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“Dear May,“Young Copperhead, the young fellow whom you have undertaken to coach, is coming to the Hall for a few days before he enters upon his studies, and Anne wishes me to ask you to come over on Tuesday to dine and sleep, and to make acquaintance with him. You can carry him back with you if it suits you. In my private opinion, he is a cub of the most disagreeable kind; but the girls like his mother, who is a kind of cousin, as you know. It is not only because he has failed to take his degree (you know how I hate the hideous slang inwhich this fact is generally stated), but that his father, who is one of the rich persons who abound in the lower circles of society, is ambitious, and would like to see him in Parliament, and that sort of thing—a position which cannot be held creditably without some sort of education: at least, so I am myself disposed to think. Therefore, your pleasing duty will be to get him up in a little history and geography, so that he may not get quite hopelessly wrong in any of the modern modifications of territory, for instance; and in so much Horace as may furnish him with a few stock quotations, in case he should be called upon, in the absence of any more hopeful neophyte, to move the Address. He is a great hulking fellow, not very brilliant, you may suppose, but not so badly mannered as he might be, considering his parentage. I don't think he'll give you much trouble in the house; but he will most probably bore you to death, and in that case your family ought to have a claim, I should think, for compensation. Anyhow, come and see him, and us, before you begin your hard task.“Very truly yours,“R. Dorset.”“Anne makes me open my letter to say that Ursula must come too. We will send a carriage to meet you at the station.”
“Dear May,
“Young Copperhead, the young fellow whom you have undertaken to coach, is coming to the Hall for a few days before he enters upon his studies, and Anne wishes me to ask you to come over on Tuesday to dine and sleep, and to make acquaintance with him. You can carry him back with you if it suits you. In my private opinion, he is a cub of the most disagreeable kind; but the girls like his mother, who is a kind of cousin, as you know. It is not only because he has failed to take his degree (you know how I hate the hideous slang inwhich this fact is generally stated), but that his father, who is one of the rich persons who abound in the lower circles of society, is ambitious, and would like to see him in Parliament, and that sort of thing—a position which cannot be held creditably without some sort of education: at least, so I am myself disposed to think. Therefore, your pleasing duty will be to get him up in a little history and geography, so that he may not get quite hopelessly wrong in any of the modern modifications of territory, for instance; and in so much Horace as may furnish him with a few stock quotations, in case he should be called upon, in the absence of any more hopeful neophyte, to move the Address. He is a great hulking fellow, not very brilliant, you may suppose, but not so badly mannered as he might be, considering his parentage. I don't think he'll give you much trouble in the house; but he will most probably bore you to death, and in that case your family ought to have a claim, I should think, for compensation. Anyhow, come and see him, and us, before you begin your hard task.
“Very truly yours,
“R. Dorset.”
“Anne makes me open my letter to say that Ursula must come too. We will send a carriage to meet you at the station.”
This letter caused considerable excitement in the Parsonage. It was the first invitation to dinner which Ursula had ever received. The dinner-parties in Carlingford were little frequented by young ladies. The male population was not large enough to afford a balance for the young women of the place, who came together in the evening, and took all the trouble of putting on their pretty white frocks, only to sit in rows in the drawing-room, waiting till the old gentlemen came in from the dining-room, after which everybody went away. There were no young gentlemen to speak of in Carlingford, so that when any one was bold enough to attempt a dancing-party, or anything of an equally amusing description, friends were sent out in all directions, as the beaters are sent into the woods to bring together the unfortunate birds for abattue, to find men. These circumstances will explain the flutter in Ursula's innocent bosom when her father read her that postscript. Mr. May was singularly amiable that day, a thing which happened at periodical intervals, usually after he had been specially “cross.” On this occasion there was no black mark against him in the family reckoning, and yet he was more kind than any one had ever known him. Instead of making any objections,he decided at once that Ursula must go, and told her to put on her prettiest frock, and make herself look very nice.
“You must let Anne Dorset see that you care to please her,” he said. “Anne is a very good woman, and her approval is worth having.”
“Oh, papa!” cried Janey, “when you are always calling her an old maid!”
“L'un n'empêche pas l'autre,” he said, which puzzled Janey, whose French was very deficient. Even Ursula, supposed to be the best French scholar in the family, was not quite sure what it meant; but it was evidently something in favour of Cousin Anne, which was sweet to the grateful girl.
Janey, though suffering bitterly under the miserable consciousness of being only fourteen, and not asked anywhere, helped with disinterested zeal to get her sister ready, and consoled herself by orders for unlimited muffins and cake for tea.
“There will only be the children,” she said, resignedly, and felt herselfincomprise; but indeed, the attractions of a good romp afterwards, no one being in the house to restrain the spirits of the youthful party, made even Janey amends.
As for Reginald, who was not asked, he was, it must be allowed, rather sulky too, and he could not solace himself either with muffins or romps. His rooms at the College were very pleasant rooms, but he was used to home; and though the home at the Parsonage was but faded, and not in such perfect order as it might have been, the young man felt even his wainscoted study dull without the familiar voices, the laughter and foolish family jokes, and even the little quarrels which kept life always astir. He walked with Ursula to the station, whither her little box with her evening dress had gone before her, in a half-affronted state of mind.
“What does he want with a pupil?” Reginald was saying, as he had said before. “A fellow no one knows, coming and taking possession of the house as if it belonged to him. There is plenty to do in the parish without pupils, and if I were not on the spot he would get into trouble, I can tell you. A man that has been ploughed, 'a big hulking fellow' (Sir Robert says so, not I). Mind, I'll have no flirting, Ursula; that is what always happens with a pupil in the house.”
“Reginald, how dare you—”
“Oh, yes, I dare; my courage is quite equal to facing you, even if you do shoot thunderbolts out of your eyes. Mind you, I won't have it. There is a set of fellows who try it regularly, and if you were above them, would go in for Janey; and it would be great fun and great promotion for Janey; shewould feel herself a woman directly; so you must mind her as well as yourself. I don't like it at all,” Reginald went on. “Probably he will complain of the dinners you give him, as if he were in an inn. Confound him! What my father means by it, I can't tell.”
