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After this there followed an exciting interval for the family at the Parsonage. Reginald, with the impatience of anger, insisted upon transporting himself to the College at once, and entering upon “his duties,” such as they were, in defiance of all public comment. And Mr. May, delighted with the head-strong resentment which served his purpose so well, promoted it by all the means in his power, goading his son on, if he showed any signs of relaxing, by references to public opinion, and what the Liberation Society would say. Before those curtains were ready, which the girls had ordered with so much pride, or the carpet laid down, he had taken possession, and his room in the Parsonage was already turned upside down preparing for a new inmate. Many and strange were the thoughts in Ursula's mind about this new inmate. She remembered Clarence Copperhead as a full-grown man, beyond, it seemed to her, the age at which pupilage was possible. What was he coming to Carlingford for? What was he coming to the Parsonage for? What could papa do with a pupil quite as old as Reginald, who, in his own person, had often taken pupils? Ursula had read as many novels as were natural at her age, and can it be supposed that she did not ask herself whether there was any other meaning in it? Could he be coming to Carlingford on account of Miss Beecham; or, on account of—any one else? Ursula never whispered, even to her own imagination, on account of me. But it is not to be supposed that theunbidden inarticulate thought did not steal in, fluttering her girlish soul. Everybody knows that in fiction, at least, such things occur continually, and are the most natural things in the world; and to Ursula, beyond her own little commonplace world, which she somewhat despised, and the strange world undeciphered and wonderful to which the Dorsets had introduced her for those ten brief days in London, the world of fiction was the only sphere she knew; and in that sphere there could be no such natural method of accounting for a young man's actions as that of supposing him to be “in love.” The question remained, was it with Miss Beecham, or was it with—anybody else? Such an inquiry could not but flutter her youthful bosom. She made his room ready for him, and settled how he was to be disposed of, with the strangest sense of something beneath, which her father would never suspect, but which, perhaps, she alone might know.
Clarence Copperhead was a more imposing figure to Ursula than he was in reality. She had seen him only twice, and he was a big and full-grown “gentleman,” while Ursula only realised herself as a little girl. She was not even aware that she had any intelligence to speak of, or that she would be a fit person to judge of “a gentleman.” To be sure she had to do many things which wanted thought and sense; but she was too unthoughtful of herself to have decided this as yet, or to have created any private tribunal at which to judge a new-comer of Clarence Copperhead's dimensions. A much greater personage than she was, an individual whose comings and goings could not be without observation, whose notice would be something exciting and strange, was what she took him to be. And Ursula was excited. Did Mrs. Copperhead, that kind little woman, know why he was coming—was she in his confidence? And how was Ursula to entertain him, to talk to him—a gentleman accustomed to so much better society? She did not say anything to Janey on this subject, though Janey was not without her curiosities too, and openly indulged in conjectures as to the new pupil.
“I wonder if he will be fine. I wonder if he will be very good,” said Janey. “I wonder if he will fall in love with Ursula. Pupils, in books, always do; and then there is a dreadful fuss and bother, and the girl is sent away. It is hard for the girl; it is always supposed to be her fault. I would not allow papa to take any pupils if it was me.”
“And much your papa would care for your permission,” said Mrs. Sam Hurst. “But so far I agree with you, Janey, that before he has pupils, or anything of that sort, there ought tobe a lady in the house. He should marry—”
“Marry! we don't want a lady in the house,” cried Janey, “we are ladies ourselves, I hope. Marry! if he does, I, for one, will do all I can to make his life miserable,” said the girl with energy. “What should he want to marry for when he has daughters grown up? There are enough of us already, I should think.”
“Too many,” said Mrs. Sam Hurst with a sigh. It gave her the greatest secret delight to play upon the girl's fears.
Besides this, however, Ursula had another pre-occupation. In that cordial meeting with the young lady who had turned out to be a person in such an embarrassing position, there had been a great deal said about future meetings, walks, and expeditions together, and Ursula had been very desirous that Phœbe should fix some time for their first encounter. She thought of this now with blushes that seemed to burn her cheeks. She was afraid to go out, lest she should meet the girl she had been so anxious to make a friend of. Not that, on her own account, after the first shock, Ursula would have been hard-hearted enough to deny her acquaintance to Tozer's granddaughter. In the seclusion of her chamber, she had cried over the downfall of her ideal friend very bitterly, and felt the humiliation for Phœbe more cruelly than that young lady felt it for herself; but Ursula, however much it might have cost her, would have stood fast to her friendship had she been free to do as she pleased.
“I did not like her for her grandfather,” she said to Janey, of whom, in this case, she was less unwilling to make a confidant. “I never thought of the grandfather. What does it matter to me if he were a sweep instead of old Tozer?”
“Old Tozer is just as bad as if he were a sweep,” said Janey; “if you had ever thought of her grandfather, and known he was old Tozer, you would have felt it would not do.”
“What is there about a grandfather? I don't know if we ever had any,” said Ursula. “Mamma had, for the Dorsets are her relations—but papa. Mr. Griffiths's grandfather was a candle-maker; I have heard papa say so—and they go everywhere.”
“But he is dead,” said Janey, with great shrewdness, “and he was rich.”
“You little nasty calculating thing! Oh, how I hate rich people; how I hate this horrid world, that loves money and loves fine names, and does not care for people's selves whether they are bad or good! I shall never dare to walk up Grange Lane again,” said Ursula, with tears. “Fancy changing to her,after being so glad to see her! fancy never saying another word about the skating, or the walk to the old mill! How she will despise me for being such a miserable creature! and she will think it is all my own fault.”
