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“Well, young ladies!” said Mrs. Sam Hurst, “I left you very quiet, but there seems to be plenty going on now-a-days. What a beautiful moon there was last night! I put up my window to look at it, and all at once I found there was a party going on below. Quite afête champêtre. I have newly come from abroad, you know, and it seemed quite congenial. I actually rubbed my eyes, and said to myself, 'I can't have come home. It's Boulogne still, it isn't Carlingford!'”
“There was no company,” said Ursula with dignity; “there was only our own party. A friend of Reginald's and a friend of mine join us often in the evening, and there is papa's pupil—if you call that a party. We are just as quiet as when you went away. We never invite strangers. We are as much by ourselves as ever.”
“With a friend of Reginald's, and a friend of yours, and papa's pupil!” said Mrs. Hurst, laughing; “double your own number, Ursula! and I don't suppose Janey counts yet. Why, there is a young man too many. How dare you waste the gifts of Providence, you prodigal child? And now let me hear who they are.”
“You may say Janey doesn't count,” cried that young woman in person. “Oh, Mrs. Hurst, what a bore they are! If that's society, I don't care for society. One always following Ursula about whenever she moves, so that you can't say a word to her; and the others pulling poor Phœbe to pieces, who hates them, I am sure. Phœbe was so jolly at first. She would talk to you, or she would play for you! Why, she taught Johnnie and me a part-song to sing with her, and said he had a delightfulvoice; but she never has any time to look at us now,” said Janey, stopping in this breathless enumeration of wrongs. “She is always taken up with those horrible men.”
“I suppose you call Reginald a horrible man?” said Ursula, with rising colour. “If that was my opinion of my own brother, I should take care not to say it, at least.”
“Oh, Reginald isn't the worst! There's your Mr. Northcote, and there's that Copperhead—Woodenhead, we call him in the nursery. Oh, how papa can put up with him, I can't tell! he never had any patience with us. You can't think how dull he is, Mrs. Hurst! I suppose girls don't mind when a mangoes on, whether he's stupid or not. I never heard Mr. Northcote say much that was interesting either; but he looks clever, and that is always something.”
“So Mr. Northcote is Ursula's one,” said Mrs. Hurst, laughing. “You are a perfect jewel, Janey, and I don't know how I should ever find out anything that's going on, but for you. Northcote! it is a new name in Carlingford. I wonder I have not heard of him already; or have you kept him entirely to yourself, and let nobody know that there was a new man in the place?”
There was a little pause here. The girls knew nothing about Northcote, except the one fact that he was a Dissenter; but as Mrs. Hurst was an excellent Churchwoman, much better than they were, who had, perhaps, been brought up too completely under the shadow of the Church to believe in it implicitly, they hesitated before pronouncing before her that unfortunate name.
“I don't know whether you are aware,” Ursula said at last, with some slowness and reluctance, “that papa's pupil is of a Dissenting family. He is related, through his mother, to our cousins, the Dorsets.” (This fact Ursula put forth with a little triumph, as refuting triumphantly any ready conclusion as to the social standing of Dissenters.) “I think Mr. Northcote came first to the house with Mr. Copperhead. He is a Dissenter too.”
“Why, Ursula,” cried Mrs. Hurst, “not the man who attacked Reginald in the Meeting? It was all in the papers. He made a frightful violent speech about the College and the sinecure, and what a disgraceful thing it was that your brother, a young man, could accept it. You don't mean him?”
Ursula was struck dumb. She looked up at her questioner with her lips falling apart a little, with a look of mingled consternation and fear.
“Of course it can't be,” said the gossip, who was not ill-natured. “You never read the papers, but your papa does,and so does Reginald. Oh, you may be sure it is some other Northcote, though I don't know the name.”
“Ursula doesn't like to tell you,” said Janey; “but he's the Dissenting Minister, I know he is. Well! I don't care! He is just as good as anybody else. I don't go in for your illiberal ways of thinking, as if no one was worth talking to except in the Church. Mr. Northcote is very nice. I don't mind what you say. Do you mean to tell me that all those curates and people who used to plague our lives out were nicer? Mr. Saunders, for instance; he is a real good Churchman, I have always heard people say—”
“Hold your tongue, Janey; you don't know anything about it,” said Mrs. Hurst, whom this wonderful disclosure elevated into authority. “A Dissenting Minister! Ah, me! what a thing it is for you poor girls to have no mother. I did not think your papa would have had so little consideration as to expose you to society like that. But men are so thoughtless.”
“I don't know what right you have to speak of exposing us to society like that,” cried Ursula, quivering all over with sudden excitement.
She felt as if some one had dug a knife into her, and turned it round in the wound.
“Men have so little consideration,” repeated Mrs. Hurst, “especially when a girl is concerned. Though how your papa could have received a man who made such an assault upon him—even if he had passed over the attack upon Reginald, he was attacked himself.”
“It must be a mistake,” said Ursula, growing pale. Her hands came together half-unconsciously, and clasped in a mute gesture of appeal. “It is not possible; it cannot be true.”
“Well, it is very odd that your papa should show such charity, I allow. I don't think it is in human nature. And Reginald, what does Reginald say? If it is that man, it will be the strangest thing I ever heard of. But there could not be two Northcotes, Dissenting Ministers in Carlingford, could there? It is very strange. I can't think what your papa can have had in his head. He is a man who would do a thing for a deep reason, whether he liked it or not. How did this Mr. Northcote come first here?”
“Oh, it was through Mr. Copperhead,” said Janey. “It was the first dinner-party we had. You should have seen the fright Ursula was in! And papa would not let me come to dinner, which was a horrid shame. I am sure I am big enough, bigger than Ursula.”