“Reginald, you ought not to swear,” said Ursula. “It is dreadfully wicked in a clergyman. Poor papa meant making a little more money. What else could he mean? And I think it is very good of him, for it will bother him most. Mr. Copperhead is very nice, Reginald. I saw him in London, you know. I thought he was very——”.
“Ah! oh!” said Reginald, “I forgot that. You met him in London? To be sure, and it was there you met Miss Beecham. I begin to see. Is he coming here after her, I should like to know? She doesn't look the sort of girl to encourage that sort of thing.”
“The sort of girl to encourage that sort of thing! How strangely you talk when you get excited: isn't that rather vulgar? I don't know if he is coming after Miss Beecham or not,” said Ursula, who thought the suggestion uncalled for, “but in a very short time you can judge for yourself.”
“Ah—indignation!” said the big brother, who like most big brothers laughed at Ursula's exhibition of offended dignity; “and, by the way, Miss Beecham—you have not seen her since that night when she was sent for. Will not she think it strange that you never sent to inquire?”
“I sent Betsey—”
“But if Miss Beecham had been somebody else, you would have gone yourself,” he said, being in a humour for finding fault. “If poor old Mrs. Tozer had been what you call a lady—”
“I thought you were much more strong than I am against the Dissenters?” said Ursula, “ever since that man's speech; and, indeed, always, as long as I can recollect.”
“She is not a mere Dissenter,” said Reginald. “I think I shall call as I go home. She is the cleverest girl I ever met; not like one of you bread-and-butter girls, though she is not much older than you. A man finds a girl like that worth talking to,” said the young clergyman, holding himself erect. Certainly Reginald had not improved; he had grown ever so much more self-important since he got a living of his own.
“And if I was to say, 'Mind, I won't have it, Reginald?'” cried Ursula, half-laughing, half-angry. “I think that is a great deal worse than a pupil. But Miss Beecham is very dignified, and you may be sure she will not think much of acall from you. Heaven be praised! that is one thing you can't get into your hands; we girls are always good for something there. Men may think themselves as grand as they please,” said Ursula, “but their visits are of no consequence; it is ladies of the family who mustcall!” After this little out-break, she came down at once to her usual calm. “I will ask Cousin Anne what I ought to do; I don't think Miss Beecham wanted me to go then—”
“I shall go,” said Reginald, and he left Ursula in her father's keeping, who met them at the station, and went off at once, with a pleasant sense of having piqued her curiosity, to Grange Lane.
It was still early, for the trains which stopped at the little country station next to the Hall were very few and inconvenient, and the sun, though setting, was still shining red from over St. Roque's upon Grange Lane. The old red walls grew redder still in the frosty night, and the sky began to bloom into great blazing patches of colour upon the wintry clearness of the blue. There was going to be a beautiful sunset, and such a thing was always to be seen from Grange Lane better than anywhere else in Carlingford. Reginald went down the road slowly, looking at it, and already almost forgetting his idea of calling on Miss Beecham. To call on Miss Beecham would be to call on old Tozer, the butterman, to whom alone the visit would be naturally paid; and this made him laugh within himself. So he would have passed, no doubt, without the least attempt at intruding on the privacy of the Tozers, had not the garden-door opened before he got so far, and Phœbe herself came out, with her hands in her muff, to take a little walk up and down as she did daily. She did not take her hand out of its warm enclosure to give it to him; but nodded with friendly ease in return to his salutation.
“I have come out to see the sunset,” said Phœbe; “I like a little air before the day is over, and grandmamma, when she is poorly, likes her room to be very warm.”
“I hope Mrs. Tozer is better. I hope you have not been anxious.”
“Oh, no! it is chronic; there is no danger. But she requires a great deal of attendance; and I like to come out when I can. Oh, how fine it is! what colour! I think, Mr. May, you must have aspécialitéfor sunsets at Carlingford. I never saw them so beautiful anywhere else.”
“I am glad there is something you like in Carlingford.”
“Something! there is a very great deal; and that I don't like too,” she said with a smile. “I don't care for the peopleI am living among, which is dreadful. I don't suppose you have ever had such an experience, though you must know a great deal more in other ways than I. All the people that come to inquire about grandmamma are very kind; they are as good as possible; I respect them, and all that, but——Well, it must be my own fault, or education. It is education, no doubt, that gives us those absurd ideas.”
“Don't call them absurd,” said Reginald, “indeed I can enter into them perfectly well. I don'tknowthem, perhaps, in my own person; but I can perfectly understand the repugnance, the distress—”
“The words are too strong,” said Phœbe, “not so much as that; the—annoyance, perhaps, the nasty disagreeable struggle with one's self and one's pride; as if one were better than other people. I dislike myself, and despise myself for it; but I can't help it. We have so little power over ourselves.”
“I hope you will let my sister do what she can to deliver you,” said Reginald; “Ursula is not like you; but she is a good little thing, and she is able to appreciate you. I was to tell you she had been called suddenly off to the Dorsets', with whom my father and she have gone to pass the night—to meet, I believe, a person you know.”
“Oh, Clarence Copperhead; he is come then? How odd it will be to see him here. His mother is nice, but his father is——Oh, Mr. May! if you only knew the things people have to put up with. When I think of Mr. Copperhead, and his great, ugly, staring wealth, I feel disposed to hate money—especially among Dissenters. It would be better if we were all poor.”
Reginald said nothing; he thought so too. In that case there would be a few disagreeable things out of a poor clergyman's way, and assaults like that of Northcote upon himself would be impossible; but he could scarcely utter these virtuous sentiments.
“Poverty is the desire of ascetics, and this is not an ascetic age,” he said at length, with a half-laugh at himself for his stiff speech.
“You may say it is not an ascetic age; but yet I suppose the Ritualists——. Perhaps you are a Ritualist yourself, Mr. May? I know as little personally about the church here, as you do about Salem Chapel. I like the service—so does papa—and I like above all things the independent standing of a clergyman; the feeling he must have that he is free to do his duty. That is why I like the church; for other things of course I like our own body best.”