At this moment Mr. May, from the door of his study, called “Ursula!” repeating the call with some impatience when she paused to dry her eyes. She ran down to him quickly, throwing down her work in her haste. He was standing at the door, and somehow for the first time the worn look about his eyes struck Ursula with a touch of pity. She had never noticed it before: a look of suppressed pain and anxiety, which remained about his eyes though the mouth smiled. It had never occurred to her to be sorry for her father before, and the idea struck her as very strange now.
“Come in,” he said, “I want to speak to you. I have been thinking about the young woman—this friend of yours. We are all among the Dissenters now-a-days, whatever Mrs. Sam Hurst may say. You seem to have taken a fancy to this Tozer girl?”
“Don't call her so, papa, please. She is a lady in herself, as good a lady as any one.”
“Well! I don't say anything against her, do I? So you hold by your fancy? You are not afraid of Grange Lane and Mrs. Sam Hurst.”
“I have not seen her again,” said Ursula, cast down. “I have not been out at all. I could not bear to be so friendly one day, and then to pass as if one did not know her the next. I cannot do it,” cried the girl, in tears; “if I see her, I must just be the same as usual to her, whatever you say.”
“Very well,bethe same as usual,” said Mr. May; “that is why I called you. I have my reasons. Notwithstanding Tozer, be civil to the girl. I have my reasons for what I say.”
“Do you mean it, papa!” said Ursula, delighted. “Oh, how good of you! You don't mind—you really don't mind? Oh! I can't tell you how thankful I am; for to pretend to want to be friends, and then to break off all in a moment because of a girl's grandfather——”
“Don't make a principle of it, Ursula. It is quite necessary, in an ordinary way, to think of a girl's grandfather—and a boy's too, for that matter. No shopkeeping friends for me; but in this individual case I am willing to make an exception. For the moment, you see, Dissenters are in the ascendant. Young Copperhead is coming next week. Now, go.”
Ursula marched delighted upstairs. “Janey, run and get your hat,” she said; “I am going out. I am not afraid of anyone now. Papa is a great deal nicer than he ever was before. He says I may see Miss Beecham as much as I like. He says we need not mind Mrs. Sam Hurst. I am so glad! I shall never be afraid of that woman any more.”
Janey was taken altogether by surprise. “I hope he is not going to fall in love with Miss Beecham,” she said suspiciously. “I have heard Betsy say that old gentlemen often do.”
“He is not so foolish as to fall in love with anybody,” said Ursula, with dignity. “Indeed, Janey, you ought to have much more respect for papa. I wish you could be sent to school and learn more sense. You give your opinion as if you were—twenty—more than that. I am sure I never should have ventured to say such things when I was a child like you.”
“Child yourself!” said Janey indignant; which was her last resource when she had nothing more to say; but Ursula was too busy putting aside her work and preparing for her walk to pay any attention. In proportion as she had been subdued and downcast heretofore, she was gay now. She forgot all about old Tozer; about the Dissenters' meeting, and the man who had made an attack upon poor Reginald. She flew to her room for her hat and jacket, and ran downstairs, singing to herself. Janey only overtook her, out of breath, as she emerged into the road from the Parsonage door.
“What a dreadful hurry you are in,” said Janey. “I always get ready so much quicker than you do. Is it all about this girl, because she is new? I never knew you were so fond of new people before.”
But that day they went up and down Grange Lane fruitlessly, without seeing anything of Phœbe, and Ursula returned home disconsolate. In the evening Reginald intimated carelessly that he had met Miss Beecham. “She is much better worth talking to than most of the girls one meets with, whoever her grandfather may be,” he said, evidently with an instant readiness to stand on the defensive.
“Oh, did you talk to her,” said Ursula, “without knowing? Reginald, papa has no objections. He says we may even have her here, if we please.”
“Well, of course I suppose he must guide you in that respect,” said Reginald, “but it does not matter particularly to me. Of course I talked to her. Even my father could not expect that his permission was needed for me.”
At which piece of self-assertion the girls looked at him with admiring eyes. Already they felt there was a difference. Reginald at home, nominal curate, without pay or position, was a different thing from Reginald with an appointment,a house of his own, and two hundred and fifty pounds a year. The girls looked at him admiringly, but felt that this was never likely to be their fate. In everything the boys had so much the best of it; and yet it was almost a comfort to think that they had seen Reginald himself trembling before papa. Reginald had a great deal to tell them about the college, about the old men who made a hundred daily claims on his attention, and the charities which he had to administer, doles of this and that, and several charity schools of a humble class.
“As for my time, it is not likely to hang on my hands as I thought. I can't be a parish Quixote, as we planned, Ursula, knocking down windmills for other people,” he said, adjusting his round edge of collar. He was changed; he was important, a personage in his own sight, no longer to be spoken of as Mr. May's son. Janey ventured on a little laugh when he went away, but Ursula did not like the change.
“Never mind,” cried Janey; “I hope Copperhead will be nice. We shall have him to talk to, when he comes.”
“Oh!” cried Ursula, in a kind of despair, “who taught you to call gentlemen like that by their name? There is nothing so vulgar. Why, Cousin Anne says—”
“Oh, Cousin Anne!” cried Janey, shaking her head, and dancing away. After that she was aware there was nothing for it but flight.
Next day, however, they were more successful. Phœbe, though very little older than Ursula, was kind to the country girls, and talked to them both, and drew them out. She smiled when she heard of Clarence Copperhead, and told them that he was not very clever, but she did not think there was any harm in him.
