Phoebe, Junior

“I did not mean that,” said the other, colouring. “Certainly it ought to pay; everything, I suppose, is meant to pay one way or other. The life and progress of the young, or the gratified sentiment of the benefactor, who feels that he has provided for the old – which is the noblest kind of payment? I think the first, for my part.”

“For that matter, there is a large and most flourishing school, which you will come across without fail if you work among the poor. Do you work among the poor? Pardon my curiosity; I don't know.”

“It depends upon what you call the poor,” said the other, who did not like to acknowledge the absence of this element in Salem Chapel; “if you mean the destitute classes, the lowest level, no; but if you mean the respectable, comfortable – ”

“Persons of small income?” said Reginald. “I mean people with no incomes at all; people without trades, or anything to earn a comfortable living by; labouring people, here to-day and away to-morrow; women who take in washing, and men who go about hunting for a day's work. These are the kind of people the Church is weighted with.”

“I don't see any trace of them,” said the Nonconformist. “Smooth lawns, fine trees, rooms that countesses might live in. I can't see any trace of them here.”

“There is no harm in a bit of grass and a few trees, and the rooms are cheaper in their long continuance than any flimsy new rubbish that could be built.”

“I know I am making an unfortunate quotation,” said Northcote; “but there is reason in it. It might be sold for so much, and given to the poor.”

“Cheating the poor, in the first place,” said Reginald, warmly concerned for what he felt to be his own; “just as the paddock an old horse dies in might bear a crop instead, and pay the owner; but what would become of the old horse?”

“Half-quarter of this space would do quite as well for your pensioners, and they might do without – ”

“A chaplain!” said Reginald, laughing in spite of himself. “I know you think so. It is a sinecure.”

“Well, I think they may say their prayers for themselves; a young man like you, full of talent, full of capability – I beg your pardon,” said Northcote, “you must excuse me, I grudge the waste. There are so many things more worthy of you that you might do.”

“What, for example?”

“Anything almost,” cried the other; “digging, ploughing, building – anything! And for me too.”

This he said in an undertone; but Reginald heard, and did not carry his magnanimity so far as not to reply.

“Yes,” he said; “if I am wasted reading prayers for my old men, what are you, who come to agitate for my abolition? I think, too, almost anything would be better than to encourage the ignorant to make themselves judges of public institutions, which the wisest even find too delicate to meddle with. The digging and the ploughing might be a good thing for more than me.”

“I don't say otherwise,” said the young Dissenter, following into the old fifteenth-century chapel, small but perfect, the young priest of the place. They stood together for a moment under the vaulted roof, both young, in the glory of their days, both with vague noble meanings in them, which they knew so poorly how to carry out. They meant everything that was fine and great, these two young men, standing upon the threshold of their life, knowing little more than that they were fiercely opposed to each other, and meant to reform the world each in his own way; one by careful services and visitings of the poor, the other by the Liberation Society and overthrow of the State Church; both foolish, wrong and right, to the utmost bounds of human possibility. How different they felt themselves standing there, and yet how much at one they were without knowing it! Northcote had sufficient knowledge to admire the perfect old building. He followed his guide with a certain humility through the details, which Reginald had already learned by heart.

“There is nothing so perfect, so beautiful, so real now-a-days,” said the young Churchman, with a natural expansion of mind over the beauty to which he had fallen heir. It seemed to him, as he looked up at the tall windows with their graceful tracery, that he was the representative of all who had worked out their belief in God within these beautiful walls, and of all the perpetual worshippers who had knelt among the old brasses of the early founders upon the worn floor. The other stood beside him with a half envy in his mind. The Dissenter did not feel himself the heir of those centuries in the same unhesitating way. He tried to feel that he was the heir of something better and more spiritual, yet felt a not ungenerous grudge that he could not share the other kinship too.

“It is very beautiful and noble,” he said. “I should like to feel for it as you do; but what I should like still better would be to have the same clear certainty of faith, the same conviction that what they were doing was the only right thing to do which made both building and prayer so unfaltering in those days. We can't be so sure even of the span of an arch now.”

