Phoebe, Junior

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.

CHAPTER XVII

A PUBLIC MEETING

Phœbe's philosophy, however, was put to the test when, after the young pastor had taken tea and got himself away from the pressing hospitalities of the Tozers, her grandfather also disappeared to put on his best coat in order to attend the Meeting. Mrs. Tozer, left alone with her granddaughter, immediately proceeded to evolve her views as to what Phœbe was expected to do.

“I never see you out o' that brown thing, Phœbe,” she said; “ain't you got a silk dress, child, or something that looks a bit younger-looking? I'd have thought your mother would have took more pride in you. Surely you've got a silk dress.”

“Oh, yes, more than one,” said Phœbe, “but this is considered in better taste.”

“Taste, whose taste?” cried the old lady; “my Phœbe didn't ought to care for them dingy things, for I'm sure she never got no such example from me. I've always liked what was bright-looking, if it was only a print. A nice blue silk now, or a bright green, is what you'd look pretty in with your complexion. Go now, there's a dear, and put on something very nice, something as will show a bit; you're going with your grandfather to this Meeting.”

“To the Meeting? oh, I hope not,” said Phœbe with fervour.

“And why should you hope not? isn't it natural as a young creature like you should get out a bit when she can, and see what's to be seen? I don't hold with girls moping in a house. Besides, it's very instructive, as I've always heard: and you as is clever, of course you'll understand every word. Mr. Northcote is a nicish-looking sort of young man. Ministers mayn't be much,” said Mrs. Tozer, “though just see how your papa has got on, my dear. Nobody else as Phœbe could have married would have got up in the world like that; you may make a deal more money in trade, but it ain't so genteel, there's always that to be said. Now it's just as well as you should have your chance with the rest and let yourself be seen, Phœbe. Run, there's a darling, and put on something bright, and a nice lace collar. You can have mine if you like. I shouldn't grudge nothing, not a single thing I've got, to see you looking as nice as the best there; and so you will if you take a little pains. I'd do up my hair a bit higher if I was you; why, Phœbe, I declare! you haven't got a single pad. Now what is the use of neglecting yourself, and letting others get ahead of you like that?”

“Pads are going out of fashion, grandmamma,” said Phœbe gravely, “so are bright colours for dresses. You can't think what funny shades we wear in town. But must I go to this Meeting? I should not like to leave you alone. It is so much nicer for me to be here.”

“You are a good girl, you are,” said Mrs. Tozer admiringly, “and me as was frightened for a fine lady from London! But Tozer would say as it was my doing. He would say as it wasn't natural for a young creature; and, bless you, they'll all be there in their best – that Pigeon and the others, and Mrs. Tom. I just wish I could go too, to see you outshine 'em all, which you'll do if you take pains. Take a little more pains with your hair, Phœbe, mount it up a bit higher, and if you want anything like a bit of lace or a brooch or that, just you come to me. I should like Mrs. Tom to see you with that brooch as she's always wanting for Minnie. Now why should I give my brooch to Minnie? I don't see no reason for it, for my part.”

“Certainly not, grandmamma,” said Phœbe, “you must wear your brooches yourself, that is what I like a great deal better than giving them either to Minnie or me.”

“Ah, but there ain't a many like you, my sweet,” cried the old woman, wiping her eyes. “You're my Phœbe's own daughter, but you're a touch above her, my darling, and us too, that's what you are. Run now and dress, or I don't know what Tozer will say to me. He's set his heart on showing you off to-night.”

Thus adjured, Phœbe went away reluctantly. It is unnecessary to say that her disinterestedness about her grandmother's brooch was not perhaps so noble as it appeared on the outside. The article in question was a kind of small warming-pan in a very fine solid gold mount, set with large pink topazes, and enclosing little wavy curls of hair, one from the head of each young Tozer of the last generation. It was a piece of jewelry very well known in Carlingford, and the panic which rose in Phœbe's bosom when it was offered for her own personal adornment is more easily imagined than described. She went upstairs feeling that she had escaped, and took out a black silk dress at which she looked lovingly.