“It is his father who is disagreeable,” said Phœbe; “didn't you think so? You know, papa is a minister, Miss May,” (she did not say clergyman when she spoke to a churchwoman, for what was the use of exciting any one's prejudices?) “and Mr. Copperhead comes to our church. You may be very thankful, in that respect, that you are not a dissenter. But it will be very strange to see Clarence Copperhead in Carlingford. I have known him since I was no bigger than your little sister. To tell the truth,” said Phœbe, frankly, “I think I am rather sorry he is coming here.”
“Why?” cried bold Janey, who was always inquisitive.
Miss Phœbe only smiled and shook her head; she made no distinct reply.
“Poor fellow, I suppose he has been 'plucked,' as thegentlemen call it, or 'ploughed,' does your brother say? University slang is very droll. He has not taken his degree, I suppose, and they want him to work before going up again. I am sorry for your father, too, for I don't think it will be very easy to get anything into Clarence Copperhead's mind. But there is no harm at all in him, and he used to be very nice to his mother. Mamma and I liked him for that; he was always very nice to his mother.”
“Will you come in and have some tea?” said Ursula. “Do, please. I hope, now that I have met you again, you will not refuse me. I was afraid you had gone away, or something—”
Ursula, however, could not help looking guilty as she spoke, and Phœbe perceived at once that there had been some reason for the two or three days disappearance of the girls from Grange Lane.
“You must tell me first,” she said, with a smile, “whether you know who I am. If you ask me after that, I shall come. I am old Mr. Tozer's granddaughter, who had a shop in the High Street. My uncle has a shop there now. I do not like it myself,” said Phœbe, with the masterly candour that distinguished her, “and no one else can be expected to like it. If you did not know—”
“Oh, we heard directly,” cried Janey; “Mrs. Sam Hurst told us. She came shrieking, 'Who is she?' before your back was turned that day; for she wondered to see you with old Tozer—”
“Janey!” cried Ursula, with horror. “Of course we know; and please will you come? Every new person in Carlingford gets talked over, and if an angel were to walk about, Mrs. Sam Hurst would never rest till she had found out where he came from.”
“And, perhaps, whether he had a broken feather in his wing,” said Phœbe. “I am very glad you don't mind. It will be very pleasant to come. I will run in and tell them, and then I will join you. Grandmamma is an invalid, and would like to know where I am.”
And the news made a considerable flutter in the dim room where Mrs. Tozer sat between the fire and the window, looking out upon the crocuses and regretting the High Street.
“But run and put on another dress, dear. What will they think of you in that everlasting brown frock as you're so fond of? I'd like them to see as my grandchild could dress as nice as any lady in the land.”
“She'll not see much finery there,” said Tozer; “they're as poor as church mice, are them Mays, and never a penny topay a bill when it's wanted. I don't think as Phœbe need mind her dressing to go there.”
“And you'll send for me if you want me, grandmamma; you will be sure to send?”
But for the brown frock, Mrs. Tozer's satisfaction would have been unalloyed as she watched her granddaughter walking across the garden.
“She's at home among the quality, she is,” said the old woman; “maybe more so than she is with you and me; but there ain't a better girl in all England, and that I'll say for her, though if she would think a little more about her clothes, as is nat'ral at her age, it would be more pleasing to me.”
“The worst dress as Phœbe has is better than anything belonging to them Mays,” said Tozer.
He did not care for the parson at St. Roque; though he was pleased that his child should be among “the quality.” But it was on that evening that poor old Mrs. Tozer had one of her attacks, and Phœbe had to be summoned back at an early hour. The servant went down with an umbrella and a note, to bring her home; and that trifling incident had its influence upon after affairs, as the reader shall shortly see.
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It was something of a comfort to Phœbe to find that the “tea” to which Ursula asked her was a family meal, such as Mr. and Mrs. Tozer indulged in, in Grange Lane, with no idea of dinner to follow, as in more refined circles. This, she said to herself benignly, must be “country fashion,” and she was naturally as bland and gracious at the Parsonage tea-table as anybody from town, knowing better, but desiring to make herself thoroughly agreeable, could be. She amused Mr. May very much, who felt the serene young princess, accepting her vulgar relations with gentle resignation, and supported by a feeling of her own innate dignity, to be something quite new to him. Phœbe had no objection to talk upon the subject, for, clever as she was, she was not so clever as to see through Mr. May's amused show of interest in her trials, but believed ingenuously that he understood and felt for her, and was, perhaps, at last, the one noble, impartial, and generous Churchman whocould see the difficulties of cultivated Dissenters, and enter into them sympathetically. Why Mr. May took the trouble to draw her out on this point it is more difficult to explain. Poor man, he was in a state of semi-distraction over Cotsdean's bill. The ten days had shortened into three, and he was no nearer finding that hundred pounds than ever. Even while he smiled and talked to Phœbe, he was repeating over and over to himself the terrible fact which could not now be ignored. “17th, 18th, 19th, and Friday will be the 20th,” he was saying to himself. If that 20th came without any help, Cotsdean would be virtually made a bankrupt; for of course all his creditors would make a rush upon him, and all his affairs would be thrown open to the remorseless public gaze, if the bill, which had been so often renewed, had to be dishonoured at last. Mr. May had a conscience, though he was not careful of his money, and the fear of ruin to Cotsdean was a very terrible and real oppression to him. The recollection was upon him like a vulture in classic story, tearing and gnawing, as he sat there and smiled over the cup of tea Ursula gave him, feeling amused all the same at Phœbe's talk. He could scarcely have told why he had permitted his daughter to pursue her acquaintance with Tozer's granddaughter. Partly it was because of Clarence Copperhead; out of curiosity, as, being about to be brought in contact with some South Sea Islander or Fijian, one would naturally wish to see another who was thrown in one's way by accident, and thus prepare one's self for the permanent acquaintance. And she amused him. Her cleverness, her ease, her conversational powers, her woman of the world aspect, did not so much impress him, perhaps, as they did others; but the complacency and innocent confidence of youth that were in her, and her own enjoyment of the situation, notwithstanding the mortifications incurred—all this amused Mr. May. He listened to her talk, sometimes feeling himself almost unable to bear it, for the misery of those words, which kept themselves ringing in a dismal chorus in his own mind, and yet deriving a kind of amusement and distraction from it all the same.