“No – nor can you be content with the old span, even though it is clearly the best by all rules,” said Reginald. The other smiled; he was the most speculative of the two, being perhaps the most thoughtful; and he had no fifteenth-century chapel to charm, nor old foundation to give him an anchor. He smiled, but there was a little envy in his mind. Even to have one's life set out before one within clear lines like this, would not that be something? If it had but been possible, no doubt saying prayers for the world, even with no better than the old men of the College to say amen, had something more beautiful in it than tours of agitation for the Liberation Society; but Northcote knew that for him it was not possible, any more than was the tonsure of Reginald's predecessor, who had said mass when first those pinnacles were reared towards heaven. After he had smiled he sighed, for the old faith was more lovely than all the new agitations; he felt a little ashamed of the Liberation Society, so long as he stood under that groined and glorious roof.

“May!” said some one, coming in suddenly. “I want you to go to the hospital for me. I am obliged to go off to town on urgent business – convocation work; and I must get a lawyer's opinion about the reredos question; there is not a moment to lose. Go and see the people in the pulmonary ward, there's a good fellow; and there are two or three bad accidents; and that old woman who is ill in Brown's cottage, you saw her the other day; and the Simmonds in Back Grove Street. I should have had a day's work well cut out, if I had not had this summons to town; but the reredos question is of the first importance, you know.”

“I'll go,” said Reginald. There is nothing more effectual in showing us the weakness of any habitual fallacy or assumption than to hear it sympathetically, through the ears, as it were, of a sceptic. Reginald, seeing Northcote's keen eyes gleam at the sound of the Rector's voice, instinctively fell into sympathy with him, and heard the speech through him; and though he himself felt the importance of the reredos, yet he saw in a moment how such a question would take shape in the opinion of the young Dissenter, in whom he clearly saw certain resemblances to himself. Therefore he assented very briefly, taking out his note-book to put down the special cases of which the Rector told him. They had a confidential conversation in a corner, during which the new-comer contemplated the figure of Northcote in his strange semi-clerical garments with some amaze. “Who is your friend?” he said abruptly, for he was a rapid man, losing no time about anything.

“It is not my friend at all; it is my enemy who denounced me at the Dissenters' meeting.”

“Pah!” cried the Rector, curling up his nostrils, as if some disagreeable smell had reached him. “A Dissenter here! I should not have expected it from you, May.”

“Nor I either,” said Reginald; but his colour rose. He was not disposed to be rebuked by any rector in Carlingford or the world.

“Are you his curate,” said Northcote, “that he orders you about as if you were bound to do his bidding? I hope, for your own sake, it is not so.”

Now it was Reginald's turn to smile. He was young, and liked a bit of grandiloquence as well as another.

“Since I have been here,” he said, “in this sinecure, as you call it – and such it almost is – I have been everybody's curate. If the others have too much work, and I too little, my duty is clear, don't you think?”

Northcote made no reply. Had he known what was about to be said to him, he might have stirred up his faculties to say something; but he had not an idea that Reginald would answer him like this, and it took him aback. He was too honest himself not to be worsted by such a speech. He bowed his head with genuine respect. The apology of the Churchman whom he had assaulted, filled him with a kind of reverential confusion; he could make no reply in words. And need it be said that Reginald's heart too melted altogether when he saw how he had confounded his adversary? That silent assent more than made up for the noisy onslaught. That he should have thus overcome Northcote made Northcote appear his friend. He was pleased and satisfied beyond the reach of words.