“If he came with the pupil, that makes it all quite plain. Isuppose your papa did not want to quarrel with his pupil. What a predicament for him, if that was the case! Poor Mr. May! Of course, he did not want to be uncivil. Why, it was in the 'Gazette,' and the 'Express,' and all the papers; an account of the Meeting, and that speech, and then a leading article upon it. I always file the 'Express,' so you can see it if you like. But what an embarrassment for your poor papa, Ursula, that you should have taken this man up! And Reginald, how could he put up with it, a touchy young man, always ready to take offence? You see now the drawback of not paying a little attention to what is going on round you. How uncomfortable you must have made them! It might be very well to look over an offence, not to be unpleasant to the stranger; but that you should have thoughtlessly led this man on into the position of an intimate—”
“I did nothing of the sort,” cried Ursula, growing red and growing pale, starting up from her work with a sense of the intolerable which she could not restrain. “What have I done to be spoken of so? I never led him on, or any one. What you say is cruel, very cruel! and it is not true.”
“Isn't it true that he was here last night, following you about, as Janey says? Oh, I know how these sort of things go on. But you ought to think of your papa's position, and you ought to think of Reginald. If it was to come to the Bishop's ears that St. Roque's Parsonage was a refuge for Dissenters! For I know whoyourfriend is, Ursula! That Tozer girl, another of them! Indeed, I assure you, it makes me feel very uncomfortable. And Reginald, just at the very beginning of his career.”
Ursula did not make any reply. She bent her head down over her work, so low that her flushed cheeks could scarcely be seen, and went on stitching with energy and passion such as needles and thread are seldom the instruments of; and yet how much passion is continually worked away through needles and thread! Mrs. Hurst sat still for some time, looking at her, very little satisfied to keep silence, but feeling that she had discharged an efficient missile, and biting her lips not to say more to weaken its effect. When some time had passed in this way, and it was apparent that Ursula had no intention of breaking the silence, her visitor got up and shook out her skirts with a little flutter of indignation.
“You are offended,” she said, “though I must say it is very ill on your part to be offended. What motive can I have but your good, and regard for your poor dear papa? It is he that is always the victim, poor man, whether it is your vagaries he has to pay for, or Reginald's high-flying. Oh, yes; you maybe as angry as you like, Ursula; but you will find out the difference if your encouragement of this Dissenter interferes with something better—a living for Reginald, perhaps, or better preferment for your poor papa.”
“Oh!” cried Janey, awe-stricken; “but after all, it was not Ursula; it was papa himself. I think he must have done it to please Mr. Copperhead; for, Mrs. Hurst, you know Mr. Copperhead is very important. We have all to give in to him. He pays papa three hundred a-year.”
“Three thousand wouldn't make up for it if it spoilt all your career,” cried the indignant woman, and she swept away without saying any more to Ursula, who kept quite still over her work without budging. Janey went downstairs meekly after her to open the door, whispering an entreaty that she would not be angry.
“No, no, I am not angry,” said Mrs. Hurst, “but I shall keep it up for a day or two. It is the best thing for her. I think she was struck with what I said.”
Janey stole upstairs again, feeling rather guilty; but Ursula took little notice of her. The dinner was ordered and everything settled for the day. She was busy with her week's mending and darning, with the stockings and other things in a big basket beside her. When she came to some articles belonging to Janey, she threw them out with great impatience.
“You may surely mend your things yourself, you are big enough. You can talk for yourself and me too,” cried Ursula with sudden impetuosity; and then she sat and worked, her needle flying through the meshes of her darning, though it is hard to darn stockings in that impassioned way. They were socks of Johnnie's, however, with holes in the heels that you could put your fist through, and the way in which the big spans filled themselves up under this influence was wonderful to see. Janey, who was not fond of mending, set to work quite humbly under the influence of this example, and made two or three attempts to begin a conversation but without avail.
The girls were seated thus in a disturbed and restless silence, working as if for their lives, when the usual little jar of the gate and sound of the bell downstairs announced a visitor. On ordinary occasions, they were both in the habit of rushing to the window when the gate was opened to see who was coming, and Janey had thrown aside her work to do so when a look from Ursula stopped her. High-spirited as Janey was, she did not dare to disobey that look. By right of the passion that had got possession of her, Ursula took the absolute command of the situation in a way she had never done before, andsome sudden intuition made her aware who it was who was coming. The girls both sat there still and breathless, waiting for his appearance. He never came in the day, never had been seen in the Parsonage at that hour before, and yet Ursula was as certain who it was as if she had seen him a mile off. He came into the room, himself looking a little breathless and disturbed, and gave a quick impatient look at Janey as he went up to her sister. Ursula saw it and understood well enough. Janey was in his way; he had come this morning with a special purpose. Her heart sank down to her very shoes, and then rose again with a feverish and unreal leap. Was it not her duty to take the initiative, to cut away the very ground from beneath his feet? He took a seat, not far from where she was sitting, and made an effort to begin a little ordinary conversation, throwing frequent glances at Janey. He said it was a fine day, which was self-evident; that he almost feared they would be out; that he had come to—to tell her something he had forgotten last night, about—yes, about—Cassiopeia's chair, to correct what he said about Orion—yes, that was it; and again he looked at Janey, who saw his looks, and wondered much what she ought to do—go away, as he evidently wished her, or stay and listen, which was the eager desire of her mind. When Ursula lifted her head from her darning, and looked at him with cheeks alternately white and crimson, Janey felt herself grow hot and breathless with kindred excitement, and knew that the moment had come.
“Mr. Northcote,” said Ursula, looking at him fixedly, so fixedly that a nervous trembling ran over him, “I have a question to ask you. You have been coming to us very often, and perhaps papa may know, but I don't. Is it true that you made a speech about Reginald when you first came here?”