“One of your friends was very hard upon my son—and myself—at your Meeting the other night, Miss Beecham.”
“He was very injudicious,” said Phœbe, shaking her head. “Indeed I did not approve. Personalities never advance any cause. I said so to him. Don't you think the Church has herself to blame for those political Dissenters, Mr. May? You sneer at us, and look down upon us—”
“I? I don't sneer at anybody.”
“I don't mean you individually; but Churchmen do. Theytreat us as if we were some strange kind of creatures, from the heart of Africa perhaps. They don't think we are just like themselves: as well educated; meaning as well; with as much right to our own ideas.”
Mr. May could scarcely restrain a laugh. “Just like themselves.” The idea of a Dissenter setting up to be as well educated, and as capable of forming an opinion, as a cultivated Anglican, an Oxford man, and a beneficed clergyman, was too novel and too foolish not to be somewhat startling as well. Mr. May was aware that human nature is strangely blind to its own deficiencies, but was it possible that any delusion could go so far as this? He did laugh a little—just the ghost of a laugh—at the idea. But what is the use of making any serious opposition to such a statement? The very fact of contesting the assumption seemed to give it a certain weight.
“Whenever this is done,” said Phœbe, with serene philosophy, “I think you may expect a revulsion of feeling. The class to which papa belongs is very friendly to the Established Church, and wishes to do her every honour.”
“Is it indeed? We ought to be much gratified,” said Mr. May.
Phœbe gave him a quick glance, but he composed his face and met her look meekly. It actually diverted him from his pre-occupation, and that is a great deal to say.
“We would willingly do her any honour; we would willingly be friends, even look up to her, if that would please her,” added Phœbe, very gravely, conscious of the importance of what she was saying; “but when we see clergymen, and common persons also, who have never had one rational thought on the subject, always setting us down as ignorant and uncultured, because we are Dissenters——”
“But no one does that,” said Ursula, soothingly, eager to save her new friend's feelings. She paused in the act of pouring out the children's second cup of tea, and looked up at her with eyes full of caressing and flattering meaning. “No one, at least, I am sure,” she added, faltering, remembering suddenly things she had heard said of Dissenters, “who knowsyou.”
“It is not I that ought to be thought of, it is the general question. Then can you wonder that a young man like the gentleman we were talking of, clever and energetic, and an excellent scholar (and very good in philosophy, too—he was at Jena for two or three years), should be made bitter when he feels himself thrust back upon a community of small shopkeepers?”
Mr. May could not restrain another short laugh.
“We must not join in the vulgar abuse of shopkeepers,” he said.
Phœbe's colour rose. She raised her head a little, then perceiving the superiority of her former position, smiled.
“I have no right to do so. My people, I suppose, were all shopkeepers to begin with; but this gives me ways of knowing. Grandpapa is very kind and nice—really nice, Mr. May; but he has not at all a wide way of looking at things. I feel it, though they are so kind to me. I have been brought up to think in such a different way; and if I feel it, who am fond of them, think how that young minister must feel it, who was brought up in a totally different class?”
“What kind of class was this one brought up in?” said Mr. May, with a laugh. “He need not have assaulted Reginald, if he had been born a prince. We had done him no harm.”
“That is making it entirely a private question,” said Phœbe, suavely, “which I did not mean to do. When such a man finds out abuses—what he takes to be abuses—in the Church, which treats him like a roadside ranter, may not he feel a right to be indignant? Oh, I am not so. I think such an office as that chaplaincy is very good, one here and there for the reward of merit; and I think he was very right to take it; but still it would not do, would it, to have many of them? It would not answer any good purpose,” she said, administering a little sting scientifically, “if all clergymen held sinecures.”
These words were overheard by Reginald, who just then came in, and to whom it was startling to find Phœbe serenely seated at tea with his family. The hated word sinecure did not seem to affect him from her lips as it would have done from any one else's. He came in quite good-humouredly, and said with a smile—
“You are discussing me. What about me? Miss Beecham, I hope you take my side.”
“I take everybody's side,” said Phœbe; “for I try to trace people's motives. I can sympathise both with you and those who assailed you.”
“Oh, that Dissenting fellow. I beg your pardon, Miss Beecham, if you are a Dissenter; but I cannot help it. We never go out of our way to attack them and their chapels and coteries, and why should they spring at our throats on every occasion? I think it is hard, and I can't say I have any charity to spare for this individual. What had we done to him? Ursula, give me some tea.”
“Miss Beecham, I leave the cause of the Church in younger and, I hope, abler hands,” said Mr. May, getting up.
