Top
After the evening at Grange Lane which has been described, Reginald May met Northcote in the street several times, as was unavoidable, considering the size of the place, and the concentration of all business in Carlingford within the restricted length of the High Street. The two young men bowed stiffly to each other at first; then by dint of seeing each other frequently, got to inclinations a little more friendly, until at length one day when Northcote was passing by the College, as Reginald stood in the old doorway, the young chaplain feeling magnanimous on his own ground, and somewhat amused by the idea which suddenly presented itself to him, asked his Dissenting assailant if he would not come in and see the place. Reginald had the best of it in every way. It was he who was the superior, holding out a hand of favour and kindness to one who here at least, was beneath him in social consideration; and it was he who was the assailed, and, so to speak, injured party, and who nevertheless extended to his assailant a polite recognition, which, perhaps, no one else occupying the same position would have given. He was amused by his own magnanimity, andenjoyed it, and the pleasure of heaping coals of fire upon his adversary's head was entirely delightful to him.
“I know you do not approve of the place or me,” he said, forgetting in that moment of triumph all his own objections to it, and the ground upon which these objections were founded. “Come in and see it, will you? The chapel and the rooms are worth seeing. They are fair memorials of the past, however little the foundation may be to your mind.”
He laughed as he spoke, but without ill-humour; for it is easy to be good-humoured when one feels one's self on the gaining, not the losing side. As for Northcote, pride kept him from any demonstration of unwillingness to look at what the other had to show. He would not for worlds have betrayed himself. It was expedient for him, if he did not mean to acknowledge himself worsted, to put on a good face and accept the politeness cheerfully. So that it was on the very strength of the conflict which made them first aware of each other's existence, that they thus came together. The Dissenter declared his entire delight in being taken to see the place, and with secret satisfaction, not easily put into words, the Churchman led the way. They went to all the rooms where the old men sat, some dozing by the fire, some reading, some busy about small businesses; one had a turning-lathe, another was illuminating texts, a third had a collection of curiosities of a heterogeneous kind, which he was cleaning and arranging, writing neat little labels in the neatest little hand for each article.
“The charity of our ancestors might have been worse employed,” said Reginald. “A home for the old and poor is surely as fine a kind of benevolence as one could think of—if benevolence is to be tolerated at all.”
“Ye-es,” said Northcote. “I don't pretend to disapprove of benevolence. Perhaps the young who have a future before them, who can be of use to their country, are better objects still.”
“Because they will pay,” said Reginald; “because we can get something out of them in return; while we have already got all that is to be had out of the old people? A very modern doctrine, but not so lovely as the old-fashioned way.”
“I did not mean that,” said the other, colouring. “Certainly it ought to pay; everything, I suppose, is meant to pay one way or other. The life and progress of the young, or the gratified sentiment of the benefactor, who feels that he has provided for the old—which is the noblest kind of payment? I think the first, for my part.”
“For that matter, there is a large and most flourishing school,which you will come across without fail if you work among the poor. Do you work among the poor? Pardon my curiosity; I don't know.”
“It depends upon what you call the poor,” said the other, who did not like to acknowledge the absence of this element in Salem Chapel; “if you mean the destitute classes, the lowest level, no; but if you mean the respectable, comfortable—”
“Persons of small income?” said Reginald. “I mean people with no incomes at all; people without trades, or anything to earn a comfortable living by; labouring people, here to-day and away to-morrow; women who take in washing, and men who go about hunting for a day's work. These are the kind of people the Church is weighted with.”
“I don't see any trace of them,” said the Nonconformist. “Smooth lawns, fine trees, rooms that countesses might live in. I can't see any trace of them here.”
“There is no harm in a bit of grass and a few trees, and the rooms are cheaper in their long continuance than any flimsy new rubbish that could be built.”
“I know I am making an unfortunate quotation,” said Northcote; “but there is reason in it. It might be sold for so much, and given to the poor.”
“Cheating the poor, in the first place,” said Reginald, warmly concerned for what he felt to be his own; “just as the paddock an old horse dies in might bear a crop instead, and pay the owner; but what would become of the old horse?”
“Half-quarter of this space would do quite as well for your pensioners, and they might do without—”
“A chaplain!” said Reginald, laughing in spite of himself. “I know you think so. It is a sinecure.”
“Well, I think they may say their prayers for themselves; a young man like you, full of talent, full of capability—I beg your pardon,” said Northcote, “you must excuse me, I grudge the waste. There are so many things more worthy of you that you might do.”
“What, for example?”
“Anything almost,” cried the other; “digging, ploughing, building—anything! And for me too.”
This he said in an undertone; but Reginald heard, and did not carry his magnanimity so far as not to reply.
“Yes,” he said; “if I am wasted reading prayers for my old men, what are you, who come to agitate for my abolition?Ithink, too, almost anything would be better than to encourage the ignorant to make themselves judges of public institutions, which the wisest even find too delicate to meddle with. Thedigging and the ploughing might be a good thing for more than me.”
“I don't say otherwise,” said the young Dissenter, following into the old fifteenth-century chapel, small but perfect, the young priest of the place. They stood together for a moment under the vaulted roof, both young, in the glory of their days, both with vague noble meanings in them, which they knew so poorly how to carry out. They meant everything that was fine and great, these two young men, standing upon the threshold of their life, knowing little more than that they were fiercely opposed to each other, and meant to reform the world each in his own way; one by careful services and visitings of the poor, the other by the Liberation Society and overthrow of the State Church; both foolish, wrong and right, to the utmost bounds of human possibility. How different they felt themselves standing there, and yet how much at one they were without knowing it! Northcote had sufficient knowledge to admire the perfect old building. He followed his guide with a certain humility through the details, which Reginald had already learned by heart.
“There is nothing so perfect, so beautiful, so real now-a-days,” said the young Churchman, with a natural expansion of mind over the beauty to which he had fallen heir. It seemed to him, as he looked up at the tall windows with their graceful tracery, that he was the representative of all who had worked out their belief in God within these beautiful walls, and of all the perpetual worshippers who had knelt among the old brasses of the early founders upon the worn floor. The other stood beside him with a half envy in his mind. The Dissenter did not feel himself the heir of those centuries in the same unhesitating way. He tried to feel that he was the heir of something better and more spiritual, yet felt a not ungenerous grudge that he could not share the other kinship too.