Janey, looking eagerly on, saw Northcote grow pale, nay, grey in the fresh daylight. The colour seemed to ebb out of him. He started very slightly, as if waking up, when she began to speak, and then sat looking at her, growing greyer and greyer. A moment elapsed before he made any reply.
“Yes, I did,” he said, with a half-groan of pain in his voice.
“You did! really you did! Oh!” cried Ursula, the hot tears falling suddenly out of her eyes, while she still looked at him, “I was hoping that it was all some horrible mistake, that you would have laughed. I hoped you would laugh and say no.”
Northcote cleared his throat; they were waiting for him to defend himself. Janey, holding herself on the leash, as it were, keeping herself back from springing upon him like a hound. Ursula gazed at him with great blazing reproachful eyes; andall he could do was to give that sign of embarrassment, of guilt, and confusion. He could not utter a word. By the time he had got himself wound up to the point of speech, Ursula, impatient, had taken the words out of his mouth.
“Reginald is my brother,” she said. “Whatever is against him is against us all; we have never had any separate interests. Didn't you think it strange, Mr. Northcote, to come to this house, among us all, when you had been so unkind to him?”
“Miss May—”
He made a broken sort of outcry and motion of his head, and then cleared his throat nervously once more.
“Did you think how your own brothers and sisters would have stood up for you? that it would have been an offence to them if anybody had come to the house who was not a friend to you? that they would have had a right—”
“Miss May,” said the culprit; “all this I have felt to the bottom of my heart; that I was here on false pretences—that I had no right to be here. But this painful feeling was all quenched and extinguished, and turned into gratitude by the goodness of your father and brother. I did not even know that you had not been told. I thought you were aware from the beginning. You were colder than they were, and I thought it was natural, quite natural, for it is easier to forgive for one's self than for those one loves; and then I thought you melted and grew kinder to me, that you saw how all my ideas were changed, all my feelings—my mind itself; changed by the great charity, the wonderful goodness I have found here!”
“Mr. Northcote!” Ursula had been struggling to break in all the time; but while he spoke her words dispersed, her feelings softened, and at the end she found nothing but that startled repetition of his name with which to answer him. No doubt if he had given her time the eloquence would have come back; but he was too much in earnest to be guilty of such a mistake.
“What can I say about it?” cried the young man. “It has filled me with shame and with happiness. I have been taken in my own trap—those whom I attacked as you say—went out of my way to attack, and abused like a fool because I knew nothing about them—have shown me what the Bible means. Your father and brother knew what I had done, they met me separately, quite independent of each other, and both of them held out their hands to me; why, except that I had offended them, I cannot tell. A stranger, belonging to an obscure class, I had no claim upon them except that I haddone what ought to have closed their house against me. And you know how they have interpreted that. They have shown me what the Bible means.”
The two girls sat listening, both with their heads bent towards him, and their eyes fixed upon his face. When he stopped, Janey got up with her work in her lap, and coming a little nearer to Ursula, addressed her in a wondering voice.
“Is itpapahe is talking of like that?” she said, under her breath.
“Yes,” he said, fervently, turning to her. “It is your father. He has made charity and kindness real things to me.”
“Poor papa!” said Ursula, whose tears were arrested in her eyes by the same surprised sensation, half-pleasure, half-pain, which hushed even Janey's voice. They were “struck,” as Mrs. Hurst had said, but by such a strange mingling of feelings that neither knew what to make of them. Northcote did not understand what they meant; their words conveyed a slight shock of surprise, but no distinct idea to him; and when Janey, too much impressed to settle down again, went away after a while musingly, carrying her work in the upper skirt of her gown, held like a market-woman's apron by her elbow against her side; and he found himself to have attained in the very confusion of his intentions to what he wished, i.e., an interview with Ursula by herself, he was almost too much agitated to take advantage of it. As for Ursula, she had floated a hundred miles away from that sensation of last night which, had no stronger feeling come in to bewilder her, would have made his errand very plain to her mind. She had ceased to think about him, she was thinking with a certain tenderness, and wondering, half-awed, half-amused, self-questioning, about her father. Was he so good as this? had he done this Christian action? were they all perhaps doing papa injustice? She was recalled to herself by Northcote's next proceeding. He went to the door and closed it after Janey, who had left it open, of course, and then he came to the back of the chair on which stood the great basket of darning. His voice was tremulous, his eyes liquid and shining with emotion.
“Will you forgive me, since they have forgiven me? and may I askyousomething?” he said.