“Will you come to the hospital with me?” he said; and they walked out together, the young Dissenter saying very little, doing what he could to arrange those new lights which had suddenly flashed upon his favourite subject, and feeling that he had lost his landmarks, and was confused in his path. When the logic is taken out of all that a man is doing, what is to become of him? This was what he felt; an ideal person in Reginald's place could not have made a better answer. Suddenly somehow, by a strange law of association, there came into his mind the innocent talk he had overheard between the two girls who were, he was aware, May's sisters. A certain romantic curiosity about the family came into his mind. Certainly they could not be an ordinary family like others. There must be something in their constitution to account for this sudden downfall, which he had encountered in the midst of all his theories. The Mays must be people of a different strain from others; a peculiar race, to whom great thoughts were familiar; he could not believe that there was anything common or ordinary in their blood. He went out in silence, with the holder of the sinecure which he had so denounced, but which now seemed to him to be held after a divine fashion, in a way which common men had no idea of. Very little could he say, and that of the most commonplace kind. He walked quite respectfully by the young clergyman's side along the crowded High Street, though without any intention of going to the hospital, or of actually witnessing the kind of work undertaken by his new friend. Northcote himself had no turn that way. To go and minister at a sick-bed had never been his custom; he did not understand how to do it; and though he had a kind of sense that it was the right thing to do, and that if any one demanded such a service of him he would be obliged to render it, he was all in the dark as to how he could get through so painful an office; whereas May went to it without fear, thinking of it only as the most natural thing in the world. Perhaps, it is possible, Northcote's ministrations, had he been fully roused, would have been, in mere consequence of the reluctance of his mind, to undertake them, more real and impressive than those which Reginald went to discharge as a daily though serious duty; but in any case it was the Churchman whose mode was the more practical, the more useful. They had not gone far together, when they met the Rector hurrying to the railway; he cast a frowning, dissatisfied look at Northcote, and caught Reginald by the arm, drawing him aside.

“Don't be seen walking about with that fellow,” he said; “it will injure you in people's minds. What have you to do with a Dissenter – a demagogue? Your father would not like it any more than I do. Get rid of him, May.”

“I am sorry to displease either you or my father,” said Reginald stiffly; “but, pardon me, in this respect I must judge for myself.”

“Don't be pig-headed,” said the spiritual ruler of Carlingford; but he had to rush off for his train, and had no time to say more. He left Reginald hot and angry, doubly disposed, as was natural, to march Northcote over all the town, and show his intimacy with him. Get rid of an acquaintance whom he chose to extend his countenance to, to please the Rector! For a man so young as Reginald May, and so lately made independent, such an act of subserviency was impossible indeed.

Before they entered the hospital, however, another encounter happened of a very different character. Strolling along in the centre of the pavement, endeavouring after the almost impossible combination of a yawn and a cigar, they perceived a large figure in a very long great-coat, and with an aspect of languor and ennui which was unmistakable a hundred yards off. This apparition called a sudden exclamation from Northcote.

“If it was possible,” he said, “I should imagine I knew that man. Are there two like him? but I can't fancy what he can be doing here.”

“That fellow!” said Reginald. “It's a pity if there are two like him. I can't tell you what a nuisance he is to me. His name is Copperhead; he's my father's pupil.”

“Then it is Copperhead! I thought there could not be another. He gives a sort of odd familiar aspect to the place all at once.”

“Then you are a friend of his!” said Reginald, with a groan. “Pardon the natural feelings of a man whose father has suddenly chosen to become a coach. I hate it, and my dislike to the thing is reflected on the person of the pupil. I suppose that's what my antipathy means.”

“He does not merit antipathy. He is a bore, but there is no harm in him. Ah! he is quickening his pace; I am afraid he has seen us; and anybody he knows will be a godsend to him, I suppose.”

“I am off,” said Reginald; “you will come again? that is,” he added, with winning politeness, “I shall come and seek you out. We are each the moral Antipodes of the other, Miss Beecham says – from which she argues that we should be acquainted and learn the meaning of our differences.”

“I am much obliged to Miss Beecham.”

“Why, Northcote!” said Clarence Copperhead, bearing down upon them in his big grey Ulster, like a ship in full sail. “Morning, May; who'd have thought to see you here. Oh, don't turn on my account! I'm only taking a walk; it don't matter which way I go.”

“I am very much hurried. I was just about to hasten off to an appointment. Good-bye, Northcote,” said Reginald. “We shall meet again soon, I hope.”