“It is very beautiful and noble,” he said. “I should like to feel for it as you do; but what I should like still better would be to have the same clear certainty of faith, the same conviction that what they were doing was the only right thing to do which made both building and prayer so unfaltering in those days. We can't be so sure even of the span of an arch now.”
“No—nor can you be content with the old span, even though it is clearly the best by all rules,” said Reginald. The other smiled; he was the most speculative of the two, being perhaps the most thoughtful; and he had no fifteenth-century chapel to charm, nor old foundation to give him an anchor. He smiled, but there was a little envy in his mind. Even to have one'slife set out before one within clear lines like this, would not that be something? If it had but been possible, no doubt saying prayers for the world, even with no better than the old men of the College to say amen, had something more beautiful in it than tours of agitation for the Liberation Society; but Northcote knew that for him it was not possible, any more than was the tonsure of Reginald's predecessor, who had said mass when first those pinnacles were reared towards heaven. After he had smiled he sighed, for the old faith was more lovely than all the new agitations; he felt a little ashamed of the Liberation Society, so long as he stood under that groined and glorious roof.
“May!” said some one, coming in suddenly. “I want you to go to the hospital for me. I am obliged to go off to town on urgent business—convocation work; and I must get a lawyer's opinion about the reredos question; there is not a moment to lose. Go and see the people in the pulmonary ward, there's a good fellow; and there are two or three bad accidents; and that old woman who is ill in Brown's cottage, you saw her the other day; and the Simmonds in Back Grove Street. I should have had a day's work well cut out, if I had not had this summons to town; but the reredos question is of the first importance, you know.”
“I'll go,” said Reginald. There is nothing more effectual in showing us the weakness of any habitual fallacy or assumption than to hear it sympathetically, through the ears, as it were, of a sceptic. Reginald, seeing Northcote's keen eyes gleam at the sound of the Rector's voice, instinctively fell into sympathy with him, and heard the speech through him; and though he himself felt the importance of the reredos, yet he saw in a moment how such a question would take shape in the opinion of the young Dissenter, in whom he clearly saw certain resemblances to himself. Therefore he assented very briefly, taking out his note-book to put down the special cases of which the Rector told him. They had a confidential conversation in a corner, during which the new-comer contemplated the figure of Northcote in his strange semi-clerical garments with some amaze. “Who is your friend?” he said abruptly, for he was a rapid man, losing no time about anything.
“It is not my friend at all; it is my enemy who denounced me at the Dissenters' meeting.”
“Pah!” cried the Rector, curling up his nostrils, as if some disagreeable smell had reached him. “A Dissenter here! I should not have expected it from you, May.”
“Nor I either,” said Reginald; but his colour rose. He wasnot disposed to be rebuked by any rector in Carlingford or the world.
“Are you his curate,” said Northcote, “that he orders you about as if you were bound to do his bidding? I hope, for your own sake, it is not so.”
Now it was Reginald's turn to smile. He was young, and liked a bit of grandiloquence as well as another.
“Since I have been here,” he said, “in this sinecure, as you call it—and such it almost is—I have been everybody's curate. If the others have too much work, and I too little, my duty is clear, don't you think?”
Northcote made no reply. Had he known what was about to be said to him, he might have stirred up his faculties to say something; but he had not an idea that Reginald would answer him like this, and it took him aback. He was too honest himself not to be worsted by such a speech. He bowed his head with genuine respect. The apology of the Churchman whom he had assaulted, filled him with a kind of reverential confusion; he could make no reply in words. And need it be said that Reginald's heart too melted altogether when he saw how he had confounded his adversary? That silent assent more than made up for the noisy onslaught. That he should have thus overcome Northcote made Northcote appear his friend. He was pleased and satisfied beyond the reach of words.
“Will you come to the hospital with me?” he said; and they walked out together, the young Dissenter saying very little, doing what he could to arrange those new lights which had suddenly flashed upon his favourite subject, and feeling that he had lost his landmarks, and was confused in his path. When the logic is taken out of all that a man is doing, what is to become of him? This was what he felt; an ideal person in Reginald's place could not have made a better answer. Suddenly somehow, by a strange law of association, there came into his mind the innocent talk he had overheard between the two girls who were, he was aware, May's sisters. A certain romantic curiosity about the family came into his mind. Certainly they could not be an ordinary family like others. There must be something in their constitution to account for this sudden downfall, which he had encountered in the midst of all his theories. The Mays must be people of a different strain from others; a peculiar race, to whom great thoughts were familiar; he could not believe that there was anything common or ordinary in their blood. He went out in silence, with the holder of the sinecure which he had so denounced, but which now seemed tohim to be held after a divine fashion, in a way which common men had no idea of. Very little could he say, and that of the most commonplace kind. He walked quite respectfully by the young clergyman's side along the crowded High Street, though without any intention of going to the hospital, or of actually witnessing the kind of work undertaken by his new friend. Northcote himself had no turn that way. To go and minister at a sick-bed had never been his custom; he did not understand how to do it; and though he had a kind of sense that it was the right thing to do, and that if any one demanded such a service of him he would be obliged to render it, he was all in the dark as to how he could get through so painful an office; whereas May went to it without fear, thinking of it only as the most natural thing in the world. Perhaps, it is possible, Northcote's ministrations, had he been fully roused, would have been, in mere consequence of the reluctance of his mind, to undertake them, more real and impressive than those which Reginald went to discharge as a daily though serious duty; but in any case it was the Churchman whose mode was the more practical, the more useful. They had not gone far together, when they met the Rector hurrying to the railway; he cast a frowning, dissatisfied look at Northcote, and caught Reginald by the arm, drawing him aside.
“Don't be seen walking about with that fellow,” he said; “it will injure you in people's minds. What have you to do with a Dissenter—a demagogue? Your father would not like it any more than I do. Get rid of him, May.”
“I am sorry to displease either you or my father,” said Reginald stiffly; “but, pardon me, in this respect I must judge for myself.”
“Don't be pig-headed,” said the spiritual ruler of Carlingford; but he had to rush off for his train, and had no time to say more. He left Reginald hot and angry, doubly disposed, as was natural, to march Northcote over all the town, and show his intimacy with him. Get rid of an acquaintance whom he chose to extend his countenance to, to please the Rector! For a man so young as Reginald May, and so lately made independent, such an act of subserviency was impossible indeed.