Top
Mr. May did not take any particular notice of what was going on around him among the young people. Nobody could have been more startled than he, had he been told of the purpose with which Horace Northcote, the Dissenting minister, had paid his early morning visit; and though he had a half-scornful, half-amused glimmer of insight into the feelings of his son, and saw that Clarence Copperhead was heavily veering the same way, it did not occur to him that any crisis was approaching. He was enjoying himself in his way, and he had not done that for a long time. He dearly liked the better way of living, the more liberal strain of housekeeping and expenditure; he liked the social meetings in the evening, the talk after dinner with the three young men, the half-fatherly flirtation with Phœbe, which she too enjoyed much, avowedly preferring him, with pretty coquetry, to the others. All this was very pleasant to him; and the additional money in his pocket was very pleasant, and when the post came in, one of these April mornings, and brought a letter from James, enclosing a draft for fifty pounds, his satisfaction was intense. The sight of the money brought an itching to his fingers, a restlessness about him generally. And yet it was not all that might have been desired, only fifty pounds! he had been buoying himself up by vain thoughts of how James this time, having been so long writing, would send a larger sum, which would at once tide him over the Tozer business, and on this account had been giving himself no trouble about it. Never before had he been soinsouciant, although never before had the risk been so great. He had suffered so much about it last time, probably, that was why he took it so easily now; or was it because his trust in the chapter of accidents had grown greater since he was more dependent on it? or because of the generally expanded sense of living in him which made anxiety uncongenial anyhow? Whatever the cause was, this was the effect. A momentary disappointment when he saw how little James's draft was—then a sense of that semi-intoxication which comes upon a poor man when a sum of money falls into his hands—gradually invaded his soul. He tried to settle down to his writing, butdid not feel equal to the effort. It was too little for the purpose, he said to himself, for which he wanted it; but it was enough to do a great many pleasant things with otherwise. For the first time he had no urgent bills to swallow it up; the very grocer, a long-suffering tradesman who made less fuss than the others, and about whom Ursula made less fuss, had been pacified by a payment on account of the Copperhead money, and thus had his mouth stopped. Barring that bill, indeed, things were in a more comfortable state than they had been for a long time in the May household; and putting that out of account, James's money would have been the nearest approach to luxury—reckoning luxury in its most simple form as money to spend without any absolutely forestalling claim upon it—which Mr. May had known for years. It is so seldom that poor people have this delicious sense of a little, ever so little surplus! and it would be hard to say how he could entertain the feeling that it was an overplus. There was something of the fumes of desperation perhaps, and impending fate in the lightness of heart which seized upon him. He could not keep still over his writing. He got up at last, and put James's draft into his pocket-book, and got his hat to go out. It was a fine morning, full of that exhilaration which belongs only to the spring. He went to the bank, and paid in the money, getting a small sum at the same time for his own immediate use; but somehow his restlessness was scarcely satisfied by that very legitimate piece of business, and he extended his walk into the town, and strayed, half by chance, half by intention, to the old furniture shop at the other end of the High Street, which was a favourite resort of the higher classes in Carlingford, and where periodically there was an auction, at which sometimes great bargains were to be had. Mr. May went into this dangerous place boldly. The sale was going on; he walked into the midst of temptation, forgetting the prayer against it, which no doubt he had said that morning. And as evil fate would have it, a carved book-case, the very thing he had been sighing for, for years, was at that moment the object of the auctioneer's praises. It was standing against the wall, a noble piece of furniture, in which books would show to an advantage impossible otherwise, preserved from dust and damp by the fine old oak and glass door. Mr. May's heart gave a little jump. Almost everybody has wished for something unattainable, and this had been the object of his desires for years. He gave a little start when he saw it, and hurried forward. The bidding had actually begun; there was no time to think and consider, if he wished to have a chance, and it was going cheap, dead cheap. Aftera minute or two of competition the blood rose to his cheeks, he got thoroughly excited. The effect of this excitement was two-fold—not only did it drive all thought of prudence out of his head, but it raised by several pounds the price of the book-case, which, had he gone about it coolly, he might have had at a much cheaper rate. When he suddenly woke up to find himself the owner of it, a thrill of consternation ran over him—it was all so sudden; and it was perfectly innocent, if only he had any money; and to be sure he had James's money, which was not enough to do anything else—certainly not to do the thing he wanted it for. He tried to laugh at himself for the little thrill of alarm that ran through him; but it was too late to recede; and he gave his cheque for the money and his directions as to having it sent to the Parsonage, with a quake at his heart, yet a little flourish of satisfaction.
“Just what I have been wanting for years,” he said, as he examined his new acquisition, and the people about looked at him with additional respect he felt, not being used to see Mr. May so prompt in payment, and so ready with his money. This pleased him also. He walked home with his head a little turned still, although there was a quake and flutter underneath. Well! he said to himself, who could call it an extravagance? a thing he had wanted for years—a thing which was a necessity, not for luxury, but everyday use—a thing which was not dear, and which was very handsome and substantial, andreally good; how could any one say it was extravagant? Ursula might stare with her big eyes, but she was only a silly little girl, and women always were silly about expenses, alarmed by a big bold handsome purchase, though there was nobody better at the art of frittering away money in pretty nothings. When he got home, he began at once nervously to clear the space where it should stand. What an improvement it would be! and his books were getting spoiled daily in those unsightly, open shelves, entirely spoiled. It was exciting to anticipate its arrival, and the admiration and commotion in the house. He called in Betsy and gave her orders about it; how, if it came when he was absent, it was to be put in that particular place, no other.
“And mind that great care is taken, for it is valuable, and a beautiful piece of furniture,” he said.
“La, sir!” said Betsy, who was thunderstruck, though she knew it was not “her place” to show any feeling. He did not think it was necessary to appeal to Ursula on the same subject, but was rather glad to get out again, feeling the restlessness which had not been dissipated, but rather the reverse. Hewent and saw one or two poor people, to whom he was much more tolerant and kind than his wont, for in general Mr. May was not attracted towards the poor; and he gave them a shilling or two of the money he had drawn at the bank that morning—though somehow it had acquired a certain value in his eyes, and it was with a grudge that he took it out of his pocket. I must not spend this, he said to himself; but gave the shillings as a kind of tithe or propitiatory offering to Providence, that things might go well with him. Why should not things go well with him? He was not a bad man, he wronged nobody. He had done nothing to-day that a saint might not have done; he wanted the book-case, and he had the money, a sum not big enough for any more important purpose; but which was far better disposed of so than frittered away in nothings, as no doubt it would have otherwise been. By the afternoon, when the book-case arrived, he had convinced himself that it was not only quite reasonable, but a most lucky chance, a thing he could scarcely have hoped for, the opportunity and the money both coming in such exact accord with each other. When he returned from his walk the girls were looking at it, Ursula somewhat scared, Janey in open raptures.
“It is very nice indeed, papa,” said the elder girl; “but it must have cost a deal of money.”
