, dragged at the chariot wheels of the State; ruled by a caste of hard-headed lawyers; or binding themselves in the rotten robes of tradition. It is we only who can dare to say that we are free!”
At this sentiment, the Meeting fairly shouted with applause and delight and self-complacency; and the speaker, delighted too, and tasting all the sweetness of success, gave place to the next, and came and sat down by Phœbe, to whose society the younger men were all very glad to escape.
“Miss Beecham, you are fashionably calm,” whispered the orator, “you don't throw yourself, like the rest of us, into this great agitation.”
“Have you a leading member?” whispered Phœbe back again; “and does he never drag you at his chariot wheels? Have you deacons that keep you up to the mark? Have youpeople you must drink tea with when they ask you, or else they throw up their sittings? I am thinking, of course, of papa.”
“Have I deacons? Have I leading members? Miss Beecham, you are cruel—”
“Hush!” said Phœbe, settling herself in her chair. “Here is somebody who is in dreadful earnest. Don't talk, Mr. Northcote is going to speak.”
Thus it will be seen that the Minister's daughter played herrôleof fine lady andbel espritvery fairly in an atmosphere so unlike the air that fine ladies breathe. Phœbe paid no more attention to the discomfited man at her elbow. She gathered up her shawl in her hand with a seeming careless movement, and let it drop lightly across her knee, where the gold threads in the embroidery caught the light; and she took off her hat, which she had thought proper to wear to show her sense that the Meeting was not an evening party; and prepared herself to listen. Her complexion and her hair, and the gold threads in the rich Indian work, thus blazed out together upon the startled audience. Many of them were as much struck by this as by the beginning of Mr. Northcote's speech, though it was very different from the other speeches. The others had been routine agitation, this was fiery conviction, crude, and jumping at conclusions, but still an enthusiasm in its way. Mr. Northcote approached his subject gradually, and his hearers, at first disappointed by the absence of their familiar watch-words, were dull, and bestowed their attention on Phœbe; but before he had been speaking ten minutes Phœbe was forgotten even by her uncle and aunt, the two people most interested in her. It would be dangerous to repeat to a reader, probably quite uninterested in the controversy, Mr. Northcote's speech, in which he laid hold of some of those weak points which the Church, of course, has in common with every other institution in the world. Eloquence has a way of evaporating in print, even when the report is immediate. But his peroration was one which startled his hearers out of a calm abstract interest to all that keen personal feeling which accompanies the narrative of facts known to an audience, and affecting people within their own locality.
“I have only been in this place three days,” said the speaker, “but in that short time I have heard of one of the most flagrant abuses which I have been indicating to you. There is in this town, as you all know, an institution called the College; what was its original object I do not know. Nests of idle pauperism, genteelly veiled under such a name, do exist, I know, overall the country; but it is at least probable that some educational purpose was in the mind of the pious founder who established it. The pious founder! how immense are the revenues, how incalculable the means of doing good, which have been locked up in uselessness, or worse than uselessness, by men who have purchased a pass into the kingdom of heaven at the last moment by such gifts, and become pious founders just before they ceased to be miserable sinners! Whatever may have been the original intention of the College, however, it is clear that it was meant for something more than the pitiful use it is put to now. This old foundation, ladies and gentlemen, which might provide half the poor children in Carlingford with a wholesome education, is devoted to the maintenance of six old men, need I say Churchmen?” (here the speaker was interrupted by mingled hisses and ironical “hear, hears”)—“and a chaplain to say their prayers for them. Six old men: and one able-bodied parson to say their prayers for them. What do you think of this, my friends? I understand that this heavy and onerous duty has been offered—not to some other mouldy old gentleman, some decayed clergyman who might have ministered in peace to the decayed old burghers without any interference on my part: for a refuge for the aged and destitute has something natural in it, even when it is a wrong appropriation of public money. No, this would have been some faint approach perhaps to justice, some right in wrong that would have closed our mouths. But no! it is given to a young gentleman, able-bodied, as I have said, who has appeared more than once in the cricket-field with your victorious Eleven, who is fresh from Oxford, and would no more condescend to consider himself on a footing of equality with the humble person who addresses you, than I would, having the use of my hands, accept a disgraceful sinecure! Yes, my friends, this is what the State Church does. She so cows the spirit and weakens the hearts of her followers that a young man at the very beginning of his career, able to teach, able to work, able to dig, educated and trained and cultured, can stoop to accept a good income in such a position as this. Think of it! Six old men, able surely, if they are good for anything, to mumble their prayers for themselves somehow; yet provided with an Oxford scholar, an able-bodied young man, to read the service for them daily! He thinks it very fine, no doubt, a good income and a good house for life, and nothing to do but to canter over morning and evening prayer at a swinging pace, as we have all heard it done: morning prayer, let us see, half an hour—or you may throw in ten minutes, in case the six should mumble their Amens slowly—andtwenty minutes for the evening, one hour a day. Here it is under your very eyes, people of Carlingford, a charming provision for the son of one of your most respected clergymen. Why, it is in your newspaper, where I read it! Can I give a more forcible instance of the way in which a State Church cuts honesty and honour out of men's hearts.”
A great many people noticed that when Mr. Northcote ended this with a thundering voice, some one who had been listening near the door in an Inverness cape, and hat over his brows, gave himself a sudden impetuous shake which shook the crowd, and turning round made his way out, not caring whom he stumbled against. The whole assembly was in a hubbub when the orator ceased, and whispers ran freely round among all the groups in the front. “That's young May he means.” “In course it's young May. Infernal job, as I've always said.” “Oh hush, Pigeon, don't swear! but it do seem a black burning shame, don't it?” “Bravo, Mr. Nor'cote!” called out old Tozer, on the platform, “that's what I call giving forth no uncertain sound. That's laying it into them 'ot and 'ot.”
This was the climax of the Meeting. Everything else was flat after such a decided appeal to personal knowledge. Phœbe alone gave a frigid reception to the hero of the evening.
“I dislike personalities,” she said, pointedly. “They never do a cause any good; and it isn't gentlemanly; don't you think so, Mr. Sloely;” and she turned away from Northcote, who had come to speak to her, and devoted herself to the man at her elbow, whom she had snubbed a little while before. Mr. Northcote said to himself that this was untrue, and brought up a hundred very good reasons why he should have employed such an example, but the reproof stung him to the quick, for to be ungentlemanly was the reproach of all others most calculated to go to his heart.
But nobody knew how Mr. May went home in his Inverness cape, breathing fire and flame, nor of the execution he did thereupon.