“I don't suppose such things can be argued about, MissBeecham. I wish I knew something of my father's new pupil. I don't like having a stranger in the house; my father is fond of having his own way.”
“It is astonishing how often parents are so,” said Phœbe, demurely; “and the way they talk of their experience! as if each new generation did not know more than the one that preceded it.”
“You are pleased to laugh, but I am quite in earnest. A pupil is a nuisance. For instance, no man who has a family should ever take one. I know what things are said.”
“You mean about the daughters? That is true enough, there are always difficulties in the way; but you need not be afraid of Clarence Copperhead. He is not the fascinating pupil of a church-novel. There's nothing the least like the Heir of Redclyffe about him.”
“You are very well up in Miss Yonge's novels, Miss Beecham.”
“Yes,” said Phœbe; “one reads Scott for Scotland (and a few other things), and one reads Miss Yonge for the church. Mr. Trollope is good for that too, but not so good. All that I know of clergymen's families I have got from her. I can recognize you quite well, and your sister, but the younger ones puzzle me; they are not in Miss Yonge; they are too much like other children, too naughty. I don't mean anything disagreeable. The babies in Miss Yonge are often very naughty too, but not the same. As for you, Mr. May——”
“Yes. As for me?”
“Oh, I know everything about you. You are a fine scholar, but you don't like the drudgery of teaching. You have a fine mind, but it interferes with you continually. You have had a few doubts—just enough to give a piquancy; and now you have a great ideal, and mean to do many things that common clergymen don't think of. That was why you hesitated about the chaplaincy? See how much I have got out of Miss Yonge. I know you as well as if I had known you all my life; a great deal better than I know Clarence Copperhead; but then, no person of genius has taken any trouble about him.”
“I did not know I had been a hero of fiction,” said Reginald, who had a great mind to be angry. All this time they were walking briskly backward and forward before Tozer's open door, the Anglican, in his long black coat, following the lively movements of Tozer's granddaughter, only because he could not help himself. He was irritated, yet he was pleased. A young man is pleased to be thought of, even when the notice is but barely complimentary. Phœbe must have thought of him agood deal before she found him out in this way; but he was irritated all the same.
“You are, however,” she answered lightly. “Look at that blaze of crimson, Mr. May; and the blue which is so clear and so unfathomable. Winter is grander than summer, and even warmer—to look at; with its orange, and purple, and gold. What poor little dirty, dingy things we are down here, to have all this exhibited every evening for our delight!”
“That is true,” he said; and as he gazed, something woke in the young man's heart—a little thrill of fancy, if not of love. It is hard to look at a beautiful sunset, and then see it reflected in a girl's face, and not to feel something—which may be nothing, perhaps. His heart gave a small jump, not much to speak of. Phœbe did not talk like the other young ladies in Grange Lane.
“Mr. May, Mr. May!” she cried suddenly, “please go away! I foresee a disastrous encounter which alarms me. You can't fight, but there is no saying what you might do to each other. Please go away!”
“What is the matter?” he said. “I don't understand any encounter being disastrous here. Why should I go away?”
She laughed, but there was a certain fright in her tone. “Please!” she said, “I see Mr. Northcote coming this way. He will stop to speak to me. It is the gentleman who attacked you in the Meeting. Mr. May,” she added entreatingly, between laughter and fright, “do go, please.”
“I shall do nothing of the kind,” said Reginald, roused; “I am not afraid. Let him come on. This wall shall fly from its firm base as soon as I.”
Phœbe clasped her hands in dismay, which was partially real. “The typical churchman,” she said, with a glance at Reginald's figure, which was not displeasing to him, “and the typical Dissenter! and what am I to do between them? Oh, I wish you would go away.”
“Not an inch,” said the young champion. Phœbe was frightened, but she was delighted. “I shall introduce him to you,” she said threatening.
“I don't mind,” he replied; “nothing on earth should induce me to fly.”
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Now here was a business! The typical Anglican and the typical Dissenter, as Phœbe said, with only that clever young woman to keep them from flying at each other's throats; the one obstinately holding his place by her side (and Phœbe began to have a slight consciousness that, being without any chaperon, she ought not to have kept Reginald May at her side; but in the Tozer world, who knew anything of chaperons?), the other advancing steadily, coming up the Lane out of the glow of the sunset, showing square against it in his frock-coat and high hat, formal and demagogical, not like his rival. The situation pleased Phœbe, who liked to “manage;” but it slightly frightened her as well, though the open door behind, and the long garden with its clouds of crocuses, was a city of refuge always within reach.
“Is it really you, Mr. Northcote?” she said. “You look as if you had dropped out of that lovely sunset I have been watching so long—and I thought you were at the other end of the world.”
“I have been at the other end of England, which comes to the same thing,” said Northcote, in a voice which was harsh by nature, and somewhat rough with cold; “and now they have sent me back to Salem Chapel, to take Mr. Thorpe's place for three months. They asked for me, I believe; but that you must know better than I do.”
It was not in the nature of man not to be a little proud in the circumstances, and it is quite possible that he considered Phœbe to have something to do with the flattering request.
“No, I have not heard; but I am glad,” said Phœbe; “and if it is not wicked to say so, I am glad Mr. Thorpe is to be away. Let us hope it will do him good. I am sure it will do the rest of us good, at all events.”
Northcote made no answer; but he looked at the other, and several questions began to tremble on his lips. That this was a Churchman did not immediately occur to him; for, indeed, various young pastors of his own body put on the livery which he himself abjured, and the sight of it as a servile copy filled him with a certain contempt.
“Mr. May has been stopped in his way by the beauty of the skies,” said Phœbe, rather enjoying the position as she got used to it. “Mr. Northcote—Mr. May. It is not easy to pass such an exhibition as that, is it?—and given to us all for love, and nothing for reward,” she added; for she was a well read young woman, and did not hesitate to suffer this to appear.