“Be thankful that you haven't got to pay for it,” he said, brusquely. He was not disposed to stand criticism. How it filled up his bare room, and made it, Mr. May thought, all at once into a library, though the old writing-table and shabby chairs looked rather worse perhaps than before, and suggested renewal in the most urgent way. To make it all of a piece, to put a soft Turkey carpet instead of the drugget, how pleasant it would be!—not extravagant, only a natural inclination towards the seemly, and a desire to have things around him becoming his position. No doubt such things were things which he ought to have in his position; a gentleman and a scholar, how humiliating it was that nothing but the barest elements of comfort should be within his reach. This was not how life ought to be; a poor creature like Clarence Copperhead, without birth, or breeding, or brains, or anything but money, was able to gratify every wish, while he—his senior, his superior! Instead of blaming himself, therefore, for his self-indulgence, Mr. May sympathized with himself, which is a much less safe thing to do; and accordingly, it soon began to appear to him that his self-denial all this time in not giving himself what he wanted had been extreme, and that what he had now done, in conceding himself so harmless a gratification, was what heought to have done years ago. It was his own money sent to him by his dutiful son without conditions; and who had any right to interfere?
When he was at dinner, Betsy came behind his chair under pretence of serving him; Betsy, whose place was in the kitchen, who had no right to show in the dining-room at all, and whose confused toilette had caught Ursula's eye and filled her with horror.
“Please, sir,” she said, breathing hot on Mr. May's ear, till he shrank with sensitive horror. “Cotsdean's in the kitchen. He says as how he must see you; and I can't get him away.”
“Ah, Cotsdean? tell him if he has anything to say to me, to write it down.”
“Which he's done, sir,” said Betsy, producing a little bit of paper rolled tightly together, “but I wasn't to give it till I'd asked you to see him. Oh, please see him, sir, like a dear good gentleman. He looks like a man as is going off his head.”
“He is a fool,” said Mr. May, taking the paper, but setting his teeth as he did so. Evidently he must get rid of this fellow—already beginning to trouble him, as if he was not the best person to know when and how far he could go.
“Tell him I'll attend to it, he need not trouble himself,” he said, and put the paper into his pocket, and went on with his dinner. Cotsdean, indeed! surely there had been enough of him. What were his trumpery losses in comparison with what his principal would lose, and how dare that fellow turn up thus and press him continually for his own poor selfish safety? This was not how Mr. May had felt three months before; but everything changes, and he felt that he had a right to be angry at this selfish solicitude. Surely it was of as much consequence to him at least as to Cotsdean. The man was a fussy disagreeable fool, and nothing more.
And as it happened they sat late that night at dinner, without any particular reason, because of some discussion into which Clarence and Reginald fell, so that it was late before Mr. May got back to his room, where his books were lying in a heap waiting their transportation. They seemed to appeal to him also, and ask him reproachfully how they had got there, and he went to work arranging them all with all the enthusiasm natural to a lover of books. He was a book-lover, a man full of fine tastes and cultured elegant ways of thinking. If he had been extravagant (which he was not) it would have been in the most innocent, nay delightful and laudable way. To attach any notion of criminality, any suspicion of wrong-doing to such a virtuous indulgence, how unjust it would be! There was no company upstairs that evening. Copperhead had strolled outwith Reginald to smoke his cigar, much against the will of the latter, and was boring him all the way to the College with accounts of his own lavish expenditure, and how much he had given for this and that; his cameos, his diamond studs, the magnificent dressing-case which was the wonder of the Parsonage. “Hang it all, what is the good of having money if you don't spend it?” said Clarence, and Reginald, who had not much money to spend, felt as near hating him as it was in his nature to do. Thus Mr. May was released from duty in the drawing-room, where Ursula, palpitating with many thoughts which were altogether new to her, sat doing her darning, and eluding as well as she could Janey's questions. Janey was determinedly conversational that night. She drove Ursula nearly out of her senses, and kept Johnnie—who had crept into the drawing-room in high delight at finding it for once free to him—from learning his lessons.
“Oh, how nice it is to be by ourselves,” said Janey, “instead of all those new people. I don't mind Phœbe; but strange men in the house, what a nuisance they are, always getting in one's way—don't you think so, Ursula?”
Ursula made no reply, and after awhile even Janey sank into silence, and the drawing-room, usually so gay, got a cold and deserted look. The new life which had come in had left its mark, and to go back to what had once been so pleasant in the past was no longer possible. Johnnie and Janey might like it, having regained their former places, but to Ursula the solitude was horrible. She asked herself, with a great blush and quiver, what she would do if that temporary filling up of new interests and relationships was to fall away, as was likely, and leave her to the old life unbroken, to Janey's childish society and questions, and papa's imperious and unmodified sway. She grew pale and chill at the very thought.
But Mr. May, as we have said, was off duty. He forgot all about Cotsdean and the note in his pocket, and set to work with the most boyish simplicity of delight to arrange his books in his new shelves. How well they looked! never before had their setting done them justice. There were books in gorgeous bindings, college prizes which had never shown at all, and which now gleamed out in crimson and gold from behind the glass, and made their owner's heart beat with pleasure. Alas! to think how much innocent pleasure is denied us by the want of that small sum of money! and worse still, how an innocent pleasure becomes the reverse of innocent when it is purchased by the appropriation of something which should have been employed elsewhere. Perhaps, however, the sense of guilt whichhe kept under, added zest in Mr. May's mind to the pleasure of his acquisition; he was snatching a fearful joy, Heaven knows how soon the penalty might overwhelm him. In the mean time he was determined to take the good of it, and enjoy what he had gained.