Partly it was that Reginald's onslaught made him see for the first time certain weak points in the situation; partly it was that his private care became too clamorous, and he could not keep on further. He went away quite abruptly, and went downstairs to his study, and shut himself in there; and the moment he had closed the door, all this amusement floated away, and the vulture gripped at him, beak and talons digging into his very soul. Good God! what was he to do? He covered his face with his hands, and turned round and round mentally in that darkness to see if anywhere there might be a gleam of light; but none was visible east or west. A hundred pounds, only a hundred pounds; a bagatelle, a thing that to many men was as small an affair as a stray sixpence; and here was this man, as good, so to speak, as any—well educated, full of gifts and accomplishments, well born, well connected, not a prodigal nor open sinner, losing himself in the very blackness of darkness, feeling that a kind of moral extinction was the only prospect before him, for want of this little sum. It seemed incredible even to himself, as he sat and brooded over it. Somehow, surely, there must be a way of deliverance. He looked piteously about him in his solitude, appealing to the very blank walls to save him. What could they do? His few books, his faded old furniture, would scarcely realize a hundred pounds if they were sold to-morrow. All his friends had been wearied out, all natural resources had failed. James might any day have sent the money, but he had not done so—just this special time, when it was so hard to get it, James, too, had failed; and the hours of this night were stealing away like thieves, so swift and so noiseless, to be followed by the others; and Cotsdean, poor soul, his faithful retainer, would be broken and ruined. To do Mr. May justice, if it had been only himself who could be ruined, he would have felt it less; but it went to his very heart to think of poor Cotsdean, who had trusted in him so entirely, and to whom, indeed, he had been very kind in his day. Strife and discord had been in the poor man's house, and perpetual wretchedness, and Mr. May had managed, he himself could scarcely tell how, to set it right. He had frightened and subdued the passionate wife, and quenched the growing tendencies to evil, which made her temper worse than it was by nature, and had won her back to soberness and some kind of peace, changing the unhappy house into one of comparative comfort and cheerfulness. Most people like those bestto whom they have been kind, whom they have served or benefited, and in this way Mr. May was fond of Cotsdean, who in his turn had been a very good friend to his clergyman, serving him as none of his own class could have done, going in the face of all his own prejudices and the timorousness of nature, on his account. And the result was to be ruin—ruin unmitigated to the small man who was in business, and equally disastrous, though in a less creditable way, to his employer. It was with a suppressed anguish which is indescribable that he sat there, with his face covered, looking this approaching misery in the face. How long he had been there, he could scarcely himself tell, when he heard a little commotion in the hall, the sounds of running up and down stairs, and opening of doors. He was in a feverish and restless condition, and every stir roused him. Partly because of that impatience in his mind, and partly because every new thing seemed to have some possibility of hope in it, he got up and went to the door. Before he returned to his seat, something might have occurred to him, something might have happened—who could tell? It might be the postman with a letter containing that remittance from James, which still would set all right. It might be—he rose suddenly, and opening the door, held it ajar and looked out; the front door was open, and the night air blowing chilly into the house, and on the stairs, coming down, he heard the voices of Ursula and Phœbe. Ursula was pinning a shawl round her new friend, and consoling her.
“I hope you will find it is nothing. I am so sorry,” she said.
“Oh, I am not very much afraid,” said Phœbe. “She is ill, but not very bad, I hope; and it is not dangerous. Thank you so much for letting me come.”
“You will come again?” said Ursula, kissing her; “promise that you will come again.”
Mr. May listened with a certain surface of amusement in his mind. How easy and facile these girlish loves and fancies were! Ursula knew nothing of this stranger, and yet so free were the girl's thoughts, so open her heart to receive impressions, that on so short knowledge she had received the other into it with undoubting confidence and trust. He did not come forward himself to say good-bye, but he perceived that Reginald followed downstairs, and took his hat from the table, to accompany Phœbe home. As they closed the outer door behind them, the last gust thus forcibly shut in made a rush through the narrow hall, and carried a scrap of paper to Mr. May's feet. He picked it up almost mechanically, and carried it with him to the light, and looked at it without thought. There wasnot much in it to interest any one. It was the little note which Tozer had sent to his granddaughter by the maid, not prettily folded, to begin with, and soiled and crumpled by the bearer.
“Your grandmother is took bad with one of her attacks. Come back directly. She wants you badly.“Saml. Tozer.”
“Your grandmother is took bad with one of her attacks. Come back directly. She wants you badly.
“Saml. Tozer.”