Before they entered the hospital, however, another encounter happened of a very different character. Strolling along in the centre of the pavement, endeavouring after the almost impossible combination of a yawn and a cigar, they perceived a large figure in a very long great-coat, and with an aspect of languor andennuiwhich was unmistakable a hundred yards off. This apparition called a sudden exclamation from Northcote.
“If it was possible,” he said, “I should imagine I knew that man. Are there two like him? but I can't fancy what he can be doing here.”
“Thatfellow!” said Reginald. “It's a pity if there are two like him. I can't tell you what a nuisance he is to me. His name is Copperhead; he's my father's pupil.”
“Then itisCopperhead! I thought there could not be another. He gives a sort of odd familiar aspect to the place all at once.”
“Then you are a friend of his!” said Reginald, with a groan. “Pardon the natural feelings of a man whose father has suddenly chosen to become a coach. I hate it, and my dislike to the thing is reflected on the person of the pupil. I suppose that's what my antipathy means.”
“He does not merit antipathy. He is a bore, but there is no harm in him. Ah! he is quickening his pace; I am afraid he has seen us; and anybody he knows will be a godsend to him, I suppose.”
“I am off,” said Reginald; “you will come again? that is,” he added, with winning politeness, “I shall come and seek you out. We are each the moral Antipodes of the other, Miss Beecham says—from which she argues that we should be acquainted and learn the meaning of our differences.”
“I am much obliged to Miss Beecham.”
“Why, Northcote!” said Clarence Copperhead, bearing down upon them in his big grey Ulster, like a ship in full sail. “Morning, May; who'd have thought to see you here. Oh, don't turn on my account! I'm only taking a walk; it don't matter which way I go.”
“I am very much hurried. I was just about to hasten off to an appointment. Good-bye, Northcote,” said Reginald. “We shall meet again soon, I hope.”
“By Jove! this is a surprise,” said Clarence; “to see you here, where I should as soon have thought of looking for St. Paul's; and to find you walking about cheek by jowl with that muff, young May, who couldn't be civil, I think, if he were to try. What is the meaning of it? I suppose you're just as much startled to see me. I'm with a coach; clever, and a good scholar and a good family, and all that; father to that young sprig: so there ain't any mystery about me. What's brought you here?”
“Work,” said Northcote, curtly. He did not feel disposed to enter into any kind of explanation.
“Oh, work! Now I do wonder that a fellow like you, with plenty of money in your pocket, should go in for work as you do. What's the good of it? and in the Dissenting parson lineof all things in the world! When a fellow has nothing, you can understand it; he must get his grub somehow. That's what people think of you, of course. Me, I don't do anything, and everybody knows I'm a catch, and all that sort of thing. Now I don't say (for I don't know) if your governor has as much to leave behind him as mine—But halt a bit! You walk as if we were going in for athletics, and doing a two mile.”
“I'm sorry to see you so easily blown,” said Northcote, not displeased in his turn to say something unpleasant. “What is it? or are you only out of training?”
“That's it,” said Clarence, with a gasp. “I'm awfully out of training, and that's the fact. We do, perhaps, live too well in Portland Place; but look here—about what we were saying—”
“Do you live with the Mays?”
“Worse luck! It's what you call plain cooking; and bless us all, dinner in the middle of the day, and the children at table. But I've put a stop to that; and old May ain't a bad old fellow—don't bother me with work more than I like, and none of your high mightiness, like that fellow. I'll tell you what, Northcote, you must come and see me. I haven't got a sitting-room of my own, which is a shame, but I have the use of their rooms as much as I like. The sisters go flying away like a flock of pigeons. I'll tell you what, I'll have you asked to dinner. Capital fun it will be. A High Church parson cheek by jowl with a red-hot Dissenter, and compelled to be civil. By Jove! won't it be a joke?”
“It is not a joke that either of us will enjoy.”
“Never mind,I'llenjoy it, by Jove!” said Copperhead. “He daren't say no. I'd give sixpence just to see you together, and the Bashaw of two tails—the young fellow. They shall have a party; leave it all to me.”
Top
Mr. May, since the bargain was fairly concluded with the Copperheads, had thought a great deal about the three hundred a-year he was to get for his pupil. It almost doubled his income in a moment, and that has a great effect upon the imagination. It was true he would have another person to maintain on this additional income, but still that additional person would simply fill Reginald's place, and it did not at firstoccur to him that what was good enough for himself, Mr. May, of St. Roque's, was not good enough for anyparvenuon the face of the earth. Therefore the additional income represented a great deal of additional comfort, and that general expansion of expenditure, not going into any special extravagances, but representing a universal ease and enlargement which was congenial to him, and which was one of the great charms of money in his eyes. To be sure, when he reflected on the matter, he felt that the first half-year of Clarence's payment ought to be appropriated to that bill, which for the present had brought him so much relief; but this would be so entirely to lose the benefit of the money so far as he was himself concerned, that it was only in moments of reflection that this appeared urgent. The bill to which Tozer's signature had been appended did not oppress his conscience. After all, what was it? Not a very large sum, a sum which when put to it, and with time before him, he could so easily supply; and as for any other consideration, it was really, when you came to think of it, a quite justifiable expedient, not to be condemned except by squeamish persons, and which being never known, could do no harm in the world. He had not harmed anybody by what he had done. Tozer, who was quite able to pay it over and over again, would never know of it; and in what respect, he asked himself, was it worse to have done this than to have a bill really signed by a man of straw, whose “value received” meant nothing in the world but a simple fiction? Cotsdean was no more than a man of straw; if left to himself, he could not pay anything, nor had he anything really to do with the business for which his name stood sponsor; and Tozer's name was merely placed there in the same fictitious way, without any trouble to Tozer, or burden of responsibility. What was the difference, except that it saved trouble and anxiety to everybody except the principal in the affair—he who ought to bear the brunt? Mr. May recognised this without doubt. It was he who had reaped the advantage; and whether Cotsdean was the instrument who knew all about it, or Tozer, who did not know anything about it, it was he, Mr. May, whose natural duty it was to meet the claim and pay the money. He was an honest man; if he was occasionally a little slow in his payments, no one could throw any doubt upon his character. But, of course, should any unforeseen emergency arise, the pupil at once made that straight. Mr. May felt that he had only to go to the bank, which generally did not encourage his visits, and tell them of his pupil, to have the money at once. Nobody could reject such unmistakeable security. So that really there was no further occasion for somuch as thinking of Tozer; that was provided for; with the freest conscience in the world he might put it out of his mind. But how he could feel this so strongly, and at the same time revel in the consciousness of a fuller purse, more to enjoy, and more to spend, is a mystery which it would be difficult to solve. He did so, and many others have done so besides him, eating their cake, yet believing that they had their cake with the fullest confidence. He was a sensible man, rather priding himself on his knowledge of business, with much experience in human nature, and a thoughtful sense (fully evidenced in his writings) of all the strange inconsistencies and self-deceits of mankind; but he dropped into this strain of self-delusion with the calmest satisfaction of mind, and was as sure of his own good sense and kindness as if he had never in all his life taken a step out of the rigidest of the narrow ways of uprightness.
