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“Papa!” cried Ursula and Janey in one breath.
“Hold your tongues! useless impedimenta, not even able to scrub the floors, and make the beds, which is all you could ever be good for – and you must have a servant forsooth to do even that. But why should I speak of the girls?” he added, with a sarcastic smile, “they can do nothing better, poor creatures; but you! who call yourself a man – a University man, save the mark – a fine fellow with the Oxford stamp upon you, twenty-three your next birthday. It is a fine thing that I should still have to support you.”
Reginald began to walk up and down the room, stung beyond bearing – not that he had not heard it all before, but to get accustomed to such taunts is difficult, and it is still more difficult for a young and susceptible mind to contradict all that is seemly and becoming in nature, and to put forth its own statement in return. Reginald knew that his education had in reality cost his father very little, and that his father knew this. He was aware, too, much more distinctly than Mr. May knew, of James's remittances on his account; but what could he say? It was his father who insulted him, and the young man's lips were closed; but the effort was a hard one. He could not stand still there and face the man who had so little consideration for his feelings. All he could do was to keep his agitation and irritation down by that hurried promenade about the room, listening as little as he could, and answering not at all.
“Oh, papa! how can you?” cried Janey, seizing the first pause. Janey was not old enough to understand the delicacy that closed Reginald's lips, and the impulse of self-defence was stirring in her; “how dare you talk to Ursula so? I mayn't be much use, but Ursula! nice and comfortable you were when she was away! as if you didn't say so ten times in a morning; to be sure that was to make me feel uncomfortable. Scrub floors!” cried Janey, in the violence of her resentment. “I'll go out and be a maid-of-all-work whenever you please. I am sure it would be much happier than here.”
“Hold your tongue,” said Mr. May, “you scolding and Ursula crying; that's the beauty of the feminine element in a house. I ought to be very thankful, oughtn't I, that I have girls to furnish this agreeable variety? But as for you, Reginald,” his father added, “mark my words, if you determine to reject this windfall that Providence has blown into your hands, it must be done at once. No further play of I would and I would not, if you please, here; and if it does not suit you, you will please to understand that I have no further need for a curate that suits me still less. I want your room. If nothing else can be done, I must try to take a pupil to add a little to the income which has so many claims upon it; and I don't mean to go on keeping you – this is plain enough, I hope.”
“Very plain, sir,” said Reginald, who had grown as pale as he was red before.
“I am glad to hear it; you will write to the Corporation at once, accepting or rejecting at your pleasure; but this must be done to-night. I must insist on its being done to-night; and if you find yourself sufficiently bold to reject an income,” said Mr. May with emphasis, “and go off into the world without a penny in your pocket, I wash my hands of it; it is nothing to me.”
Then there was a pause. The father of the family sat down in his chair, and looked round him with the happy consciousness that he had made everybody miserable. The girls were both crying, Reginald pale and desperate, coming and going through the room. No one had escaped but Johnnie, who, happy in insignificance, lay all his length on the other side of the fire, and lifted his face from his book to watch the discomfiture of the others. Johnnie had no terrors on his own account. He had done nothing to call forth the paternal wrath. Mr. May could not resist this temptation.
“Is that a way to learn lessons as they ought to be learnt?” he cried suddenly, throwing one of his darts at the unthinking boy. “Get up this moment, and sit down to a table somewhere. Your own room, where there is nobody to disturb you, is better than amid the chit-chat here; do you hear me? get up, sir, and go.”
Johnnie stumbled to his feet appalled; he was too much startled to say anything. He took his books across the room to the writing-table which Reginald had abandoned in a similar way. But by the time he reached that haven, he came to himself, and recovering his courage muttered something about the hardship to which he was thus exposed, as boys have a way of doing; upon which Mr. May got suddenly up, seized him by the shoulders and turned him out of the drawing-room. “I said your own room, sir,” cried this impartial father, distributing to all alike an equal share of his urbanities. When he had accomplished this, he stood for a moment and looked at the rest of his confused and uncomfortable family. “There is not much cheerful society to be had here this evening, I perceive,” he said. “It is pleasant to come in from one's cares and find a reception like this, don't you think? Let some one bring me some coffee to my study. I am going to write.”
“Whose fault is it that he gets such a reception?” burst forth Janey, the moment her father had closed the door. “Who does it all, I wonder? Who treats us like a set of wretches without any feeling? I can't hush, I won't hush! Oh, shouldn't I be glad to go out as a housemaid, to do anything!”