This was all that was in it. Mr. May opened it out on his table with a half-smile of that same superficial amusement which the entire incident had caused him—the contact, even momentary, of his own household with that of Tozer, the old Dissenting butterman, was so droll an event. Then he sank down on his chair again with a sigh, the amusement dying out all at once, purely superficial as it was. Amusement! how strange that even the idea of amusement should enter his head in the midst of his despair. His mind renewed that horrible mechanical wandering through the dismal circle of might-be's which still survived amid the chaos of his thoughts. Once or twice there seemed to gleam upon him a stray glimmer of light through a loophole, but only to throw him back again into the darkness. Now and then he roused himself with a look of real terror in his face, when there came a noise outside. What he was afraid of was poor Cotsdean coming in with his hand to his forehead, and his apologetic “Beg your pardon, sir.” If he came, what could he say to him? Two days—only two days more! If Mr. May had been less sensible and less courageous, he would most likely have ended the matter by a pistol or a dose of laudanum; but fortunately he was too rational to deliver himself by this desperate expedient, which, of course, would only have made the burden more terrible upon the survivors. If Cotsdean was to be ruined, and there was no remedy, Mr. May was man enough to feel that it was his business to stand by him, not to escape in any dastardly way; but in the mean time to face Cotsdean, and tell him that he had done and could do nothing, seemed more than the man who had caused his ruin could bear. He moved about uneasily in his chair in the anguish of his mind. As he did so, he pushed off some of his papers from the table with his elbow. It was some sort of break in his feverish musings to pick them up again in a bundle, without noticing what they were. He threw them down in a little heap before him. On the top, as it chanced, came the little dirty scrap of paper, which ought to have been tossed into the fire or the waste-paper basket. Saml. Tozer!What was Saml. Tozer to him that his name should stare him in the face in this obtrusive way? Tozer, the old butterman! a mean and ignorant person, as far beneath Mr. May's level as it is possible to imagine, whose handwriting it was very strange to see on anything but a bill. He fixed his eyes upon it mechanically; he had come, as it were, to the end of all things in those feverish musings; he had searched through his whole known world for help, and found there nothing and nobody to help him. Those whom he had once relied on were exhausted long ago; his friends had all dropped off from him, as far, at least, as money was concerned. Some of them might put out a hand to keep him and his children from starvation even now, but to pay Cotsdean's bill, never. There was no help anywhere, nor any hope. Natural ways and means were all exhausted, and though he was a clergyman, he had no such faith in the supernatural as to hope much for the succour of Heaven. Heaven! what could Heaven do for him? Bank-notes did not drop down out of the skies. There had been a time when he had felt full faith in “Providence;” but he seemed to have nothing to expect now from that quarter more than from any other. Samuel Tozer! why did that name always come uppermost, staring into his very eyes? It was a curious signature, the handwriting very rude and unrefined, with odd, illiterate dashes, and yet with a kind of rough character in it, easy to identify, not difficult to copy—
What was it that brought beads of moisture all at once to Mr. May's forehead? He started up suddenly, pushing his chair with a hoarse exclamation, and walked up and down the room quickly, as if trying to escape from something. His heart jumped up in his breast, like a thing possessed of separate life, and thumped against his side, and beat with loud pulsations in his ears. When he caught sight of himself in the mirror over the mantelpiece, he started as if he had seen a ghost. Some one else seemed to see him; seemed to pounce upon and seize him out of that glass. He retreated from the reach of it, almost staggering; then he returned to his table. What thought was it that had struck him so wildly, like a sudden squall upon a boat? He sat down, and covered his face with his hands; then putting out one finger, stealthily drew the paper towards him, and studied it closely from under the shadow of the unmoved hand, which half-supported, half-covered his face. Well! after all, what would be the harm? A gain of three months' time, during which every sort of arrangement could be made so nicely; supplies got anywhere, everywhere; the whole machinery of being set easily in motion again, andno harm done to any one: this was the real force of the idea—no harm done to any one! Long before the three months were out, that hundred pounds—a paltry business, a nothing, when a man had time before him—could be got, one might make sure; and where was the harm?Hewould never know it. Poor Cotsdean need never have the slightest burden upon his conscience. Here, in the stillness of his own room, it could all be done as easily as possible, without a soul being taken into confidence, except that bloodless wretch in the glass with his staring face, Mr. May said to himself, only dimly sensible that this wretch was himself. No, it would harm no one, that was clear; it never need be known to any one. It was a mere act of borrowing, and borrowing was never accounted a crime; borrowing not money even, only a name, and for so short a time. No harm; it could do no one in the world any harm.
While these reasonings went on in his mind, his heart dropped down again into its right place; his pulse ceased to beat like the pistons of a steam-engine; he came gradually to himself. After all, what was it? Not such a great matter; a loan of something which would neither enrich him who took, nor impoverish him who, without being aware of it, should give—a nothing! Why people should entertain the prejudices they did on the subject, it was difficult to see, though, perhaps, he allowed candidly to himself, it might be dangerous for any ignorant man to follow the same strain of thinking; but in the hands of a man who was not ignorant, who knew, as he himself did, exactly how far to go, and what might beinnocentlydone;innocentlydone—in his own mind he put a great stress on this—why, what was it? A thing which might be of use in an emergency, and which was absolutely no harm.
Mr. May was late in leaving his room that night. It was understood in the family that he “was writing,” and all was kept very quiet in the house; yet not sufficiently quiet, for Janey, when she brought in the coffee, placing it on the table close to the door, was startled by the fierceness of the exclamation with which her father greeted her entrance.
“What do you want prying here?” he said, dropping his hand over the writing.
“Prying himself!” said Janey, furiously, when she was up again in the cheerful light of the drawing-room; “a great deal there is to pry into in that dreadful old study.”
“Hush! he never likes to be disturbed in his writing,” said Ursula, soothingly.
And he sat at his “writing” to a much later hour than usual, and he stumbled upstairs to his bed-room in the dead ofthe night, with the same scared pale face which he had seen in the glass. Such a look as that when it once comes upon a man's face takes a long time to glide away; but his heart beat more tranquilly, and the blood flowed even in his veins. After all, where was the harm?