Some part of this illusion, however, was sharply dispelled at a very early date. Clarence Copperhead, who was not likely to err by means of too much consideration for the feelings of others, grumbled frankly at the mid-day meal.
“I don't understand a two o'clock dinner,” he said; “it's lunch, that's what I call it; and I won't be disagreeable about the kids, but I must have my dinner. Bless you! a man can't live without his dinner. What is he to do? It is the sort of thing you can look forward to, whatever happens. If it's a wet day, or anything of that sort, there's always dinner; and after it's over, if there's music or a rubber, why that's all very well; or if a man feels a bit sleepy, it doesn't matter. Why, dinner's your stand-by, wherever you are. I'd as soon do without my head, for my part.”
Ursula hastened to tell her father this with dismay in her looks.
“I've always heard that late dinners were so expensive; you require twice as many dishes. At two, one has only what is necessary; but at seven, you require to have fish, and soup, andentrées, and all sorts of things, besides the joint. It was disgraceful of him to say it!” cried Ursula; “and I think he ought to be made to follow our plan, whatever it is, and not do everything he likes here.”
“That is all very true,” said Mr. May; “but he is right about the dinner; it is a great deal more agreeable.”
“And expensive, papa.”
“Well, perhaps it is a great deal to expect at your age; but if you read your cookery-book, as I have often said, when you were reading those novels, and learned how to toss up littledishes out of nothing, and makeentrées, and so forth, at next to no expense—”
The tears came into Ursula's eyes at this unjust assault.
“Papa,” she said, “you ought to know better at your age. One forgives the boys for saying such silly things. How can I toss up little dishes out of nothing? If you only knew the price of butter, not to talk of anything else. Made dishes are the most expensive things! A leg of mutton, for instance; there it is, and when one weighs it, one knows what it costs; but there is not one of thoseentréesbut costsshillingsfor herbs and truffles and gravy and forcemeat, and a glass of white wine here, and a half pint of claret there. It is all very well to talk of dishes made out of nothing. The meat may not be very much—and men never think of the other things, I suppose.”
“It is management that is wanted,” said Mr. May, “to throw nothing away, to make use of everything, to employ all your scraps. If you once have a good sauce—which is as easy as daylight when you take the trouble—you can make all sorts of things out of a cold joint; but women never will take the trouble, and that is the secret of poor dinners. Not one in fifty will do it. If you wanted really to help us, and improve my position, you might, Ursula. I can't afford to fall out with Copperhead, he is very important to me just at this moment; and perhaps it is better that I should give in to him at once about the late dinner.”
“You may say it is not my business,” said Ursula, “but we have already another maid, and now two dinners—for it is just the same as two dinners. He will not be any advantage to you like that, and why should he be so much harder to please than we are? Reginald never grumbled, who was much better bred and better educated than Mr. Copperhead.”
“And with so much money to keep up his dignity,” said her father mockingly. “No, it is not your business, the cookery-book is your business, and how to make the best of everything; otherwise I don't want any advice from you.”
“What did he say?” cried Janey, rushing in as soon as her father had left the room. Ursula, a very general consequence of such interviews, was sitting by the fire, very red and excited, with tears glistening in her eyes.
“Of course I knew what he would say; he says it is not my business, and there are to be late dinners, and everything that man chooses to ask for. Oh, it is so hard to put up with it!” cried Ursula, her eyes flashing through her tears. “I amto read up the cookery-book and learn to makeentréesfor them; but to say we can't afford it is not my business. I wonder whose business it is? It is I who have to go to the tradespeople and to bear it all if they grumble; and now this horrible man, who dares to tell me the coffee is not strong enough, as if I was a barmaid—”
“Barmaids don't have to do with coffee, have they?” said matter-of-fact Janey; “but the fact ishe is not a gentleman; why should you mind? What does it matter what a person like that says or does? You said so yourself, he is not a bit a gentleman. I wonder what Cousin Anne and Cousin Sophy could mean.”
“It is not their fault; they think of his mother, who is nice, who sent those things; but Mr. Copperhead knew about the things, which was not so nice of her, was it? But never mind, we must try to make the best of it. Get the cookery-book, Janey; perhaps if you were to read it out loud, and we were both to try to fix our mind upon it—for something must be done,” said Ursula gravely. “Papa will never find it out till all the money is spent, but we shall be poorer than we were before we had the pupil. Who is that, Janey, at the door?”
It was Phœbe, who came in blooming from the cold, in a furred jacket, at which the girls looked with unfeigned admiration. “The skating will soon come on in earnest now,” she said; “grandmamma is better, and I thought I might come and see you. I had a long talk with your brother the other day, did he tell you? and I made him know Mr. Northcote, one of our people. I know you will turn up your pretty nose, Ursula, at a Dissenter.”
“I should think so,” cried Janey; “we have nothing to do with such people, being gentlefolks, have we, Ursula? Oh, I forgot! I beg your pardon, I didn't mean to say—”
Phœbe smiled upon her serenely. “I am not angry,” she said, “I understand all that; and in Carlingford I have no right, I suppose, to stand upon being a lady, though I always thought I was one. I am only a young woman here, and not so bad either for that, if you will promise, Janey, not to call me a young person—”
“Oh, Miss Beecham!”
“Mr. Copperhead is a Dissenter,” said Ursula, somewhat sullenly, “we put up with him because he is rich. Oh, it is all very disagreeable! I don't want to know any new people whatever they are; I find the old ones bad enough. Reginald hates him too, a big lazy useless being that treats one as if one were a chambermaid!”