And then there was a momentary pause. Northcote was confused, it must be allowed, by thus coming face to face, without previous warning, with the man whom he had so violently assailed. Reginald had the best of it in every way, for he was the man injured, and had it in his power to be magnanimous; and he had the advantage of full warning, and had prepared himself. Besides, was not he the superior by every social rule? And that consciousness is always sweet.
“If Mr. Northcote is new to Carlingford, he will probably not know what a fine point of view we have here. That, like so many other things,” said Reginald, pointedly, “wants a little personal experience to find it out.”
“For that matter, to see it once is as good as seeing it a hundred times,” said Northcote, somewhat sharply; for to give in was the very last thing he thought of. A little glow of anger came over him. He thought Phœbe had prepared this ordeal for him, and he was vexed, not only because she had done it, but because his sense of discomfiture might afford a kind of triumph to that party in the connection which was disposed, as he expressed it, to “toady the Church.”
“Pardon me, I don't think you can judge of anything at a first view.”
“And, pardon me, I think you see everything most sharply and clearly at a first view,” said the Nonconformist, who was the loudest; “certainly in all matters of principle. After a while, you are persuaded against your will to modify this opinion and that, to pare off a little here, and tolerate a little there. Your first view is the most correct.”
“Well,” said Phœbe, throwing herself into the breach, “I am glad you don't agree, for the argument is interesting. Will you come in and fight it out? You shall have some tea, which will be pleasant, for it shall be hot. I really cannot stay out any longer; it is freezing here.”
The new-comer prepared to follow; but Reginald hesitated. Pride whispered that to go into the house of Tozer, the butterman, was something monstrous; but then it might be amusing. This “Dissenting fellow,” no doubt, was a drawback; but a kind of angry antagonism and disdain half-attracted him even to the Dissenting fellow. It might be well, on the whole, tosee what kind of being such a person was. All curious phenomena are attractive to a student. “The proper study of mankind is man,” Reginald said to himself. Before he had got through this little argument with himself, Phœbe had gone in, and Northcote, whose disgust at the interposition of an adversary had no such softening of curiosity, followed her abruptly, without any of those graces which are current in society. This rudeness offended the other, who was about to walk on indignant, when Phœbe turned back, and looked out at him from the open door.
“Are not you coming, Mr. May?” she said softly, looking at him with the least little shrug of her shoulders.
Reginald yielded without further resistance. But he felt fully that to see him, the chaplain of the old College, walking down through Tozer's garden, between the two rows of closed-up crocuses which glimmered ghostly by the side of the path, was one of the strangest sights in the world.
Phœbe, to tell the truth, was a little confused as to where to convey her captive, out of whom she meant to get a little amusement for the long winter afternoon. For a girl of her active mind, it may easily be imagined that a succession of long days with Mrs. Tozer was somewhat monotonous. She did her duty like a hero, and never complained; but still, if a little amusement was possible, it was worth having. She carried in her two young men as naughty boys carry stag-beetles, or other such small deer. If they would fight it would be fun; and if they would not fight, why, it might be fun still, and more amusing than grandmamma. She hesitated between the chilly drawing-room, where a fire was lighted, but where there was no evidence of human living, and the cozy parlour, where Mrs. Tozer sat in her best cap, still wheezy, but convalescent, waiting for her tea, and not indisposed to receive such deputations of the community as might come to ask for her. Finally, Phœbe opened the door of that sanctuary, which was dazzling with bright fire-light after the gloom outside. It was a very comfortable interior, arranged by Phœbe to suit her own ideas rather than those of grandmamma, though grandmamma's comfort had been her chief object. The tea-things were sparkling upon the table, the kettle singing by the fire, and Mrs. Tozer half-dozing in the tranquillity and warmth.
“Grandmamma, I have brought Mr. May and Mr. Northcote to see you,” she said.
The poor old lady almost sprang from her chair in amazement.
“Lord bless us, Phœbe, Mr. May!”
“Don't disturb yourself, grandmamma; they will find seats.Yes, we were all looking at the sunset, and as I knew tea must be ready—I know you want it, dear granny—I asked them to have some. Here it is, as I told you, quite hot, and very fragrant this cold night. How cold it is outside! I think it will freeze, and that skating may come off at last, Mr. May, that you were talking of, you remember? You were to teach your sisters to skate.”
“Yes, with the advantage of your example.”
Reginald had put himself in a corner, as far away as possible from the old woman in the chair. His voice, he felt, had caught a formal tone. As for the other, his antagonist, he had assumed the front of the battle—even, in Tozer's absence, he had ventured to assume the front of the fire. He was not the sort of man Reginald had expected, almost hoped to see—a fleshy man, loosely put together, according to the nature, so far as he knew it, of Dissenters; but a firmly knit, clean-limbed young man, with crisp hair curling about his head, and a gleam of energy and spirit in his eye. The gentler Anglican felt by no means sure of a speedy victory, even of an intellectual kind. The young man before him did not look a slight antagonist. They glared at each other, measuring their strength; they did not know, indeed, that they had been brought in here to this warmth and light, like the stag-beetles, to make a little amusement for Phœbe; but they were quite ready to fight all the same.
“Mr. Northcote, sir, I'm glad to see you. Now this is friendly; this is what I calls as it should be, when a young pastor comes in and makes free, without waiting for an invitation,” said Tozer kindly, bustling in; “that speech of yours, sir, was a rouser; that 'it 'em off, that did, and you can see as the connection ain't ungrateful. What's that you say, Phœbe? what? I'm a little hard of hearing. Mr.—May!”