“Oh, Janey, hush! we can't help ourselves, we are obliged to put up with it,” said Ursula; “but Reginald, he is not obliged, he can save himself when he likes. Oh, I know, I know papa is unreasonable; but, Reginald, aren't you a little bit unreasonable too?”
“Don't you begin to reproach me,” cried the young man, “I have had enough for one day. Have I been such a charge upon him, Ursula? What has he spent upon me? Next to nothing. That tailor's bill he spoke of, he knew as well as I do that I paid it by the tutorship I had in the vacation. It is his bill that is not paid, not mine. And then James's money – ”
“Oh, never mind that, never mind the past,” cried Ursula, “think of the present, that's what you ought to do. Oh, Reginald, think; if I had the chance of two hundred and fifty pounds a year! there is nothing I would not do for it. I would scrub floors, as he said, I would do anything, the dirtiest work. You will be independent, able to do what you please, and never to ask papa for anything. Reginald, think! Oh, dear, dear, I wish I knew how to talk to you. To be independent, able to please yourself!”
“I shall be independent anyhow after to-night,” he said. “Ursula, you will help me to pack my things, won't you? It is leaving you here, you girls, with nobody to stand up for you; it is that I feel most.”
“Oh, Reginald, don't go and leave us,” cried Janey, leaning on the back of his chair; “what can we do without you? When he comes in, in a rage like to-night, as long as you are here one can bear it. Oh, Reginald, can't you, can't you take the chaplaincy? Think what it would be for us.”
“Yes, I will pack your things,” said Ursula, “I will help you to get out of it, though we must stay and put up with it all, and never, never escape. But where will you go? You have no money, not enough scarcely to pay your railway fare. You would have to take to teaching; and where are you to go?”
“I have some friends left,” cried Reginald, his lips quivering, “some people care for me still and would hold out a hand. I am – not – quite so badly off as he thinks; I could go to town, or to Oxford – or – ”
“You don't know where; and here is a nice old-fashioned house all ready for you to step into, and an income,” cried Ursula, her tone deepening to mark the capital letter; “an Income, quite sure and ready – without any difficulty, without any trouble, all if you say yes. Oh, only think what a comfort for us all to be able to rush to you when we are in trouble! Think of Johnnie and Robin; and that delightful wainscoted room for your study, with the book-cases all ready – and plenty of money to buy books.” This being the highest point to which Ursula could reach, she dropped down after it into an insinuating half whisper, “And plenty of work to do; dear Reginald, plenty of work in the parish, you may be sure, if you will only help the Rector; or here where you are working already, and where you may be sure nobody will think of paying you. Oh, Reginald, there is plenty, plenty of work.”
The young man was already beginning to melt. “Do you think so?” he said.
“Think!” cried Janey, “I am sure you may do all papa's work for him and welcome, if that is all. For my part I think you are very silly, both Ursula and you. Work! Pay is far better if you weren't such a pair of simpletons. After all, he has a little reason to be angry. Good gracious! why shouldn't you take it? Some one else will, if you won't. I would in a minute, and so would Ursula if we could. And why should you be so much grander than anybody else? I think it is quite childish for my part.”
“Reginald, never mind her, she is only a child and doesn't understand ('Child yourself,' cried Janey). I don't understand very well, but still I can see what you want. Oh, you might find such quantities of work, things nobody is ever found to do. What do the fellows do at Oxford that they get that money for? I have heard you say you would be very glad to get a fellowship – ”
“That is different, that is a reward of scholarship.”
“Well, and so is this too,” said Ursula; “it is (I am sure) because the old men knew you were one that would be kind. You were always kind, Reginald, that is what it is for.”
“The old men have nothing to do with it,” he said, shaking his head, “it is the Corporation, and they are – ”
“Very rich men, Reginald dear, a great many of them, very sensible! what does it matter about their education? And then you would be a really educated man, always ready to do anything that was wanted in Carlingford. Don't you see that was their meaning? They pay you for that which is not work, but they will find you plenty of work they don't pay for. That is what they mean; and oh, Reginald, to run over to you there in that pretty wainscoted room, and to have you coming in to us every day, and to know that you were there to stand by us!”
Here once more Ursula began to cry. As for Janey, she made a dash at the writing-table and brought him paper and pens and ink, “Say yes, say yes,” she cried; “oh, Reginald, if it was only to spite papa!”