“Is it Clarence? It is not quite his fault. His mother is a lady, but his father is a brute,” said Phœbe, “thinking of nothing but his horrible money. Clarence is not so bad. It is because he has no imagination, and does not understand other people's feelings; he does not mean it, poor fellow; he goes trampling about with his big feet upon everybody's toes, and never is a bit the wiser. Here he is—he is coming in with your father. I suppose there must be a great deal in race,” she added with a soft little sigh, “Clarence looks a clown, and your father such a gentleman. I suppose I show just the same when I stand beside you.”
Now Phœbe was well aware that this was not the case, and Ursula's indignant disclaimer made her rather laugh, because it was so unnecessary, than be pleased by its vehemence. There was an old convex mirror opposite which reflected the girls in miniature, making a pretty picture of them as they sat together, Ursula with her dark locks, and Phœbe in her golden hair, and the tall sharp school-girl, Janey, all elbows and angles, short petticoats and grey stockings. Janey was the only one in whom there could have been suspected any inferiority of race; but her awkwardness was that of youth, and her disordered hair and dress belonged also to her age, for she was at that troublesome period when frocks are constantly getting too short, and sleeves too scanty. Janey was shuffling slowly round the visitor, admiring her at every point; her garments were not made as dresses were made in Carlingford. Their fit and their texture were alike too perfect for anything that ever came out of High Street. The furred jacket had not been seen in Grange Lane before. Perhaps it was because the cold had become more severe, an ordinary and simple reason—or because Clarence Copperhead, who knew her, and in whose eyes it was important to bate no jot of her social pretensions, was here; and the furred jacket was beyond comparison with anything that had been seen for ages in Carlingford. The deep border of fur round the velvet, the warm waddings and paddings, the close fit up to the throat, were excellencies which warranted Janey's tour of inspection. Phœbe perceived it very well, but did not confuse the girl by taking any notice, and in her heart she was herself slightly pre-occupied, wondering (as Ursula had done) what the man had come here for, and what he would say when he saw her. Both of these young women had a secret belief that something romantic, something more than the mere prose of reading in the first tutor's house that happened to have been suggested to him, had brought young Copperhead to such an unlikely place as Carlingford. Ursula had by this timelearned to reject this hypothesis with much indignation at herself for having entertained it, but Phœbe still felt slightly fluttered by this possibility, and was eager for the entrance of Clarence. She would know at once what had brought him, she said to herself, the moment she caught his eye.
And though Mr. May had reconciled himself so completely to the Tozer business, the appearance of Tozer's granddaughter gave him a momentary shock. “What did you do with my grandfather's letter? he thought her eyes said, and the meeting confused and disturbed him. This, however, was only for a moment. He was a man to whom it was always possible to make himself agreeable to women, and though he felt so easy in his mind about Tozer, still it was evident that to conciliate Tozer's relation, and that so influential a relation, was on the whole a good thing to do. He was going up to her accordingly with outstretched hands, and the most amiable inquiries about her grandmother's health, when, to his surprise, he was frustrated by Clarence who had come in before him—his large person swelling out, as it always seemed to do when he presented himself upon a new scene, with importance and grandeur.
“Miss Beecham!” he said, “really, who would have thought it? Now look here, I came to Carlingford thinking there was not a soul I knew in the place; and here have you turned up all at once, and Northcote (you know Northcote?). It is very queer.”
“It is odd, isn't it?” said Phœbe quickly. “I was astonished to see Mr. Northcote, and though I heard you were coming I am not less surprised to see you.” “He has not come for me,” she said rapidly to herself, “nor for Ursula either; then who is it?” Phœbe demanded in the depths of her own bosom; that he should have come for nobody at all, but simply for his own purposes, to get a little information put into his head, seemed incredible to both the girls. Ursula, for her part, had been angry when she discovered his want of meaning, though why she would have found it hard to say. But Phœbe, for her part, was not angry. She took this like other things of the kind, with great and most philosophical calm, but she could not outgrow it all at once. For whom was it? His cousins, those Miss Dorsets? But they were much older, and not the kind of women for whom such an act was likely. Her mind wandered forth lively and curious in search of the necessary clue. She could not consent to the fact that no clue was necessary where no mystery was.
“I am glad to see that you venture out in this wintry weather,” said Mr. May; “you set us all a good example. I am alwaystelling my girls that cold weather is no sufficient reason for staying indoors. I wish Ursula would do as you do.”
“Papa, how can you talk so?” said Janey, indignant, “when you know very well it is not the cold that keeps Ursula in, but because she has so much to do.”
“Oh, yes, one knows the sort of things young ladies have to do,” said Clarence, with a laugh; “read stories, and look up pretty dresses for their parties, eh, Miss Janey? and consult the fashion-books. Oh, of course you will deny it; but my mother makes me her confidant, and I know that's what you all do.”
“To be sure,” said Phœbe, “we are not so clever as you are, and can't do so many things. We know no Latin or Greek to keep our minds instructed; we acknowledge our infirmity; and we couldn't play football to save our lives. Football is what you do in this season, when you don't hunt, and before the ice is bearing? We are poor creatures; we can't parcel out our lives, according as it is time for football or cricket. You must not be so severe upon girls for being so inferior to you.”
(“Oh, don't be too hard upon him,”) whispered Ursula, in a parenthesis, afraid that this irony should drive the pupil to desperation. (“Hard upon him! he will never find it out,”) Phœbe whispered back in the same tone.
“Oh, hang it all, I don't mean to be severe upon girls,” said Clarence, pulling his moustache with much complacency; “I am sorry for them, I can tell you. It ain't their fault; I know heaps of nice girls who feel it horribly. What can they do? they can't go in for cricket and football. There ought to be something invented for them. To be sure there is lawn-tennis, but that's only for summer. I should go mad, I think, if I had nothing to do.”
“But you have more brain and more strength, you see, than we have; and besides, we are used to it,” said Phœbe. “I am afraid, Ursula, grandmamma will want me, and I must go.”
Here Mr. May said something to his daughter which filled Ursula with excitement, mingled of pleasure and displeasure.
“Papa says, will you come to dinner to-morrow at seven? It appears there is some one you know coming—a Mr. Northcote. I don't know who he is, but it will be very kind if you will come on my account,” the girl concluded, whispering in her ear, “for how shall I ever get through a dinner-party? We never gave one in my life before.”
“Of course I will come,” said Phœbe. “Dinner-parties are not so common here that I should neglect the chance. I must thank Mr. May. But I hope you know who Mr. Northcoteis,” she added, laughing. “I gave an account of myself loyally, before I permitted you to ask me; but Mr. Northcote—Oh, no! he does not belong to——the lower classes; but he is a fiery red-hot——”
“What?” cried eager Janey, pressing to the front. “Radical? I am a radical too; and Reginald used to be once, and so was Ursula. Oh, I wish it was to-night!” said Janey, clasping her hands.