“Mr. May was good enough to come in with me, grandpapa. We met at the door. We have mutual friends, and you know how kind Miss May has been,” said Phœbe, trembling with sudden fright, while Reginald, pale with rage and embarrassment, stood up in his corner. Tozer was embarrassed too. He cleared his throat and rubbed his hands, with a terrible inclination to raise one of them to his forehead. It was all that he could do to get over this class instinct. Young May, though he had been delighted to hear him assailed in the Meeting, was a totally different visitor from the clever young pastor whom he received with a certain consciousness of patronage. Tozer did not know that the Northcotes were infinitely richer, and quite as well-born and well-bred in their ways as the Mays, and that his young Dissenting brother was a morecostly production, as well as a more wealthy man, than the young chaplain in his long coat; but if he had known this it would have made no difference. His relation to the one was semi-servile, to the other condescending and superior. In Reginald May's presence, he was but a butterman who supplied the family; but to Horace Northcote he was an influential member of society, with power over a Minister's individual fate.
“I assure you, sir, as I'm proud to see you in my house,” he said, with a duck of his head, and an ingratiating but uncomfortable smile. “Your father, I hope, as he's well, sir, and all the family? We are a kind of neighbours now; not as we'd think of taking anything upon us on account of living in Grange Lane. But Phœbe here—Phœbe, junior, as we call's her—she's a cut above us, and I'm proud to see any of her friends in my 'umble 'ouse. My good lady, sir,” added Tozer, with another duck, indicating with a wave of his hand his wife, who had already once risen, wheezy, but knowing her manners, to make a kind of half-bow, half-curtsey from her chair.
“You are very kind,” said Reginald, feeling himself blush furiously, and not knowing what to say. The other young man stood with his back to the fire, and a sneer, which he intended to look like a smile, on his face.
And as for Phœbe, it must be allowed that, notwithstanding all her resources, even she was exquisitely uncomfortable for a minute or two. The young people all felt this, but to Tozer it seemed that he had managed everything beautifully, and a sense of elation stole over him. To be visited in this manner by the gentry, “making free,” and “quite in a friendly way,” was an honour he had never looked for. He turned to Northcote with great affability and friendliness.
“Well,” he said, “Mr. Northcote, sir, it can't be denied as this is a strange meeting; you and Mr. May, as mightn't be, perhaps, just the best of friends, to meet quite comfortable over a cup of tea. But ain't it the very best thing that could happen? Men has their public opinions, sir, as every one should speak up bold for, and stick to; that's my way of thinking. But I wouldn't bring it no farther; not, as might be said, into the domestic circle. I'm clean against that. You say your say in public, whatever you may think on a subject, but you don't bear no malice; it ain't a personal question; them's my sentiments. And I don't know nothing more elevatin', nothing more consolin', than for two public opponents, as you may say, to meet like this quite cozy and comfortable over a cup o' tea.”
“It is a pleasure, I assure you, which I appreciate highly,” said Reginald, finding his voice.
“And which fills me with delight and satisfaction,” said Northcote. Those stag-beetles which Phœbe, so to speak, had carried in in her handkerchief, were only too ready to fight.
“You had better have some tea first,” she said breathless, “before you talk so much of its good effects. Sit down, grandpapa, and have your muffin while it is hot; I know that is what you like. Do you care about china, Mr. May? but every one cares for china now-a-days. Look at that cup, and fancy grandmamma having this old service in use without knowing how valuable it is. Cream Wedgwood! You may fancy how I stared when I saw it; and in everyday use! most people put it up on brackets, when they are so lucky as to possess any. Tell Mr. May, grandmamma, how you picked it up. Mr. Northcote, there is an article in this review that I want you to look at. Papa sent it to me. It is too metaphysical for me, but I know you are great in metaphysics—”
“I am greater in china; may not I look at the Wedgwood first?”
“Perhaps you will turn over the literature to me,” said Reginald, “reviews are more in my way than teacups, though I say it with confusion. I know how much I am behind my age.”
“And I too,” whispered Phœbe, behind the book which she had taken up. “Don't tell any one. It is rare, I know; and everybody likes to have something that is rare; but I don't really care for it the least in the world. I have seen some bits of Italianfaienceindeed—but English pottery is not like Italian, any more than English skies.”
“You have the advantage of me, Miss Beecham, both as regards the pottery and the skies.”
“Ah, if it is an advantage; bringing poetry down to prose is not always an advantage, is it? Italy is such a dream—so long as one has never been there.”
“Yes, it is a dream,” said Reginald, with enthusiasm, “to everybody, I think; but when one has little money and much work all one's life—poverty stands in the way of all kinds of enjoyment.”
“Poverty is a nice friendly sort of thing; a ground we can all meet on,” said Phœbe. “But don't let us say that to grandpapa. How odd people are! he knows you are not Crœsus, but still he has a sort of feeling that you are a young prince, and do him the greatest honour in coming to his house; and yet, all the same, he thinks that money is the very grandest thing in existence. See what prejudice is! He would notallow that he had any class-reverence, and yet he can no more get rid of it—”
“Miss Beecham, it is very difficult for me to say anything on such a subject.”
“Very difficult, and you show your delicacy by not saying anything. But you know, apart from this, which is not gratifying, I am rather proud of grandpapa's way of looking at some things. About saying out your opinions in public, and yet bearing no malice, for instance. Now, Mr. Northcote is the very Antipodes to you; therefore you ought to know him and find out what he means. It would be better for you both. That is what I call enlarging the mind,” said Phœbe with a smile; which was, to tell the truth, a very pretty smile, and filled with a soft lustre the blue eyes with which she looked at him. Whether it was this, or the cogency of her argument, that moved the young Anglican, it would be hard to say.
“If you are to be the promoter of this new science, I don't object to studying under you,” he said with a great deal of meaning in his voice.
Phœbe gave him another smile, though she shook her head; and then she turned to the hero on the other side.
“Is it genuine, Mr. Northcote? is it as fine as I thought? There now, I told you, grandmamma! Have you been telling Mr. Northcote how you picked it up? I am sure you will present him with a cup and saucer for his collection in return for his praises.”