When the books were all in he sat down at his table and surveyed it, rubbing his dusty hands. How much that is childish, how much that is fresh, and youthful, and innocent must be in the mind of a man (you would say) who could be thus excited about a book-case! and yet this was not the kind of man whom you would call unsophisticated and youthful. It was probably the state of suppressed excitement in which he was, the unreality of his position, that helped him to that sense of elation as much as anything else; for emotion is a Proteus ready to take any form, and pain itself sometimes finds vent in the quick blazing up of fictitious delight, as much as in the moanings that seem more accordant with its own nature. He put his hand into his pocket for his pencil to make a note of the contents of the new shelves, and then he found Cotsdean's note, which he had not forgotten, but which he had felt no desire to remember. When he felt it between his fingers his countenance fell a little; but he took it out and read it with the smile still upon his face. It was a dirty little roll of paper, scribbled in pencil.
“Rev. Sir,“I hope as you are not forgetting the 15th. Pleas excuse anxiety and bad writing, i am a poor nervous man I no, a word of answer just to say as it is all right will much oblidge.“Rev. Sir,“Your humble servant,“T. Cotsdean.”
“Rev. Sir,
“I hope as you are not forgetting the 15th. Pleas excuse anxiety and bad writing, i am a poor nervous man I no, a word of answer just to say as it is all right will much oblidge.
“Rev. Sir,“Your humble servant,
“T. Cotsdean.”
Betsy knocked at the door as he read this, with a request for an answer to Mr. Cotsdean's note. “Little Bobby, sir, is waiting for it in the kitchen.”
“Give Bobby some supper,” said Mr. May, “tell him to tell his father it's all right, and I shan't forget. You understand? He is a troublesome little fool; but it's all right, and I shan't forget, and give the child some supper, Betsy. He ought not to be out so late.”
“He is a delicate little thing, sir, thankye, sir,” said Betsy, half-frightened by her master's amiability; and he smiled and repeated,
“Tell him it's all right.”
Was it all right, the 15th? Cotsdean must have made a mistake. Mr. May's countenance paled, and the laugh went off; he opened a drawer in his writing-table and took out a book, and anxiously consulted an entry in it. It was the 18th certainly, as clear as possible. Something had been written on the opposite page, and had blotted slightly the one on which these entries were written; but there it stood, the 18th April. Mr. May prided himself on making no mistakes in business. He closed the book again with a look of relief, the smile coming back once more to his face. The 18th, it was three days additional, and in the time there was no doubt that he would find out what was the right thing to do.
Top
When Mr. May woke next morning, it was not the book-case he thought of, but that date which had been the last thing in his mind on the previous night. Not the 15th,—the 18th. Certainly he was right, and Cotsdean was wrong. Cotsdean was a puzzle-headed being, making his calculations by the rule of thumb; but he had put down the date, and there could be no possible mistake about it. He got up disposed to smile at the poor man's ignorance and fussy restlessness of mind. “I have never left him in the lurch, he may trust to me surely in the future,” Mr. May said to himself, and smiled with a kind of condescending pity for his poor agent's timidity; after all, perhaps, as Cotsdean had so little profit by it, it was not wonderful that he should be uneasy. After this, it might be well if they did anything further of the sort, to divide the money, so that Cotsdean too might feel that he had got something for the risk he ran; but then, to be sure, if he had not the money he had no trouble, except by his own foolish anxiety, for the payment, and always a five-pound note or two for his pains. But Mr. May said to himself that he would do no more in this way after the present bill was disposed of; no, he would make a stand, he would insist upon living within his income. He would not allow himself to be subject to these perpetual agitations any more. It would require an effort, but after the effort was made all would be easy. So he said to himself; and it was the 18th, not the 15th, three days more to make his arrangementsin. It had come to be the 12th now, and up to this moment he had done nothing, having that vague faith in the Indian mail which had been realized, and yet had not been realized. But still he had nearly a week before him, which was enough certainly. Anything that he could do in six months, he said to himself, he could easily do in six days—the mere time was nothing; and he smiled as he dressed himself leisurely, thinking it all over. Somehow everything looked perfectly easy to him this time; last time he had been plunged into tragic despair; now, and he did not know why, he took it quite easily; he seemed to fear nothing. There were various ways of getting the money as natural as the daylight, and in the mean time why should he make himself unhappy? As soon as he was ready he went to his room and had another look at the book-case which, with his best books in it, all in order and ranged in unbroken lines, looked everything a book-case ought to look. It made him feel more of a man somehow, more like the gentleman and scholar he had meant to be when he started in life; he had not intended then to be a poor district incumbent all his life, with a family of eight children. His book-case somehow transported him back to the days when he had thought of better things for himself, and when life had held an ideal for him. Perhaps at the best of times it had never been a very high ideal; but when a man is over fifty and has given up doing anything but struggle through each day as it comes, and get out of his work as best he may, doing what he must, leaving undone what he can, any ideal almost seems something higher than himself; but the recollection of what he had meant to be, came back to him strongly when he looked at his carved oak. It had not been carried out; but still he felt rehabilitated and better in his own opinion as he stood beside this costly purchase he had made, and felt that it changed his room and all his surroundings. It might have been almost wicked to run into such an extravagance, but yet it did him good.
“My people came down to the Hall last night,” Clarence Copperhead said to him at breakfast, “and the Governor is coming over along with Sir Robert. He'd like to see you, I am sure, and I suppose they'll be going in for sight-seeing, and that sort of thing. He is a dab at sight-seeing, is the Governor. I can't think how he can stand it for my part.”
“Then you must remember that I put myself at his orders for the day,” said Mr. May graciously. “Sir Robert is not a bad guide, but I am a better, though it sounds modest to say it; and, Ursula, of course Mr. Copperhead will take luncheon with us.”