“Not a radical, but a Dissenter; and you who are a clergyman, Mr. May! I like you, oh, so much for it. But I wonder what the people will say.”
“My dear Miss Beecham,” said the suave Churchman, quite ready to seize the chance of making a point for himself, “in the Church, fortunately, what the people say has not to be studied, as your unfortunate pastors, I am informed, have to do. While Mr. Copperhead is under my roof, I make his friends welcome—for his sake first, probably afterwards for their own.”
“Yes, I asked Northcote,” said Clarence; “I never thought they would have any objection. He's not a common Dissenter, like the most of those fellows that have nothing but their salaries. He's well off; he don't require, bless you, to keep people in good temper, and toady to 'em, like most do. He's as independent as I am; I don't say that he's quite as well off; but money always finds its level. I shouldn't have thought of asking May to receive a common Dissenting fellow, like the rest.”
Phœbe laughed. It did not occur to the accomplished scion of the house of Copperhead, nor to the two girls, who were not experienced enough to think of such things, what was the meaning expressed in Phœbe's laugh, which was not cheerful. Mr. May himself had the advantage of more discrimination.
“I hope you will find that, Dissenter or not, I know what is my duty to my friends,” he said. “What my guests may possess, or the exact nature of their opinions on all points, are not subjects to be discussed by me.”
“Oh, there is nothing to find fault with inyou,” said Phœbe, with less than her usual universal courtesy; “you are always kind, Mr. May;” and then she laughed again. “Some people are very clever in finding out the vulnerable places,” she said.
“She is changed,” said Clarence, when she was gone. “She is not the jolly girl she used to be. She was always a very jolly girl; ready to help a fellow out of a scrape, you know. But Northcote's a fearfully clever fellow. You should just hear him talk. He and May will go at it hammer and tongs, as sure as fate.”
Top
It would be difficult to describe the anxiety with which that first “late dinner” was regarded by Ursula. Janey, too, had thrown herself into it heart and soul, until she received the crushing intimation from her father, that her company was not expected at this stately meal; a discovery which altogether extinguished poor Janey, accustomed to be always in the front whatever occurred, and to whom suggestions of things that could not be done by a girl who was not “out,” had never presented themselves. She retired to her own room dissolved in tears when this fearful mandate went forth, and for the rest of the morning was good for nothing, her eyes being converted into a sort of red pulp, her rough hair doubly dishevelled, her whole being run into tears. She was of no more use now to go errands between the kitchen and the drawing-room, or to read the cookery-book out loud, which was a process upon which Ursula depended very much, to fix in her mind the exact ingredients and painful method of preparation of theentréesat which she was toiling. Betsy, the former maid-of-all-work, now promoted under the title of cook, could be trusted to roast the saddle of mutton, which, on consideration that it was “a party,” had been thought preferable to a leg, and she could boil the fish, after a sort, and make good honest family soup, and the rice-pudding or apple-tart, which was the nearest approach to luxury indulged in at the Parsonage; but as forentrées, Betsy did not know what they were. She had heard of made dishes indeed, and respectfully afar off had seen them when she was kitchen-maid at Lady Weston's—the golden age of her youthful inexperience. But this was so long ago, that her recollections were rather confusing than useful to Ursula, when she went downstairs to make her first heroic effort.
“La, Miss, that ain't how cook used to do 'em at Lady Weston's,” Betsy said, looking on with unbelieving eyes. She was sure of this negative, but she was not sure of anything else, and utterly failed to give any active assistance, after driving the girl desperate with her criticisms. Altogether it was a confused and unpleasant day. When Reginald came in in the morning, his sister had no time to speak to him, so anxious wasshe and pre-occupied, and the drawing-room was being turned upside down, to make it look more modern, more elegant, more like the Dorsets' drawing-room, which was the only one Ursula knew. The comfortable round table in the middle, round which the family had grouped themselves for so long, had been pushed aside into a corner, leaving one fresh patch of carpet, quite inappropriate, and unconnected with anything else; and instead of the work and the school-books which so often intruded there, all that was gaudy and uninteresting in the May library had been produced to decorate the table; and even a case of wax flowers, a production of thirty years since, which had been respectfully transferred to a china closet by Ursula's better taste, but which in the dearth of ornament she had brought back again. Reginald carried off the wax flowers and replaced the table with his own hands, while Ursula scorched her cheeks over theentréesdownstairs.
“All this for Northcote,” he said, when she ran up for a moment, done up in a big white apron, her face crimson with the fire and anxiety combined: “for Miss Beecham has been here before, and you made no fuss about her then.”
“She came to tea,” said Ursula. “And I got a cake, which was all any one could do; but a dinner is a very different thing.” Indeed she had by this time come to share her father's opinion, that dinner was the right and dignified thing in all cases, and that they had been hitherto living in a very higgledy-piggledy way. The dinner had gone to her head.
“Then it is for Northcote, as I say,” said Reginald. “Do you know who he is?”
“A Dissenter,” said Ursula, with a certain languor; “but so, you know, is Mr. Copperhead, and he is the chief person here now-a-days. Papa thinks there is nobody like him. And so is Phœbe.”
“Oh, have you come so far as that?” said Reginald, with a little tinge of colour in his face. He laughed, but the name moved him. “It is a pretty fresh sort of country name, not quite like such an accomplished person.”
“Oh, that is just like you men, with your injustice! Because she is clever you take it amiss; you are all jealous of her. Look at her pretty colour and her beautiful hair; if that is not fresh I should like to know what is. She might be Hebe instead of Phœbe,” said Ursula, who had picked up scraps of classical knowledge in spite of herself.