CHAPTER XVI
THE NEW GENTLEMAN
It seems difficult to imagine what connection there could be between Phœbe Beecham's appearance in Grange Lane and the interview which took place there between her and the “new gentleman,” and Mr. May's sudden onslaught upon his family, which ended in Reginald's acceptance of the chaplaincy. But yet the connection was very distinct. Not even the Mays, in their excitement over the appearance of a stranger in Carlingford, could be more surprised than Phœbe was when her solitary walk was interrupted by the apparition across the street of a known person, a face familiar to her in other regions. “Mr. Northcote!” she cried, with a little start of surprise. As for the stranger, he made but two steps across Grange Lane in his delight at the sight of her. Not that he was Phœbe's lover, or possessed by any previous enthusiasm for the girl whom he had met about half-a-dozen times in his life, and of whom he knew little more than that she was the daughter of a “brother clergyman;” for both Mr. Beecham and he were in the habit of using that word, whether appropriate or inappropriate. This was the explanation of the white necktie and the formal dress which had puzzled Ursula.
Horace Northcote was not of Mr. Beecham's class. He was not well-to-do and genial, bent upon keeping up his congregation and his popularity, and trying to ignore as much as he could the social superiority of the Church without making himself in any way offensive to her. He was a political Nonconformist, a vigorous champion of the Disestablishment Society, more successful on the platform than in the pulpit, and strenuously of opinion in his heart of hearts that the Church was the great drawback to all progress in England, an incubus of which the nation would gladly be rid. His dress was one of the signs of his character and meaning. Strong in a sense of his own clerical position, he believed in uniform as devoutly as any Ritualist, but he would not plagiarise the Anglican livery and walk about in a modified soutane and round hat like “our brethren in the Established Church,” as Mr. Beecham kindly called them. To young Northcote they were not brethren, but enemies, and though he smiled superior at the folly which stigmatised an M.B. waistcoat, yet he scorned to copy. Accordingly his frock coat was not long, but of the extremest solemnity of cut and hue, his white tie was of the stiffest, his tall hat of the most uncompromising character. He would not veil for a day in easier and more ordinary habiliments the distinct position he assumed as clerical, yet not of the clergy; a teacher of men, though not a priest of the Anglican inspiration. He could not help feeling that his appearance, as he moved about the streets, was one which might well thrill Anglican bosoms with a flutter of terror. He was the Church's avowed enemy, and upon this he stood as his claim to the honour of those who thought with him. This was very different from the views held by the pastor of the Crescent Chapel, who was very willing to be on the best terms with the Church, and would have liked to glide into closer and closer amity, and perhaps finally to melt away altogether in her broad bosom, like a fat raindrop contributing noiselessly to swell the sea. It was not, however, any feeling of this difference which made Phœbe draw herself back instinctively after the first start of recognition. Across her mind, even while she held out her hand to the stranger, there flashed a sudden recollection of her grandmother and her grandfather, and all the homely belongings which he, a minister of the connection, could not be kept in ignorance of. It was but a momentary pang. Phœbe was not so foolish as to shrink before the inevitable, or to attempt by foolish expedients to stave off such a danger. She shrank for a second, then drew herself up and shook off all such ignoble cares. “I am myself whatever happens,” was her reflection; and she said with something like security:
“I am so glad to meet you, Mr. Northcote; what an unexpected pleasure to see you here!”
“It is a most unexpected pleasure for me, I assure you,” he said, “and a very great one.” He spoke with unaffected honesty; for indeed his plunge into the society of Salem Chapel had given him a shock not easily got over, and the appearance of a being of his own species, among all these excellent poulterers and grocers, was a relief unspeakable; and then he added, “May I walk with you, if you are going to walk?”
“Surely,” said Phœbe with momentary hesitation, and it was just at this moment that she perceived Ursula on the other side of the road, and, glad of the diversion, waved her hand to her, and said, “How do you do?”
“A friend of yours?” said Mr. Northcote, following her gesture with his eyes, and feeling more and more glad that he had met her. “I passed those young ladies just now, and heard some of their conversation, which amused me. Do they belong to our people? If you will not be angry, Miss Beecham, I must say that I should be glad to meet somebody belonging to us, who is not – who is more like – the people one meets elsewhere.”