“Not for the world,” said Northcote, with profound seriousness; “break a set of cream Wedgwood! what do you take me for, Miss Beecham? I don't mean to say that I would not give my ears to have it—all; but to break the set—”
“Oh, I beg your pardon! I was not prepared for such delicacy of feeling—such conscientiousness—”
“Ah!” said Northcote, with a long-drawn breath, “I don't think you can understand the feelings of an enthusiast. A set of fine China is like a poem—every individual bit is necessary to the perfection of the whole. I allow that this is not the usual way of looking at it; but my pleasure lies in seeing it entire, making the tea-table into a kind of lyric, elevating the family life by the application of the principles of abstract beauty to its homeliest details. Pardon, Miss Beecham, but Mrs. Tozer is right, and you are wrong. The idea of carrying off a few lines of a poem in one's pocket for one's collection—”
“Now that's what I call speaking up,” said Mrs. Tozer, the first time she had opened her lips, “that's just what I like. Mr. Northcote has a deal more sense than the like of you. Heknows what's what. Old things like this as might have been my granny's, they're good enough for every day, they're very nice for common use; but they ain't no more fit to be put away in cupboards and hoarded up like fine china, no more than I am. Mr. Northcote should see our best—that's worth the looking at; and if I'd known as the gentleman was coming—but you can't put an old head on young shoulders. Phœbe's as good as gold, and the trouble she takes with an old woman like me is wonderful; but she can't be expected to think of everything, can she now, at her age?”
The two young men laughed—it was the first point of approach between them, and Phœbe restrained a smile, giving them a look from one to another. She gave Reginald his cup of tea very graciously.
“Mr. Northcote prefers the Wedgwood, and Mr. May doesn't mind, grandmamma,” she said sweetly. “So it is as well to have the best china in the cupboard. Grandpapa, another muffin—it is quite hot; and I know that is what you like best.”
“Well, I'll say that for Phœbe,” said Tozer, with his mouth full, “that whether she understands china or not I can't tell, but she knows what a man likes, which is more to the purpose for a young woman. That's what she does; and looks after folk's comforts as I never yet saw her match. She's a girl in a thousand, is Phœbe, junior. There be them as is more for dress,” he added, fond and greasy, looking at her seated modestly in that gown, which had filled with awe and admiration the experienced mind of Mrs. Sam Hurst; “and plays the pianny, and that sort of style of girl; but for one as minds the comforts of them about her——” Tozer turned back to the table, and made a gulp of his last piece of muffin. Eloquence could have no more striking climax; the proof of all his enthusiasm, was it not there?
“Don't you play, Miss Beecham?” said Reginald, half-amused, half-angry.
“A little,” said Phœbe, with a laugh. She had brought down a small cottage piano out of the drawing-room, where nobody ever touched it, into a dark corner out of reach of the lamp. It was the only accomplishment upon which she prided herself. She got up from the table, when she had poured out another cup of tea for her grandfather, and without saying a word went to the little piano. It was not much of an instrument, and Reginald May was very little of aconnoisseur. Northcote, who knew her gifts, gave himself up to listening, but the Tozers looked on, shaking their heads, and it was only after some timehad passed, that Reginald began to understand that he was listening to something which he had never heard before. Ursula's school-girl tunes had never interested him very much; he did not know what this was which seemed to creep into his heart by his ears. He got up by and by, and stole towards the piano bewildered.
“It'll soon be over, sir,” said Tozer, encouragingly. “Don't you run away, Mr. May. Them are queer tunes, I allow, but they don't last long, and your company's an honour. As for the playing, it'll soon be over; you needn't run away.”
Top
It is unnecessary to say that the dinner party in the Hall bore very little resemblance to those simple amusements in No. 6, Grange Lane. There were three or four people to meet Mr. May, who, as an orator and literary man, had greater reputation even such a little way from home than he had in his own town. He was a very good preacher, and those articles of his were much admired as “thoughtful” papers, searching into many mental depths, and fathoming the religious soul with wonderful insight. Ladies especially admired them; the ladies who were intellectual, and found pleasure in the feeling of being more advanced than their neighbours. The Rector's wife of the parish in which the Dorsets lived applied herself with great vigour to the art of drawing him out. She asked him questions with that air of delightful submission to an intellectual authority which some ladies love to assume, and which it pleases many men to accept. His daughters were not at all reverential of Mr. May, and it soothed him to get marks of devotion and literary submission out of doors. Even Sophy Dorset had gone through the phase of admiration for her cousin. This had been dissipated, it is true, long ago; but yet she did not laugh, as she usually did, at the believers in him. She listened to Mrs. Rector plying him with eager questions, asking his advice on that point and the other, and smiled, but was charitable. As for Cousin Anne, she was charitable by nature, and all the world got the advantage of it. Little Ursula was one of her prime favourites—a motherless girl, who was the eldest, and who had to work for the family, was of all others the thing which moved her sympathies most. The little Indianchildren had long ere this yielded to the charms of Aunt Anne. They followed her wherever she went like little spaniels, hanging on by her dress. She had to go up to the nursery to hear them say their prayers before she dressed for dinner.
“You see, this is a proof that with children one should never be discouraged,” she said; “for they did not take to me at first;” and she turned her mild countenance, beaming with soft light, upon Ursula. To be hampered by these babies clinging about her, to have them claiming imperiously her attention and her time, however she might be engaged; to give up to them the moments of leisure in which otherwise she might have had a little quiet and repose, this was what Anne Dorset considered as her recompense.
“Oh, I wish I could be as good to Amy and Robin! But I feel as if I should like to shake them often,” cried Ursula, “even though I love them with all my heart. Oh! Cousin Anne, I don't think there is any one like you.”
“Yes, that is what she thinks her reward,” said Sophy. “I should like something better, if it was I. Don't copy her, Ursula. It is better to have children of your own, and get other people to nurse them. Anne, you see, likes it. I want you to marry, and get all the good things in this life. Let us leave the self-denials to her; she likes them, you perceive.”
“I don't know why you should always talk of marrying to me, Cousin Sophy,” said Ursula with gentle reproach. “I hope I am not a girl to think of such things.”
“And why not? Is it not the first duty of woman, you little simpleton?” said Sophy Dorset, with a laugh.