“Don't think of that,” said Clarence, “he's queer and likes his own way. Just as likely as not he'll think he ought to support the hotels of the place where he is—sort of local production, you know. I think it's nonsense, but that is how it is—that's the man.”
“We shall look for him all the same,” said Mr. May, with a nod at Ursula; and a sudden project sprang up in his mind, wild as projects so often are. This father whom his fancy, working upon what Clarence said, immediately invested with all the prodigal liberality of a typical rich man; this stranger to whom a hundred pounds was less then a penny was to himself, would give him the money he wanted. What so easy? He drew a long breath, and though he had not been aware that he was anxious, he was suddenly conscious of a sense of relief. Yes, to be sure, what so simple, what so likely? he would explain his monetary necessities lightly and with grace, and Mr. Copperhead would supply them. He was in the mildest state of desperation, the painless stage, as may be seen, when this strange idea entered into his head. He hugged it, though he was a man of the world and might have known better, and it produced a kind of elation which would have been a very strange spectacle to any looker-on who knew what it meant. The thing seemed done when he next thought of it ten minutes later, settled as if it had been so for years. Mr. Copperhead would make it all right for him, and after that he would undertake such risks no more.
Mr. Copperhead, however, did not come for two days, though Ursula spent all the morning and a great deal of trouble in arranging a luncheon for him; but on the second morning he came, driven by Sir Robert, who had changed horses on the road, and who was in a somewhat irritated and excited condition, very glad to get rid of his visitor.
“I hope you don't mind having your toes trodden on, May,” he said, privately; “that fellow is never happy but when he's insulting some one.” And indeed Mr. Copperhead began this favourite pastime at once by making very big eyes at the sight of Ursula. “A-ha!” he said, rubbing his hands, and elevating his eyebrows; and he gave a meaning laugh as he shook hands with her, and declared that he did not expect to find young ladies here. “I haven't a great deal of education myself, and I never knew it could be carried on so pleasantly,” he said. “You're a lucky young dog, Clar, that's what you are;” and the son laughed with the father at this excellent joke, though the rest of the company looked on with great gravity. Ursula,for her part, turned with wondering eyes from the new-comer to her old friend, Sir Robert.
“What does he mean?” she asked, with an appealing look.
“He is the greatest brute I know,” said poor Sir Robert, under his breath; and he went off suddenly on the plea of business, leaving his unpleasant visitor in Mr. May's hands, who undertook the charge not unwillingly, being possessed by his own plan. Mr. Copperhead went all over Carlingford. He inspected the town-hall, the infirmary, and the church, with the business-like air of a man who was doing his duty.
“Poor little place, but well enough for the country,” he said. “A country-town's a mistake in my opinion. If I had it in my power I'd raze them all to the ground, and have one London and the rest green fields. That's your sort, Mr. May. Now you don't produce anything here, what's the good of you? All unproductive communities, sir, ought to be swept off the face of the earth. I'd let Manchester and those sort of places go on till they burst; but a bit of a little piggery like this, where there's nothing doing, no trade, no productions of any kind.”
“We like it all the same,” said Mr. May; “we small sort of people who have no enterprise like you—”
“I dare say you like it! To be sure, you can moon about here as much as you please, and make believe to do something, and there's nobody to contradict you. In a great centre of industry you couldn't live like that; you must work or you'll get pushed aside altogether; unless, of course, you're a millionnaire to start with,” Mr. Copperhead added, with a noisy laugh.
“Which I am not certainly—very much the reverse—in short, a poor man with a large family, which I suppose is a thing about as objectionable in a centre of industry as anything can be.”
“The large family ain't objectionable if you make 'em work,” said Mr. Copperhead; “it all depends on that. There's always objections, you know,” he said, with a jocular grin, “to pretty girls like that daughter of yours put straight in a young fellow's way. You won't mind my saying it? They neither work themselves nor let others work—that sort. I think we could get on with a deal fewer women, I must allow. There's where Providence is in a mistake. We don't want 'em in England; it's a waste of raw material. They're bad for the men, and they ain't much good for themselves, that I can see.”
“You are a little hard upon the ladies, Mr. Copperhead.”
“Not I—we can't do without 'em of course, and the surplus we ought to export as we export other surpluses; but I object to them in a young man's way, not meaning anything unpleasant to you. And perhaps if I had been put up to it sooner—but let's hope there's no mischief done. What is this now? some of your antiquities, I suppose. Oh yes, let's have a look at it; but I confess it's the present age I like best.”
“This is the College,” cried Mr. May, swallowing certain sensations which impaired his sense of friendliness; “but not an educational college, a foundation for old men—decayed citizens, as they are called—founded in the fifteenth century. My son is the chaplain, and will be very glad to show it you. There are twelve old men here at present, very comfortably looked after, thanks to the liberal arrangements of the founder. They attend chapel twice a day, where Reginald officiates. It is very agreeable to me to have him settled so near me.”
“Cunning I call it,” said Mr. Copperhead, with his hoarse laugh; “does you credit; a capital snug nest—nothing to do—and pay—pay good now? those old fellows generally managed that; as it was priests that had the doing of it, of course they did well for their own kind. Good Lord, what a waste of good money all this is!” he continued, as they went into the quadrangle, and saw the little park beyond with its few fine trees; “half-a-dozen nice villas might be built on this site, and it's just the sort of place I should fancy where villas would pay. Why don't the Corporation lay hands on it? And your son lives here? Too dull for me; I like a little movement going on, but I dare say he likes it; and with how much a year?”
“Two hundred and fifty; and some advantages beside—”
“Bravo!” said Mr. Copperhead, “now how many curates could you get for that two and a-half? I've got a great respect for you, Mr. May; you know what's what. That shows sense, that does. How do you do, sir? fine old place you've got here—capital snug appointment. I've just been saying to your father I admire his sense, looking out for you a nice fat easy appointment like this.”