“Well,” said Phœbe, “we are always talking of wanting something original; I think on the whole I am of your opinion; still there is nothing very great or striking about most of the people one meets anywhere.”
“Yes; society is flat enough,” said the young man. “But – it is strange and rather painful, though perhaps it is wrong to say so – why, I wonder, are all our people of one class? Perhaps you have not seen much of them here? All of one class, and that – ”
“Not an attractive class,” said Phœbe, with a little sigh. “Yes, I know.”
“Anything but an attractive class; not the so-called working men and such like. One can get on with them. It is very unpleasant to have to say it; buying and selling now as we have it in Manchester does not contract the mind. I suppose we all buy and sell more and less. How is it? When it is tea and sugar – ”
“Or butter and cheese,” said Phœbe with a laugh, which she could not quite keep from embarrassment. “I must be honest and tell you before you go any further. You don't know that I belong to the Tozers, Mr. Northcote, who are in that line of business. Don't look so dreadfully distressed. Perhaps I shouldn't have told you, had you not been sure to find out. Old Mr. Tozer is my grandfather, and I am staying there. It is quite simple. Papa came to Carlingford when he was a young clergyman, newly ordained. He was pastor at Salem Chapel, and married mamma, who was the daughter of one of the chief members. I did not know myself when I came to Carlingford that they actually kept a shop, and I did not like it. Don't apologize, please. It is a very difficult question,” said Phœbe philosophically, partly to ease herself, partly to set him at his ease, “what is best to do in such a case. To be educated in another sphere and brought down to this, is hard. One cannot feel the same for one's relations; and yet one's poor little bit of education, one's petty manners, what are these to interfere with blood relationships? And to keep everybody down to the condition they were born, why, that is the old way – ”
“Miss Beecham, I don't know what to say. I never meant – I could not tell. There are excellent, most excellent people in all classes.”
“Exactly so,” said Phœbe, with a laugh. “We all know that; one man is as good as another – if not better. A butterman is as good as a lord; but – ” she added, with a little elevation of her eyebrows and shrug of her shoulders, “not so pleasant to be connected with. And you don't say anything about my difficulty, Mr. Northcote. You don't realize it perhaps, as I do. Which is best: for everybody to continue in the position he was born in, or for an honest shopkeeper to educate his children and push them up higher until they come to feel themselves members of a different class, and to be ashamed of him? Either way, you know, it is hard.”
Northcote was at his wit's end. He had no fellow-feeling for this difficulty. His friends were all much better off than he was as a poor minister. They were Manchester people, with two or three generations of wealth behind them, relations of whom nobody need be ashamed; and he was himself deeply humiliated and distressed to have said anything which could humiliate Phœbe, who rose immeasurably in his estimation in consequence of her bold avowal, though he himself would have sacrificed a great deal rather than put himself on the Tozer level. He did not know what to say.
“Miss Beecham, you know as well as I do, how falsely our opinions are formed in this respect, how conventional we are. What is position after all? To a grand Seigneur, for instance, the difference between his steward and his laquais seems nothing, but to the steward it is a great gulf. I – I mean – the whole question is conventional – position, or station, or rank – ”
Phœbe smiled. “I don't think that is quite the question,” she said, “but never mind. I suppose you are here on some mission? You would not come to Carlingford for pleasure.”
“Nay,” said Northcote, with a reproachful tone. “I should have thought you must have heard of our Meeting. It is for to-night. I have come from the Disestablishment Society with some other friends; but it has been my fate to come on before to make the arrangements. The others come to-day.”
“A hard fate, Mr. Northcote.”
“I thought so this morning. I have not been much in the way of the country congregations. I was confounded; but, Miss Beecham, I no longer think my fate hard since I have met you. Your noble simplicity and frankness have taught me a lesson.”
“It is not noble at all,” said Phœbe; “if I had not been sure you must find out I should have said nothing about it. Now I fear I must turn back.”
“But you will come to the Meeting,” he said, turning with her. He felt it necessary to be obsequious to Phœbe, after the terrible mistake he had made.
“Not unless grandpapa insists. I should like to hear your speech,” said Phœbe; “but I don't object to the Established Church as you do, neither does papa when you push him hard. I don't think England would be much nicer if we were all Dissenters. To be sure we might be more civil to each other.”
“If there were no Dissenters, you mean.”