“You are a little goose,” said Reginald, pinching her ear, but he liked his sister for her generous partizanship. “Mind you don't come to dinner with cheeks like that,” he said. “I like mysister to be herself, not a cook-maid, and I don't believe inentrées;” but he went away smiling, and with a certain warmth in his breast. He had gone up and down Grange Lane many times at the hour of sunset, hoping to meet Phœbe again, but that sensible young woman had no mind to be talked of, and never appeared except when she was certain the road was clear. This had tantalized Reginald more than he chose to avow, even to himself. Pride prevented him from knocking at the closed door. The old Tozers were fearful people to encounter, people whom to visit would be to damn himself in Carlingford; but then the Miss Griffiths were very insipid by the side of Phœbe, and the variety of her talk, though he had seen so little of her, seemed to have created a new want in his life. He thought of a hundred things which he should like to discuss with her—things which did not interest Ursula, and which the people about him did not understand much. Society at that time, as may be presumed, was in a poor way in Carlingford. The Wentworths and Wodehouses were gone, and many other nice people; the houses in Grange Lane were getting deserted, or falling into inferior hands, as was apparent by the fact that the Tozers—old Tozer, the butterman—had got one of them. The other people were mostly relics of a bygone state of things: retired old couples, old ladies, spinsters, and widows—excellent people, but not lively to talk to—and the Griffiths, above mentioned, put up with in consideration of tolerable good looks and “fun,” became tiresome when anything better was to be had. The mere apparition of Phœbe upon the horizon had been enough to show Reginald that there were other kinds of human beings in the world. It had not occurred to him that he was in love with her, and the idea of the social suicide implied in marrying old Tozer's granddaughter, had not so much as once entered his imagination. Had he thought of it, he would have pulled that imagination up tight, like an unruly horse, the thing being too impossible to bear thinking of. But this had never entered his mind. He wanted to see Phœbe to talk to her, to be near her, as something very new, captivating and full of interest—that was all. No one else within his sphere could talk so well. The Rector was very great indeed on the reredos question, and the necessity of reviving the disused “Church” customs; but Reginald could not go so far as he did as to the importance of the reredos, and was quite in doubt whether it was not as well for most people to “direct” themselves by their own consciences as to be directed by the spiritual head of the parish, who was not over wise in his own concerns. His father, Reginald knew, could be very agreeableamong strangers, but he seldom chose to be so in his own house. All this made the advent of Phœbe appear to him like a sudden revelation out of a different world. He was an Oxford man, with the best of education, but he was a simpleton all the same. He thought he saw in her an evidence of what life was like in those intellectual professional circles which a man may hope to get into only in London. It was not the world of fashion he was aware, but he thought in his simplicity that it was the still higher world of culture and knowledge, in which genius, and wit, and intellect stood instead of rank or riches. How Tozer's granddaughter had got admission there, he did not ask himself, but this was what he thought, and to talk to her was a new sensation. He was quite unconscious of anything more.
Nobody knew when Ursula took her place at the head of the table in her pretty white dress, which she had worn at the Dorsets', how much toil and anxiety the preparations had given her. At the last moment, when her mind was so far clear of theentrées, &c.—as clear as the mind of an inexperienced dinner-giver can be, until the blessed moment when they are eaten and done with—she had to take Sarah in hand, who was not very clear about the waiting, and to instruct her according to her own very imperfect knowledge how to fulfil her duties.
“Think it is not a dinner-party at all, but only just our ordinary luncheon, and don't get fluttered; and when I look at you likethiscome quite close, and I will whisper what you are to do. And oh, Sarah, like a good creature, don't break anything!” said Ursula almost with tears.
These were all the directions she could give, and they, it must be allowed, were somewhat vague. The excitement was becoming to her. She sat down with a dreadful flutter in her heart, but with her eyes shining and sparkling. Clarence Copperhead, who extended an arm very carelessly to take her downstairs, absolutely certain of being a more important person than his guest Northcote, was roused for the first time to the consciousness that she was very pretty, which he had not found out before. “But no style,” he said to himself. Phœbe was the one who had style. She sat between Mr. May and the stranger, but devoted herself to her host chiefly, displaying a gentle contempt of the younger men in his presence. No anxiety was in her mind about the dinner. She did not follow the fate of thoseentréesround the table with terrible palpitations, as poor Ursula did; and, alas, theentréeswere not good, and Ursula had the mortification to see the dishes she had taken so much trouble with, rejected by one and another.Reginald ate some, for which she blessed him, and so did Phœbe, but Mr. May sent his plate away with polite execrations.
“Tell your cook she shall go if she sends up such uneatable stuff again, Ursula,” her father cried from the other end of the table.
Two big tears dashed up hot and scalding into Ursula's eyes. Oh, how she wished she could be dismissed like Betsy! She turned those two little oceans of trouble piteously, without knowing it, upon Northcote, who had said something to her, without being able to reply to him. And Northcote, who was but a young man, though he was a fiery political Dissenter, and who had come to the Parsonage with a curious mixture of pleasure and reluctance, immediately threw down any arms that nature might have provided him with, and fell in love with her there and then on the spot! to his own absolute consternation. This was how it happened. The moment was not romantic, the situation was not sublime. A little motherless housekeeper crying because her father scolded her in public for a piece of bad cookery. There is nothing in this to make an idyll out of; but such as it was, it proved enough for Horace Northcote; he yielded himself on the spot. Not a word was said, for Ursula felt that if she tried to talk she must cry, and anything further from her troubled thoughts than love it would be impossible to imagine; but then and there, so far as the young man was concerned, the story began. He talked very little for the rest of the meal, and Ursula did not exert herself, though she recovered slightly when the mutton turned out to be very good, and was commended; but what was the mutton in comparison with herentrées, which she had made with her own hands, and which were a failure? She was reduced to silence, and she thought that the stranger at her left hand was nice, because he did not bother her, and was content with a very little talk.
“Oh, Phœbe, did you hear papa about thoseentrées?” she cried, when they reached the drawing-room; and sitting down on the stool by the fire which Janey usually appropriated, she cried, poor child, with undisguised passion. “I had made them myself; I had been busy about them all day; I read the cookery-book till my head ached, and took such pains! and you heard what he said.”
“Yes, dear, I heard him; but he did not think what he was saying, it never occurred to him that it was you. Don'tshake your little head, I am sure of it; you know, Ursula, your papa is very agreeable and very clever.”
“Yes, I know he is clever; and he can be nice when he likes—”
“Did you like it?” cried Janey, bursting in, red-eyed and dishevelled in her morning frock. “Oh, no, I am not dressed, I don't mean to, to let him get the better of me, and think I care. Only just for a moment to see you two. Oh, isn't Phœbe grand in that dress? She is like a picture; you are nothing beside her, Ursula. Tell me, is it nice to have dinner instead of tea? Did it go off very well, did you enjoy yourselves? Or were you all unhappy, sitting round the table, eating beef and mutton,” cried Janey with all the scorn of ignorance, “at that ridiculous hour!”