“By Jove! this is a surprise,” said Clarence; “to see you here, where I should as soon have thought of looking for St. Paul's; and to find you walking about cheek by jowl with that muff, young May, who couldn't be civil, I think, if he were to try. What is the meaning of it? I suppose you're just as much startled to see me. I'm with a coach; clever, and a good scholar and a good family, and all that; father to that young sprig: so there ain't any mystery about me. What's brought you here?”

“Work,” said Northcote, curtly. He did not feel disposed to enter into any kind of explanation.

“Oh, work! Now I do wonder that a fellow like you, with plenty of money in your pocket, should go in for work as you do. What's the good of it? and in the Dissenting parson line of all things in the world! When a fellow has nothing, you can understand it; he must get his grub somehow. That's what people think of you, of course. Me, I don't do anything, and everybody knows I'm a catch, and all that sort of thing. Now I don't say (for I don't know) if your governor has as much to leave behind him as mine – But halt a bit! You walk as if we were going in for athletics, and doing a two mile.”

“I'm sorry to see you so easily blown,” said Northcote, not displeased in his turn to say something unpleasant. “What is it? or are you only out of training?”

“That's it,” said Clarence, with a gasp. “I'm awfully out of training, and that's the fact. We do, perhaps, live too well in Portland Place; but look here – about what we were saying – ”

“Do you live with the Mays?”

“Worse luck! It's what you call plain cooking; and bless us all, dinner in the middle of the day, and the children at table. But I've put a stop to that; and old May ain't a bad old fellow – don't bother me with work more than I like, and none of your high mightiness, like that fellow. I'll tell you what, Northcote, you must come and see me. I haven't got a sitting-room of my own, which is a shame, but I have the use of their rooms as much as I like. The sisters go flying away like a flock of pigeons. I'll tell you what, I'll have you asked to dinner. Capital fun it will be. A High Church parson cheek by jowl with a red-hot Dissenter, and compelled to be civil. By Jove! won't it be a joke?”

“It is not a joke that either of us will enjoy.”

“Never mind, I'll enjoy it, by Jove!” said Copperhead. “He daren't say no. I'd give sixpence just to see you together, and the Bashaw of two tails – the young fellow. They shall have a party; leave it all to me.”

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE NEW PUPIL

Mr. May, since the bargain was fairly concluded with the Copperheads, had thought a great deal about the three hundred a-year he was to get for his pupil. It almost doubled his income in a moment, and that has a great effect upon the imagination. It was true he would have another person to maintain on this additional income, but still that additional person would simply fill Reginald's place, and it did not at first occur to him that what was good enough for himself, Mr. May, of St. Roque's, was not good enough for any parvenu on the face of the earth. Therefore the additional income represented a great deal of additional comfort, and that general expansion of expenditure, not going into any special extravagances, but representing a universal ease and enlargement which was congenial to him, and which was one of the great charms of money in his eyes. To be sure, when he reflected on the matter, he felt that the first half-year of Clarence's payment ought to be appropriated to that bill, which for the present had brought him so much relief; but this would be so entirely to lose the benefit of the money so far as he was himself concerned, that it was only in moments of reflection that this appeared urgent. The bill to which Tozer's signature had been appended did not oppress his conscience. After all, what was it? Not a very large sum, a sum which when put to it, and with time before him, he could so easily supply; and as for any other consideration, it was really, when you came to think of it, a quite justifiable expedient, not to be condemned except by squeamish persons, and which being never known, could do no harm in the world. He had not harmed anybody by what he had done. Tozer, who was quite able to pay it over and over again, would never know of it; and in what respect, he asked himself, was it worse to have done this than to have a bill really signed by a man of straw, whose “value received” meant nothing in the world but a simple fiction? Cotsdean was no more than a man of straw; if left to himself, he could not pay anything, nor had he anything really to do with the business for which his name stood sponsor; and Tozer's name was merely placed there in the same fictitious way, without any trouble to Tozer, or burden of responsibility. What was the difference, except that it saved trouble and anxiety to everybody except the principal in the affair – he who ought to bear the brunt? Mr. May recognised this without doubt. It was he who had reaped the advantage; and whether Cotsdean was the instrument who knew all about it, or Tozer, who did not know anything about it, it was he, Mr. May, whose natural duty it was to meet the claim and pay the money. He was an honest man; if he was occasionally a little slow in his payments, no one could throw any doubt upon his character. But, of course, should any unforeseen emergency arise, the pupil at once made that straight. Mr. May felt that he had only to go to the bank, which generally did not encourage his visits, and tell them of his pupil, to have the money at once. Nobody could reject such unmistakeable security. So that really there was no further occasion for so much as thinking of Tozer; that was provided for; with the freest conscience in the world he might put it out of his mind. But how he could feel this so strongly, and at the same time revel in the consciousness of a fuller purse, more to enjoy, and more to spend, is a mystery which it would be difficult to solve. He did so, and many others have done so besides him, eating their cake, yet believing that they had their cake with the fullest confidence. He was a sensible man, rather priding himself on his knowledge of business, with much experience in human nature, and a thoughtful sense (fully evidenced in his writings) of all the strange inconsistencies and self-deceits of mankind; but he dropped into this strain of self-delusion with the calmest satisfaction of mind, and was as sure of his own good sense and kindness as if he had never in all his life taken a step out of the rigidest of the narrow ways of uprightness.