But Ursula could not imagine that it was only in this general way that her cousin spoke. She could not but feel that this big Clarence Copperhead, with the diamond buttons, and that huge expanse of shirt-front, had something to do with Sophy's talk. There was six feet of him, which is a thing that goes a long way with a girl; and he was not bad-looking. And why did he come to Carlingford, having nothing in the world to do with the place? and coming to Carlingford, why was papa sought out, of all people, to be his tutor? Certainly the circumstances were such as invited conjecture, especially when added on to Sophy's allusions. He took Ursula in to dinner, which fluttered her somewhat; and though he was much intent upon the dinner itself, and studied themenuwith a devotion which would have made her tremble for her housekeeping, had she been sufficiently disengaged to notice it, he yet found time to talk a little between the courses.
“I did not expect, when I saw you in London, that we wereto meet again so soon, Miss May,” was the perfectly innocent remark with which he opened the conversation.
Ursula would have said it herself had he not said it, and all she could do was to answer, “No, indeed,” with a smile.
“And I am coming to your father to be coached,” continued the young man. “It is a funny coincidence, don't you think so? I am glad you came to that ball, Miss May. It makes me feel that I know you. I don't like starting off afresh, all at once, among people I don't know.”
“No,” said Ursula; “I should not like it either. But there are other people you know in Carlingford. There is the lady who was at the ball—the young lady in black, I used to call her—Miss Beecham; you must know her better than you know me.”
“Who? Phœbe? really!” he said, elevating his eyebrows. “Phœbe in Carlingford! By Jove! how the governor will laugh! I should like to know,” with a conscious smile on his countenance, “whatsheis doing there.”
“Her grandmamma is ill, and she is nursing her,” said Ursula simply, at which young Copperhead laughed again.
“Oh, that is how it is! Very good of her, don't you think? Shouldn't suppose she would be amusing, the old granny, and Phœbe likes to be amused. I must go to see her as soon as I can get there. You know, we are Dissenters at home, Miss May. Good joke, isn't it? The governor will not hear a word against them. As a matter of fact, nobody does go to chapel in our rank of life; but the governor sometimes is as obstinate as an old pig.”
“I suppose he likes it best,” said Ursula, gently; and here a new course came round, and for the moment Clarence had something else to do. He resumed after theentrées, which were poor, as he made a mental note.
“Is there anything to do at Carlingford, Miss May? I hope you skate. I am not much in the hunting way; nor your father, I suppose? for, to be sure, a hunting parson would never do. I am too heavy a weight for most horses, and the good of galloping over the country all day, after a poor brute of a fox!—but we must not say that before Sir Robert. I suppose it is dull?” he said, somewhat pathetically, looking in her face.
“We don't think it dull, Mr. Copperhead. It may be, perhaps, for a gentleman.”
“That's it,” said Clarence. “I don't know if it's because women have more resources, or because they want less; but you always get on better than we do, somehow; very luckyfor you. You don't expect so much. I believe that's what it is.”
“Then that shows we are the most sensible,” said Ursula, roused, and a little indignant.
He paused, to make his choice between the inevitable turkey and the inevitable beef.
“I hope it's braised,” he said, in a devout undertone. “You don't expect so much, Miss May, that's what it is; you're always in the house. You don't care for exercise. Bless you, if I didn't take exercise, I should be fifteen stone before you could turn round. How much are you? about eight, perhaps; not much more. That makes a deal of difference: you don't require to keep yourself down.”
Ursula did not make any answer. She was prepared to look upon him very favourably, and accept what he said as full of originality and force; but the tone the conversation had taken was not entirely to her mind. Phœbe could have managed it; but Ursula was not Phœbe. She was more disposed to take offence at the young man's tone than to guide it into better ways.
“I hope your mother is well,” she said at last, falteringly, after a long pause. Ursula thought her companion would remark this pause, and think her displeased. She might have saved herself the trouble, for it was the braised turkey which kept Clarence quiet, not offence.
“Oh, quite well, I thank you. Not so well as when I am at home; she don't like parting with me,” he said, “but, of course, I can't be always at my mother's apron-strings. Women forget that.”
“She was very kind when I was in London.”
“Yes, that just pleases her; she is never so happy as when she is buying things for somebody,” he replied, betraying an acquaintance with the exact manner of the kindness which somewhat disturbed poor Ursula: “that is exactly her way. I dare say she'll come and see the Dorsets while I'm here.”
Then there was again a pause, and Clarence turned to speak to some one at his other side.
“No, I don't hunt much,” he said; “I have come into the country to be coached. My father's a modern sort of man, and wants a fellow to be up in history, and that sort of thing. Bore—yes; and I dare say Carlingford is very dull. Oh, yes, I will go out with the hounds now and then, if there is not a frost. I should rather like a frost for my part.”
It was a hunting lady who had started this new conversation, into which the stranger had drifted away, leaving Ursula stranded. She was slightly piqued, it must be allowed, andwhen Sophy asked her after dinner how she liked her companion, made a dignified reply.
“I have no doubt he is very nice,” she said; “I don't know much of gentlemen. He talks of papa as if he were a school-master, and thinks Carlingford will be dull.”
“So it is, Ursula. I have often heard you say so.”
“Yes, perhaps; but a stranger ought to be civil,” said the girl, offended; and she went and entrenched herself by the side of Cousin Anne, where the new pupil could not come near her. Indeed he did not seem very anxious to do so, as Ursula soon saw. She blushed very hotly all by herself, under Cousin Anne's shadow: that she could have been so absurd as ever to think—But his size, and the weight over which he had lamented, and his abundant whiskers and large shirt front, made it quite impossible for Ursula to think of him as a person to be educated. It must be Miss Beecham, she said to herself.