“It comes to much the same thing; congregations are not pleasant masters, are they, Mr. Northcote? I know some people – one at least,” said Phœbe, “who is often very insolent to papa; and we have to put up with it – for the sake of peace, papa says. I don't think in the Church that any leading member could be so insolent to a clergyman.”
“That is perhaps rather – forgive me – a narrow, personal view.”
“Wait till you get a charge, and have to please the congregation and the leading members!” cried Phœbe. “I know what you are thinking: it is just like a woman to look at a public question so. Very well; after all women are half the world, and their opinion is as good as another.”
“I have the greatest respect for your opinion,” said young Northcote; “but we must not think of individual grievances. The system, with all its wrongs, is what occupies me. I have heard something – even here – this very day – What is it, my good friend? I am busy now – another time; or if you want me, my lodgings are – ”
A glance, half of pain, half of fun, came into Phœbe's eyes. “It is grandpapa!” she said.
“You shouldn't speak in that tone, sir, not to your elders, and maybe your betters,” said Tozer, in his greasy old coat. “Ministers take a deal upon them; but an old member like me, and one as has stood by the connection through thick and thin, ain't the one to be called your good friend. Well, if you begs pardon, of course there ain't no more to be said; and if you know our Phœbe – Phœbe, junior, as I calls her. What of the meeting, Mr. Northcote? I hope you'll give it them Church folks 'ot and strong, sir. They do give themselves airs, to be sure, in Carlingford. Most of our folks is timid, seeing for one thing as their best customers belong to the Church. That don't touch me, not now-a-days,” said Tozer, with a laugh, “not that I was ever one as concealed my convictions. I hope you'll give it 'em 'ot and strong.”
“I shall say what I think,” said the young man bewildered. He was by no means broken into the ways of the connection, and his pride rebelled at the idea of being schooled by this old shopkeeper; but the sight of Phœbe standing by not only checked his rebellious sentiments, but filled him with a sympathetic thrill of feeling. What it must be for that girl to own this old man, to live with him, and feel herself shut into his society and friends of his choosing – to hear herself spoken of as Phœbe, junior! The idea made him shiver, and this caught old Tozer's always hospitable eye.
“You're chilly,” he said, “and I don't wonder after the dreadful weather we've had. Few passes my door without a bite or a sup, specially at tea-time, Mr. Nor'cote, which is sociable time, as I always says. Come in and warm yourself and have a cup of tea. There is nothing as pleases my old woman so much as to get out her best tea-things for a minister; she 'as a great respect for ministers, has Mrs. Tozer, sir; and now she's got Phœbe to show off as well as the chiney. Come along, sir, I can't take no refusal. It's just our time for tea.”
Northcote made an unavailing attempt to get away, but partly it appeared to him that to refuse the invitation might look to Phœbe like a pretence of superiority on his part, and partly he was interested in herself, and was very well aware he should get no company so good in Carlingford, even with the drawback of the old shop-people among whom she lived. How strange it was to see her in the dress of which Mrs. Sam Hurst had raved, and of which even the young Nonconformist vaguely divined the excellence, putting her daintily-gloved hand upon old Tozer's greasy sleeve, walking home with the shuffling old man, about whose social position no one could make the least mistake! He turned with them, with a sensation of thankfulness that it was in Grange Lane, Carlingford, where nobody knew him. As for Phœbe, no such comfort was in her mind; everybody knew her here, or rather, everybody knew old Tozer. No disguise was possible to her. The only way to redeem the position was to carry it with a high hand, as she did, holding her head erect, and playing her part so that all the world might see and wonder. “I think you had better come, Mr. Northcote, and have some tea,” she said graciously, when the awe-stricken young man was floundering in efforts to excuse himself. Old Tozer chuckled and rubbed his hands.
“Take Phœbe's advice,” he said, “Phœbe's the sensiblest girl I know; so was her mother before her, as married one of the most popular preachers in the connection, though I say it as shouldn't. My old woman always said as our Phœbe was cut out for a minister's wife. And Phœbe junior's just such another,” cried the admiring grandfather. Heavens above! did this mean traps and snares for himself, or did the old shopkeeper think of him, Horace Northcote, as another possible victim? If he had but known with what sincere compassionate toleration Phœbe regarded him, as a young man whom she might be kind to, he might have been saved all alarm on this point. The idea that a small undistinguished Dissenting minister should think her capable of marrying him, was a humiliation which did not enter into Phœbe's head.