Top
Next morning, Cotsdean was mournfully turning over his ledger in the High Street, wondering whether he should go back to Mr. May on another forlorn expedition, or whether he should betray his overwhelming anxiety to his wife, who knew nothing about the state of affairs. The shop was what is called a corn-factor's shop, full of sacks of grain, with knots of wheat-ears done up ornamentally in the window, a stock not very valuable, but sufficient, and showing a good, if not a very important, business. A young man behind, attended to what little business was going on; for the master himself was too much pre-occupied to think of bushels of seed. He was as uneasy as Mr. May had been on the previous night, and in some respects even more unhappy; for he had no resource except a sort of dumb faith in his principle, a feeling that he must be able to find out some way of escape—chequered by clouds of despondency, sometimes approaching despair. For Cotsdean, too, felt vaguely that things were approaching a crisis—that a great many resources had been exhausted—that the pitcher which had gone so often to the well must, at last, be broken, and that it was as likely the catastrophe was coming now as at any other time. He said to himself that never in his previous experience had things seemed so blank as at present; never had the moment of fate approached so nearly without any appearance of deliverance. He had not even the round of possibilities before him which were in Mr. May's mind, however hopeless, at this particular moment, he might find them.
Cotsdean, for his part, had nothing to think of but Mr. May. Would he find some way out of it still, he who was always so clever, and must, in his position, have always “good friends?” How the poor man wished that he had never been led into this fatal course—that he had insisted, long ago, on the settlement which must come some time, and which did not get any easierby putting it off; but then, who was he to stand against his clergyman? He did not feel able now to make any stand against him. If he had to be ruined—he must be ruined: what could he do? The man who had brought him to this, held him in such subjection that he could not denounce or accuse him even now. He was so much better, higher, abler, stronger than himself, that Cotsdean's harshest sentiment was a dumb feeling of injury; a feeling much more likely to lead him to miserable tears than to resistance. His clergyman—how was he to stand against his clergyman? This was the burden of his thoughts. And still, perhaps, there might be salvation and safety in the resources, the power, and cleverness, and superior strength of the man for whom, in his humility, he had risked everything. Poor Cotsdean's eyes were red with sleeplessness and thinking, and the constant rubbings he administered with the sleeve of his rough coat. He hung helpless, in suspense, waiting to see what his chief would say to him; if he would send for him—if he would come. And in the intervals of these anxious thoughts, he asked himself should he tell poor Sally—should he prepare her for her fate? She and her children might be turned out of house and home, very probably would be, he said to himself, leaping to the extreme point, as men in his condition are apt to do. They might take everything from him; they might bring all his creditors on him in a heap; they might sell him up; his shop by which he made his daily bread, and everything he had, and turn his children out into the streets. Once more he rubbed his sleeve over his eyes, which were smarting with sleeplessness and easily-coming tears. He turned over the pages of the ledger mechanically. There was no help in it—no large debts owing to him that could be called in; no means of getting any money; and nothing could he do but contemplate the miseries that might be coming, and wait, wait, wondering dully whether Mr. May was doing anything to avert this ruin, and whether, at any moment, he might walk in, bringing safety in the very look of his bold eyes. Cotsdean was not bold; he was small and weakly, and nervous, and trembled at a sharp voice. He was not a man adapted for vigorous struggling with the world. Mr. May could do it, in whose hands was the final issue. He was a man who was afraid of no one; and whose powers nobody could deny. Surely now, even at the last moment, he would find help somehow. It seemed profane to entertain a doubt that he would be able to do it even at the very last.
But Cotsdean had a miserable morning; he could do nothing.Minute by minute, hour by hour, he waited to be called to the Parsonage; now and then he went out to the door of his shop and looked out wistfully down the street where it ended in the distance of Grange Lane. Was that the maid from the Parsonage coming up across the road? Were these the young ladies, who, though they knew nothing about the matter at issue, very frequently brought a note, or message, from their father to Cotsdean? But he was deceived in these guesses as well as in so many others. All the world seemed out of doors that morning, but nobody came. The ruddy sunshine shone full down the street, glorifying it with rays of warm gold, and tinting the mists and clouds which lurked in the corners. It had been heavy and overcast in the morning, but at noon the clouds had cleared away, and that big red globe of fire had risen majestically out of the mists, and everybody was out. But no one, except humble people in the ordinary way of business, came to Cotsdean. Bushels of grain for chickens, pennyworths of canary seed—oh! did any one think he could pay a hundred pounds out of these?—a hundred pounds, the spending of which had not been his, poor man; which was indeed spent long ago, and represented luxuries past and over, luxuries which were not Cotsdean's. Strange that a mere lump of money should live like this, long after it was, to all intents and purposes, dead, and spent and gone!
Then came the hour of dinner, when his Sally called him to the room behind the shop, from which an odour of bacon and fine big beans—beans which were represented in his shop in many a sackful. He went in unwillingly in obedience to her command, but feeling unable to eat, soon left the table, sending the young man to fill his place, with whose appetite no obstacle of care or thought interfered. Poor Cotsdean felt that the smell of the dinner made him sick—though he would have liked to eat had he been able—the smell of the bacon which he loved, and the sight of the small children whom he loved still better, and poor Sally, his wife, still red in the face from dishing it up. Sally was anxious about her husband's want of appetite.
“What ails you, John?” she said, pathetically; “it wasn't as if you were out last night, nor nothing o' that sort. A man as is sober like you don't ought to turn at his dinner.”
She was half sorry, and half aggrieved, poor woman, feeling as if some blame of her cookery must be involved.
“It's the bile,” said poor Cotsdean, with that simplicity of statement which is common in his class. “Don't you take on, Sally, I'll be a deal better by supper-time——or worse,” he added to himself. Yes, he would make an effort to eat atsupper-time; perhaps it might be the last meal he should eat in his own comfortable home.