No thoughts of this kind crossed Mr. Clarence Copperhead's mind, as he stretched his big limbs before the drawing-room fire after dinner, and said “Brava!” when the ladies sang. He knew “Brava” was the right thing to say. He liked to be at the Hall, which he had never visited before, and to know that it was undeniable gentry which surrounded him, and which at the piano was endeavouring to gain his approbation. He was so much his father's son that he had a sense of pleasure and triumph in being thus elevated; and he had a feeling, more or less, of contempt for the clergyman, “only a parson,” who was to be his coach. He felt the power and the beauty of money almost as much as his father did. What was there he could not buy with it? the services of the most learned pundit in existence, for what was learning? or the prettiest woman going to be his wife, if that was what he wanted. It may be supposed then that he had very little attention indeed to bestow upon a girl like Ursula, who was only the daughter of his coach—nobody at all in particular—and that her foolish fancies on the subject might have been spared. He aired himself on the hearth-rug with great satisfaction, giving now and then a shake to one of his long limbs, and a furtive glance to see that all was perfect in thesitof the garment that clothed it. He had been ploughed it is true, but that did not interfere much with his mental satisfaction; for, after all, scholarship was a thing cultivated chiefly by dons and prigs, and poor men; and no doubt this other poor man, the parson, would be able to put all into his head that was necessary, just as much as would pay, and no more—a process the mere thought of whichmade Clarence yawn, yet which he had wound up his noble mind to submit to.
“Mind you, I don't say I am going to work,” he had said to his mother; “but if you think he can put it into me, he may try,” and he repeated much the same sentiment, with a difference, to Sophy Dorset, who by way of civility, while the Rector's wife paid court to Mr. May, talked to Clarence a little, from the corner of the ottoman close to the fire.
“Work! well, I suppose so, after a sort. I don't mean to make myself ill with midnight oil and that sort of thing,” he said (he was not at all clear in his mind as to how the midnight oil was applied), “but if Mr. May can get it into me, I'll give him leave; for one thing, I suppose there will be nothing else to do.”
“Not much in Carlingford; there are neither pictures, nor museums, nor fine buildings, nor anything of the sort; and very little society; a few tea-parties, and one ball in the season.”
Mr. Clarence Copperhead shrugged his large shoulders.
“I shan't go to the tea-parties, that's certain,” he said; “a fellow must hunt a little, I suppose, as the place is so destitute. As for pictures and museums, that don't trouble me. The worst of going abroad is that you've always got to look at things of that sort. To have to do it at home would be beyond a joke.”
“Have you seen the box of curious things John sent me with the children?” said Sophy. “They are on the table at the end of the room,—yataghans, and I don't know what other names they have, all sorts of Indian weapons. I should think you would be interested in them.”
“Thanks, Cousin Sophy, I am very well where I am,” he said. He looked at her in such a way that she might have appropriated this remark as a compliment, had she pleased; but Sophy laughed, and it is to be feared did not feel the compliment, for she turned right round to somebody else, and took no more notice of Clarence. He was so fully satisfied with himself that he had not any strong sense of neglect, though he had but little conversation with the company. He was quite satisfied to exhibit himself and his shirt-front before the fire.
Next day he accompanied the Mays back to Carlingford. Mr. May had enjoyed his visit. His mind was free for the moment; he had staved off the evil day, and he had a little money in his pocket, the remains of that extra fifty pounds which he had put on to Tozer's bill. With some of it he had paid some urgent debts, and he had presented five pounds to Cotsdean to buy his wife a gown, and he had a little money in his pockets. So that in every way he was comfortable and more at ease thanusual. The reckoning was four months off, which was like an eternity to him in his present mood of mind, and of course he would get the money before that time. There was so much time, indeed, that to begin to think of the ways and means of paying it at this early period seemed absurd. He was to have three hundred pounds for the year of Copperhead's residence with him, if he stayed so long, and that would do, if nothing else. Therefore Mr. May was quite easy in his mind, not in the least feeling the possibility of trouble in store for him. And the visit had been pleasant. He had enlarged his acquaintance, and that among the very sort of people he cared to know. He had been very well received by all the Dorsets, and introduced by Sir Robert as a relation, and he had received some personal incense about his works and his gifts which was sweet to him. Therefore he was in very good spirits, and exceedingly amiable. He conversed with his future pupil urbanely, though he had not concealed his entire concurrence in Sir Robert's opinion that he was “a cub.”
“What have you been reading lately?” he asked, when they had been transferred from the Dorsets' carriage, to the admiration and by the obsequious cares of all the attendant officials, into the railway carriage. Mr. May liked the fuss and liked the idea of that superiority which attended the Dorsets' guests. He had just been explaining to his companions that Sir Robert was the Lord of the Manor, and that all the homage done to him was perfectly natural; and he was in great good-humour even with this cub.
“Well, I've not been reading very much,” said Clarence, candidly. “What was the good? The governor did not want me to be a parson, or a lawyer, or anything of that sort, and a fellow wants some sort of a motive to read. I've loafed a good deal, I'm afraid. I got into a very good set, you know, first chop—Lord Southdown, and the Beauchamps, and that lot; and—well, I suppose we were idle, and that's the truth.”
“I see,” said Mr. May; “a good deal of smoke and billiards, and so forth, and very little work.”
“That's about it,” said the young man, settling himself and his trousers, which were the objects of a great deal of affectionate care on his part. He gave them furtive pulls at the knees, and stroked them down towards the ankle, as he got himself comfortably into his seat.
Mr. May looked at him with scientific observation, and Ursula with half-affronted curiosity; his self-occupation was an offence to the girl, but it was only amusing to her father. “An unmitigated cub,” Mr. May pronounced to himself; butthere where he sat he represented three hundred a-year, and that, at least, was not to be despised. Ursula was not so charitable as her father; she was not amused by him in the slightest degree. Had he come down to Carlingford in humble worship of her pretty eyes, and with a romantic intention of making himself agreeable to her, the captivating flattery would have prepossessed Ursula, and prepared her to see him in a very pleasant light, and put the best interpretation upon all he did and said. But this pretty delusion being dissipated, Ursula was angry with herself for having been so foolish, and naturally angry with Clarence for having led her into it, though he was quite without blame in the matter. She looked at him in his corner—he had taken the best corner, without consulting her inclinations—and thought him a vulgar coxcomb, which perhaps he was. But she would not have been so indignant except for that little bit of injured feeling, for which really, after all, he was not justly to blame.