Reginald turned from red to white, and then to portentous blackness. The subject was of all others the one least likely to please him.
“It is not very fat,” he said, with a look of offence, quite undeserved by the chief sufferer, towards his father, “nor very easy. But come in. It is rather an interesting old place. I suppose you would like to see the Chapel, and the old captain's rooms; they are very fine in their way.”
“Thank you; we've been seeing a deal already, and I feel tired. I think I'll—let you off the chapel. Hallo! here's another old friend—Northcote, by George! and what areyoudoing here I should like to know, a blazing young screamer of the Liberation Society, in a high and dry parson's rooms? This is as good as a play.”
“I suppose one is not required to stay at exactly the same point of opinion all one's life,” said Northcote, with a half-smile.
“By George! but you are though, when you're a public man; especially when you're on a crusade. Haven't I heard you call it a crusade? I can tell you that changing your opinion is just the very last thing the public will permit you to do. But I shan't tell for my part—make yourself easy. Clarence, don't you let it out; your mother, fortunately, is out of the way. The world shall never know through me that young Northcote, the anti-state Churchman, was discovered hob-nobbing with a snug chaplain in a sinecure appointment. Ha, ha! had you there.”
“To do Northcote justice,” said Mr. May; “he began life in Carlingford by pointing out this fact to the neighbourhood; that it was a sinecure, and that my son and I—”
“Would it not be more to the point to inspect the chapel?” said Reginald, who had been standing by impatiently playing with a big key; upon which Mr. Copperhead laughed more loudly than before.
“We'll not trouble the chapel,” he said, “railway stations are more in my way; you are all a great deal finer than I am, and know a deal more, I suppose; but my roughness has served its purpose on the whole, better perhaps for some things—yes, for some things, Clar, and you may thank your stars, old boy. If you had been a parson's son, by George! there would have been no fat appointment waiting for you.”
“After all, my son's appointment is not so very fat,” said Mr. May, forcing a laugh. “It is not so much as many a boy at school gets from his father.”
“Ah, you mean my boy at school! he's an extravagant dog. His mother and he, sir, are made of different clay from me; they are porcelain and I am delft. They want fine velvet cupboards to stand themselves in, while I'm for the kitchen dresser. That's the difference. But I can afford it, thank Heaven. I tell Clarence that he may thank his stars that I can afford it, and that he isn't born a poor man's son. He has been plucked at Oxford, you know,” he said, with a big laugh, thrusting forth his chest as Clarence thrust forth his shirt-front, with an apparent complacency over the very plucking. My son can afford to be plucked, he seemed to say. He got upas he spoke, and approaching the fireplace turned his back to it, and gathered up his coat-tails under his arm. He was no taller than Mr. May, and very little taller than Reginald; but they both shrank into insignificance beside the big self-assertive figure. He looked about the room as if he was thinking of “buying up” the whole contents of it, and thought very little of them. A glance of contempt, a shrug more implied than actual, testified his low opinion of everything around. When he withdrew his eyes from the furniture he shook out his leg, as Clarence had done his, and gave a pull to his trousers that they might sit properly. He had the word “Rich” painted in big letters all over him, and he seemed to feel it his vocation to show this sense of superiority. Clarence by his side, the living copy of the great man's appearance and manners, strutted and put himself forward like his father, as a big calf might place itself beside the parent cow. Mr. Copperhead did not look upon his offspring, however, with the cow's motherly complacency. He laughed at him openly, with cynical amusement. He was clever in his way, and Clarence was stupid; and besides he was the proprietor, and Clarence, for all he was porcelain, was his goods and chattels. When he looked at him, a wicked leer of derision awoke in his eye.
“Yes, my boy,” he said, “thank your stars; you would not make much of it if you were a poor man. You're an ornament that costs dear; but I can afford you. So, Northcote, you're changing your opinions—going over to the Church, eh? Extremes meet, they say; I shouldn't have thought it—”
“I am doing nothing of the kind,” said Northcote stoutly. He was not in a mood to be taken to task by this Mammon of unrighteousness, and indeed had at all times been a great deal too independent and unwilling to submit to leading members of the connection. Mr. Copperhead, however, showed no resentment. Northcote too, like Clarence, had a father before him, and stood on quite a different footing from the ordinary young pastor, whose business it was to be humble and accept all that his betters might portion out.
“Well,” he said, “you can afford to please yourself, and that's always something. By the way, isn't it time to have something to eat? If there is a good hotel near—”
“Luncheon will be waiting at my house,” said Mr. May, who was still doing his best to please the man upon whom he had built such wild hopes, “and Ursula will be waiting.”
“Ah, ah, the young lady! so she will. I wouldn't miss that for something; but I don't like putting you to so much expense.My son here has an excellent appetite, as you must have found out by this time, and for my part so have I. I think it a thousand pities to put you to this trouble—and expense.”
“Pray don't think of that,” said Mr. May with courtesy, which belied his feelings, for he would have liked nothing so well as to have knocked down his complacent patron. He led the way out, almost with eagerness, feeling Mr. Copperhead to be less offensive out of doors than within four walls. Was this the sort of man to be appealed to for help as he had thought? Probably his very arrogance would make him more disposed towards liberality. Probably it would flatter his sense of consequence, to have such a request made to him. Mr. May was very much at sea, letting I dare not wait upon I would; afraid to speak lest he should shut this door of help by so doing, and afraid to lose the chance of any succour by not speaking. He tried hard, in spite of all his difficulties, to be smooth and agreeable to a man who had so much in his power; but it was harder work than he could have thought.