He had been out at the shop door, gazing despairingly down the road; he had come in and sold some birdseed, wondering—oh, what good would that penny do him?—he who wanted a hundred pounds? and was standing listening with a sad heart to the sound of the knives and forks and chatter of the children, when suddenly all at once Mr. May walked into the shop, changing dismay into hope. What a thing it was to be a gentleman and a clergyman. Cotsdean could not but think! The very sight of Mr. May inspired him with courage; even though probably he had no money in his pocket, it was a supporting thing only to see him, and hear the sound of his free unrestrained step. He came in with a friendly nod to his humble helper; then he glanced round the shop, to see that no one was present, and then he said, “All right, Cotsdean,” in a voice that was as music to the little corn-factor's ears. His heart, which had been beating so low, jumped up in his bosom; his appetite came back with a leap; he asked himself would the bacon be cold? and cried, “God be praised, sir,” in a breath.
Mr. May winced slightly; but why should it be wrong to be grateful to God in any circumstances? he asked himself, having become already somewhat composed in his ideas on this particular point.
“Are we quite alone?” he said. “Nobody within hearing? I have not brought you the money, but a piece of paper that is as good as the money. Take it: you will have no difficulty in discounting this; the man is as well known as the Carlingford Bank, and as safe, though I dare say you will be surprised at the name.”
Cotsdean opened out the new bill with trembling hands. “Tozer!” he said faintly, between relief and dismay.
“Yes. You must know that I am taking a pupil—one who belongs to a very rich Dissenting family in London. Tozer knows something about him, from his connection with the body, and through this young man I have got to know something ofhim. He does it upon the admirable security of the fees I am to receive with this youth; so you see, after all, there is no mystery about it. Better not wait for to-morrow, Cotsdean. Go at once, and get it settled. You see,” said Mr. May, ingratiatingly, “it is a little larger than the other—one hundred and fifty, indeed—but that does not matter with such an excellent name.”
“Tozer!” said Cotsdean, once more bewildered. He handledthe piece of paper nervously, and turned it upside down, and round about, with a sense that it might melt in his hold. He did not like the additional fifty added. Why should another fifty be added? but so it was, and there seemed nothing for him but to take the immediate relief and be thankful.
“I'd rather, sir, as Tozer hadn't known nothing about it; and why should he back a bill for me as ain't one of my friends, nor don't know nothing about me? and fifty more added on,” said Cotsdean. It was the nearest he had gone to standing up against his clergyman; he did not like it. To be Mr. May's sole stand-by and agent, even at periodical risk of ruin, was possible to him; but a pang of jealousy, alarm, and pain came into his mind when he saw the new name. This even obliterated the immediate sense of relief that was in his mind.
“Come three months it'll have to be paid,” said Cotsdean, “and Tozer ain't a man to stand it if he's left to pay; he'd sell us up, Mr. May. He ain't one of the patient ones, like—some other folks; and there's fifty pounds put on. I don't see my way to it. I'd rather it was just the clear hundred, if it was the same to you.”
“It is not the same to me,” said Mr. May, calmly. “Come, there is no cause to make any fuss. There it is, and if you don't like to make use of it, you must find some better way. Bring the fifty pounds, less the expenses, to me to-night. It is a good bit of paper, and it delivers us out of a mess which I hope we shall not fall into again.”
“So you said before, sir,” said the corn-factor sullenly.
“Cotsdean, you forget yourself; but I can make allowance for your anxiety. Take it, and get it settled before the bank closes; pay in the money to meet the other bill, and bring me the balance. You will find no difficulty with Tozer's name; and what so likely as that one respectable tradesman should help another? By the way, the affair is a private one between us, and it is unnecessary to say anything to him about it; the arrangement, you understand, is between him and me.”
“Beg your pardon, sir,” said Cotsdean, with a deprecatory movement of his hand to his forehead; “but it is me as will be come upon first if anything happens, and that fifty pounds—”
“Have you ever found me to fail you, Cotsdean? If you knew the anxiety I have gone through, that you might be kept from harm, the sleepless nights, the schemes, the exertions! You may suppose it was no ordinary effort to ask a man like Tozer.”
Cotsdean was moved by the touching tone in which his partnerin trouble spoke; but terror gave him a certain power. He grumbled still, not altogether vanquished.
“I don't say nothing against that, sir,” he said, not meeting Mr. May's eye; “but when it comes to be paid, sir, I'm the first in it, and where is that other fifty to come from? That's what I'm a thinking for—for I'm the first as they'd haul up after all.”
“You!” said Mr. May, “what could they get from you? You are not worth powder and shot. Don't be ridiculous, my good fellow. I never avoid my responsibilities, as you know. I am as good, I hope, for that fifty as for all that went before. Have you ever known me leave you or any one in the lurch?”
“No, sir, I can't say as—I don't suppose I have. I've always put my trust in you like in Providence itself,” he cried, hastily, holding his breath.
“Then do as I tell you,” said Mr. May, waving his hand with careless superiority; and though his heart was aching with a hundred anxious fears, he left the shop with just that mixture of partial offence and indifference which overawed completely his humble retainer. Cotsdean trembled at his own guilty folly and temerity. He did not dare to call his patron back again, to ask his pardon. He did not venture to go back to the table and snatch a bit of cold bacon. He was afraid he had offended his clergyman, what matter that he was hungry for his dinner? He called the young man from the bacon, which was now cold and all but eaten up, and snatched at his hat and went out to the bank. It was all he could do.