“I was as miserable as I could be,” cried Ursula, “I was not happy at all. Enjoy myself! with theentréeson my mind, and after what papa said. Oh, run away, Janey, and dress, or else go to bed. Papa will be so angry if he comes up and finds you here.”
“I should like to make him frantic,” cried Janey with vindictive force, “I should just like to drive him out of his senses! Never mind, yes, I am angry; haven't I a right to be angry? I am as tall as Ursula—I hope I know how to behave myself—and when there were people coming, and a real dinner—”
“Oh, I hear them,” cried Ursula in alarm, and Janey flew off, her hair streaming behind her. Phœbe put her arm round Ursula, and raised her from the stool. She was not perhaps a perfect young woman, but had her own ends to serve like other people; yet she had a friendly soul. She gave her friend a kiss to preface her admonition, as girls have a way of doing.
“I would not let Janey talk so,” she said, “I think you should not talk so yourself, Ursula, if you will forgive me, of your papa; he is very nice, and so clever. I should try all I could to please him, and I should not let any one be disrespectful to him if it was I.”
“Oh, Phœbe, if you only knew—”
“Yes, I know, gentlemen don't understand often; but we must do our duty. He is nice, and clever, and handsome, and you ought to be proud of him. Dry your eyes, here they are really, coming upstairs. You must be good-humoured and talk. He is ever so much nicer than the young men,” said Phœbe, almost loud enough to be heard, as Clarence Copperhead,sauntering in advance of the others with his large shirt-front fully displayed, came into the room. He came in half whistling in serene indifference. Phœbe had “style,” it was true; but she was only a Dissenting parson's daughter, and what were two such girls to Clarence Copperhead? He came in whistling an opera air, which he let drop only after he was well inside the door.
“Miss Beecham, let us have some music. I know you can play,” he said.
“If Miss May likes,” said Phœbe, covering his rudeness; and then she laughed, and added, “if you will accompany me.”
“Does Mr. Copperhead play too?”
“Oh beautifully. Has he not let you see his music? Won't you bring it here and let us look over it? I dare say there are some things we can play together.”
“You can play everything,” said the young man. “And I'll bring my violin, if you like.”
He was delighted; he quickened his steps almost into a run as he went away.
“You should not laugh at Mr. Copperhead,” Ursula retorted on her friend. “You should be good-humoured, too. You are better than I am, but you are not quite good, after all.”
“Violin!” said Mr. May. “Heaven and earth! is there going to be any fiddling? Miss Beecham, I did not expect you to bring such a horror upon me. I thought I had nothing but good to expect from you.”
“Wait till you hear him, sir,” said Phœbe.
Mr. May retired to the far corner of the room. He called young Northcote to him, who was standing beside Ursula, eager to talk, but not knowing how to begin. It was bad enough to be thus withdrawn from his chance of making himself agreeable; but the reader may imagine what was the Dissenter's feelings when Mr. May, with a smile, turned upon him. Having given him a (tolerably) good dinner, and lulled him into a belief that his sins against the family were unknown, he looked at him, smiling, and began.
“Mr. Northcote, the first time I saw you, you were discoursing at an Anti-Establishment Meeting in the Town Hall.”
Northcote started. He blushed fiery red. “It is quite true. I wished to have told you; not to come here on false pretences; but Copperhead—and your son has been very kind—”
“Then I suppose your views are modified. Clergymen no longer appear to you the demons in human shape you thought them then; and my son, in particular, has lost his horns and hoofs?”
“Mr. May, you are very severe; but I own there is reason—”
“It was you who were severe. I was not quite sure of you till Copperhead brought you in. Nay,” said the clergyman, rubbing his hands; “do you think that I object to the utterance of a real opinion? Certainly not. As for Reginald, it was the thing that decided him; I leave you to find out how; so that we are positively in your debt. But I hope you don't fiddle too. If you like to come with me to my study—”
Northcote gave a longing look round the room, which had become all at once so interesting to him. Mr. May was too clear-sighted not to see it. He thought, quite impartially, that perhaps it was an excusable weakness, even though it was his own society that was the counter attraction. They were two nice-looking girls. This was how he put it, being no longer young, and father to one of them; naturally, the two young men would have described the attraction of Phœbe and Ursula more warmly. Clarence Copperhead, who had come in with an armful of music and his fiddle, was not thinking of the girls, nor of anything but the sweet sounds he was about to make—and himself. When he began to tune his violin, Mr. May got up in dismay.
“This is more than mortal can stand,” he said, making as though he would have gone away. Then he changed his mind, for, after all, he was the chaperon of his motherless girl. “Get me the paper, Ursula,” he said. It would be hard to tell with what feelings Northcote contemplated him. He was the father of Ursula, yet he dared to order her about, to bring the tears to her eyes. Northcote darted the same way as she was going, and caught at the paper on a side-table, and brought it hastily. But alas, that was last week's paper! he did not save her the trouble, but he brought upon himself a gleam of mischief from her father's eyes. “Mr. Northcote thinks me a tyrant to send you for the paper,” he said, as he took it out of her hands. “Thank him for his consideration. But he was not always so careful of your peace of mind,” he added, with a laugh.
Ursula looked at him with a wondering question in her eyes; but those tears were no longer there which had gone to Northcote's heart.
“I don't know what papa means,” she said, softly; and then, “I want to beg your pardon, please. I was very silly. Will you try to forget it, and not tell any one, Mr. Northcote? The truth was, I thought I had done them nicely, and I was vexed. It was very childish,” she said, shaking her head withsomething of the same moisture floating back over the lustre in her pretty eyes.
“I will never tell any one, you may be sure,” said the young man; but Ursula did not notice that he declined to give the other pledge, for Reginald came up just then with wrath in his eyes.
“Is that idiot going to fiddle all night?” he cried (poor Clarence had scarcely begun); “as if anybody wanted to hear him and his tweedle-dees. Miss Beecham plays like St. Cecilia, Ursula; and I want to speak to her about something. Can't you get that brute beguiled away?”
Clarence was the one who wasde tropin the little party; but he fiddled beatifically, with his eyes fixed on the ceiling, without the slightest suspicion of the fact, while Phœbe accompanied him, with little smiles at her friends, and shrugs of her shoulders. Reginald felt very strongly, though for the first time, that she was over doing the Scriptural maxim of being all things to all men.