“But grandmamma would think it was no better than this,” she said to herself, and after much searchings of heart she chose a costume of Venetian blue, one soft tint dying into another like the lustre on a piece of old glass, which in her own opinion was a great deal too good for the occasion. “Some one will tread on it to a certainty, and the colours don't show in candle-light; but I must try to please grandmamma,” she said heroically. When it was put on with puffings of lace such as Mrs. Tozer had never seen, and was entirely ignorant of the value of, at the throat and sleeves, Phœbe wrapt a shawl round her in something of the same dim gorgeous hue, covered with embroidery, an Indian rarity which somebody had bestowed upon Mrs. Beecham, and which no one had used or thought of till Phœbe's artistic eye fell upon it. It was a great deal too fine for Carlingford. An opera-cloak bought in Oxford Street for a pound or two would have much more impressed the assembly to which Phœbe was bound. Mrs. Tozer inspected her when she went downstairs, with awe, yet dissatisfaction.

“I dare say as it's all very fine, and it ain't like other folks, anybody can see; but I'd dress you different, my dear, if you was in my hands,” said the old woman, walking round and round her. As for Tozer, he too showed less admiration than if he had known better.

“I got a fly, thinking as you'd have some fallal or other on you; but, bless my heart, you could have walked in that gown,” he said. So that Phœbe's toilette, which would have been mightily admired in a London drawing-room, could not be said to be a success. She was somewhat discouraged by this, notwithstanding that she knew so very much better; and accordingly set out in the fly with her grandfather in his best coat, feeling, generally, in a depressed condition.

“It is clear that I must take to the pinks and blues to please them,” she said to herself with a sigh. She could triumph over the slight that might be shown to herself in consequence of her relations; but those sneers at her dress went to Phœbe's heart.

The Music Hall was full of a miscellaneous crowd when Phœbe, following her grandfather, went in; and the seats allotted to these important people were on the platform, where, at least, Tozer's unacknowledged object of showing her off could be amply gratified. This arrangement did not, on the whole, displease Phœbe. Since she must be exhibited, it seemed better, on the whole, to be exhibited there, than in a less distinguished place; and all the speakers knew her, which was something. She sat down with some complaisance, and let her Indian scarf droop from her shoulders, and her pretty dress show itself.

“I declare if that isn't Phœbe, junior,” said Mrs. Tom audibly, in the middle of the hall, “making a show of herself; but, Lord bless us, for all their grandeur, how she do dress, to be sure. A bit of a rag of an old shawl, and a hat on! the same as she wears every day. I've got more respect for them as comes to instruct us than that.”

And, indeed, Mrs. Tom was resplendent in a red sortie de bal, with a brooch almost as big as that envied one of Mrs. Tozer's stuck into her gown, and a cap covered with flowers upon her head. This was the usual fashion of the Salem ladies on such rare occasions. The meeting of the Disestablishment Society was to them what a ball is to worldly-minded persons who frequent such vanities. The leading families came out en masse to see and to be seen. It would be wrong to say that they did not enter into all the arguments and recognise the intellectual feast set before them; no doubt they did this just as well as if they had come in their commonest attire; but still the seriousness of the occasion was, no doubt, modified by being thus made into a dissipation. The men were not so fine, perhaps, because it is more difficult for men to be fine – but they were all in their Sunday clothes; and the younger ones were in full bloom of coloured satin cravats and fine waistcoats. Some of them were almost as fine a sight as the ladies in their ribbons and flowers.

“I suppose by the look of them this must be an influential community – people of some pretensions,” said an obese elderly minister, who had seated himself by Phœbe, and whose eyes were dazzled by the display. “I never expected all this dress in a quiet country place.”

“Oh, yes! they are people of much pretension,” said Phœbe gravely.

And then the proceedings began. Old Mr. Green, the grocer, whose son had married Maria Pigeon, and who had long been retired from business, occupying a house in the country and “driving his carriage,” was in the chair; and the proceedings went on according to the routine of such assemblies, with differing degrees of earnestness on the part of the speakers. To most of these gentlemen it was the ordinary occupation of their lives; and they made their hearers laugh at well-known stories, and enjoyed their own wit, and elicited familiar cheers, and made hits such as they had made for years on the same subject, which was a comfortable cheval de bataille, not at all exciting to themselves, though they were quite willing to excite their audience, if that audience would allow itself to be excited. Things jogged on thus for the first hour very pleasantly! the Meeting was not excited, but it was amused and enjoyed itself. It was an intellectual treat, as Pigeon said to Brown, and if the younger people did not like it so well as they would have liked a ball, the elder people liked it a great deal better, and the hall rang with applause and with laughter as one speaker succeeded another. It was pleasant to know how unstable “the Church” was on her foundation; that aristocratical Church which looked down upon Dissent, and of which the poorest adherent gave himself airs much above Chapel folks; and how much loftier a position the Nonconformist held, who would have nothing to say to State support.