Some part of this illusion, however, was sharply dispelled at a very early date. Clarence Copperhead, who was not likely to err by means of too much consideration for the feelings of others, grumbled frankly at the mid-day meal.

“I don't understand a two o'clock dinner,” he said; “it's lunch, that's what I call it; and I won't be disagreeable about the kids, but I must have my dinner. Bless you! a man can't live without his dinner. What is he to do? It is the sort of thing you can look forward to, whatever happens. If it's a wet day, or anything of that sort, there's always dinner; and after it's over, if there's music or a rubber, why that's all very well; or if a man feels a bit sleepy, it doesn't matter. Why, dinner's your stand-by, wherever you are. I'd as soon do without my head, for my part.”

Ursula hastened to tell her father this with dismay in her looks.

“I've always heard that late dinners were so expensive; you require twice as many dishes. At two, one has only what is necessary; but at seven, you require to have fish, and soup, and entrées, and all sorts of things, besides the joint. It was disgraceful of him to say it!” cried Ursula; “and I think he ought to be made to follow our plan, whatever it is, and not do everything he likes here.”

“That is all very true,” said Mr. May; “but he is right about the dinner; it is a great deal more agreeable.”

“And expensive, papa.”

“Well, perhaps it is a great deal to expect at your age; but if you read your cookery-book, as I have often said, when you were reading those novels, and learned how to toss up little dishes out of nothing, and make entrées, and so forth, at next to no expense – ”

The tears came into Ursula's eyes at this unjust assault.

“Papa,” she said, “you ought to know better at your age. One forgives the boys for saying such silly things. How can I toss up little dishes out of nothing? If you only knew the price of butter, not to talk of anything else. Made dishes are the most expensive things! A leg of mutton, for instance; there it is, and when one weighs it, one knows what it costs; but there is not one of those entrées but costs shillings for herbs and truffles and gravy and forcemeat, and a glass of white wine here, and a half pint of claret there. It is all very well to talk of dishes made out of nothing. The meat may not be very much – and men never think of the other things, I suppose.”

“It is management that is wanted,” said Mr. May, “to throw nothing away, to make use of everything, to employ all your scraps. If you once have a good sauce – which is as easy as daylight when you take the trouble – you can make all sorts of things out of a cold joint; but women never will take the trouble, and that is the secret of poor dinners. Not one in fifty will do it. If you wanted really to help us, and improve my position, you might, Ursula. I can't afford to fall out with Copperhead, he is very important to me just at this moment; and perhaps it is better that I should give in to him at once about the late dinner.”

“You may say it is not my business,” said Ursula, “but we have already another maid, and now two dinners – for it is just the same as two dinners. He will not be any advantage to you like that, and why should he be so much harder to please than we are? Reginald never grumbled, who was much better bred and better educated than Mr. Copperhead.”