Phoebe, Junior

“Don't give me up for one moment's distraction; and it was your fault, not mine, for suggesting such a startling idea.”

Phœbe shook her head, and waved her hand as a parting salutation, and then went across the room to where Ursula was sitting, where Horace Northcote at least found her very much in his way. She began at once to talk low and earnestly on some subject so interesting that it absorbed both the girls in a way which was very surprising and unpleasant to the young men, neither of whom had been able to interest the one whose attention he was specially anxious to secure half so effectually. Northcote, from the other side of the table, and Reginald from the other end of the room, gazed and gloomed with discomfited curiosity, wondering what it could be; while Clarence strutted uneasily about the piano, taking up his fiddle now and then, striking a note, and screwing up his strings into concord, with many impatient glances. But still the girls talked. Was it about their dresses or some nonsense, or was it a more serious subject, which could thus be discussed without masculine help? but this matter they never fathomed, nor have they found out till this hour.

CHAPTER XXXI

SOCIETY

Notwithstanding such little social crosses, however, the society at the Parsonage, as thus constituted, was very agreeable. Mr. May, though he had his faults, was careful of his daughter. He sat in the drawing-room every evening till she retired, on the nights their visitors came, and even when it was Clarence only who remained, an inmate of the house, and free to go and come as he pleased. Ursula, he felt, must not be left alone, and though it is uncertain whether she fully appreciated the care he took of her, this point in his character is worth noting. When the young party went out together, to skate, for instance, as they did, for several merry days, Reginald and Janey were, he considered, sufficient guardians for their sister. Phœbe had no chaperon – “Unless you will take that serious office upon you, Ursula,” she said, shrugging her shoulders prettily; but she only went once or twice, so well was she able, even when the temptation was strongest, to exercise self-denial, and show her perfect power of self-guidance. As for old Tozer and his wife, the idea of a chaperon never entered their homely head. Such articles are unnecessary in the lower levels of society. They were anxious that their child should enjoy herself, and could not understand the reason of her staying at home on a bright frosty day, when the Mays came to the door in a body to fetch her.

“No, if they'd have gone down on their knees, nor if I had gone down on mine, would that girl have left me,” cried the old lady, with tears in her eyes. “She do behave beautiful to her old granny. If so be as I haven't a good night, no power on earth would make that child go pleasuring. It's 'most too much at her age.”

But Phœbe confided to Ursula that it was not altogether anxiety about her grandmother.

“I have nobody of my own to go with. If I took grandpapa with me, I don't think it would mend matters. Once or twice it was possible, but not every day. Go and enjoy yourself, dear,” she said, kissing her friend.

Ursula was disposed to cry rather than to enjoy herself, and appealed to Reginald, who was deeply touched by Phœbe's fine feeling. He took his sister to the ice, but that day he went so far as to go back himself to No. 6, actually into the house, to make a humble protest, yet to insinuate his admiration. He was much impressed by, and approved highly of this reticence, having a very high standard of minor morals for ladies, in his mind, like most young men.

“She is not one of the girls who rush about everywhere, and whom one is sick of seeing,” he said.

“I think it is very silly,” cried Janey. “Who cares for a chaperon! and why shouldn't Phœbe have her fun, like the rest, instead of shutting herself up in a stuffy room with that dreadful old Mrs. Tozer?”

Her brother reproved her so sharply for this speech that Janey withdrew in tears, still asking “Why?” as she rushed to her room. Clarence Copperhead, for his part, stroked his moustache and said it was a bore.

“For she is the best skater of all the ladies here,” he said. “I beg your pardon, Miss Ursula. She's got so much go in her, and keeps it up like fun. She's the best I know for keeping a fellow from getting tired; but as it's Thursday, I suppose she'll be there in the evening.”

Clarence never called them anything but Miss Ursula and Miss Phœbe, dropping the prefix in his thoughts. He felt that he was “a little sweet upon” them both; and, indeed, it had gleamed dully across his mind that a man who could marry them both need never be bored, but was likely always to find something “to do.” Choice, however, being necessary, he did not see his way so clearly as to which he would choose. “The mountain sheep are sweeter, but the valley sheep are fatter,” he said to himself, if not in these immortal words, yet with full appreciation of the sentiment. Ursula began to understand dinners with a judicious intelligence, which he felt was partly created by his own instructions and remarks; but in the evening it was Phœbe who reigned supreme. She was so sensible that most likely she could invent a menu all out of her own head, he thought, feeling that the girl who got him through the “Wedding March” with but six mistakes, was capable of any intellectual feat. He had not the slightest doubt that it was in his power to marry either of the girls as soon as he chose to intimate his choice; and in the mean time he found it very agreeable to maintain a kind of mental possibility of future proprietorship of them both.

And thus the pleasant life ran on in the most agreeable absorption and abstraction from the world outside. “Don't ask any one else; why should we have any one else?” they all said, except Janey, who had condescended to appear in the evening in her best frock, though she was not admitted at dinner, and who thought a few additional guests, and a round game now and then, would be delightful variations upon the ordinary programme; but the others did not agree with her. They became more and more intimate, mingling the brother and sister relationship with a something unnamed, unexpressed, which gave a subtle flavour to their talks and flirtations. In that incipient stage of love-making this process is very pleasant even to the spectators, full of little excitements and surprises, and sharp stings of momentary quarrel, and great revolutions, done with a single look, which are infinitely amusing to the lookers-on. The house became a real domestic centre, thought of by each and all with tender sentiment, such as made its owners somewhat proud of it, they could scarcely tell why. Even Mr. May felt a certain complacence in the fact that the young men were so fond of the Parsonage, and when he heard complaints of the coldness and dullness of domestic intercourse, smiled, and said that he did not feel it so, with that pleasant sense of something superior in himself to cause this difference, which is sweet to the greatest Stoic; for he was not as yet enlightened as to the entire indifference of the little circle to any charm in him, and would have been utterly confounded had any one told him that to the grave and reflective Northcote, whom he had treated with such magnanimous charity, binding him (evidently) by bonds of gratitude to himself for ever, it was little Ursula, and not her father, who was the magnet of attraction. Mr. May was a clever man, and yet it had not occurred to him that any comparison between his own society and that of Ursula was possible. Ursula! a child! He would have laughed aloud at the thought.

But all this pleasant society, though father and daughter both agreed that it cost nothing, for what is a cake and a cup of tea? and the late dinners and the extra maid, and the additional fires, and general enlargement of expenditure made immense inroads, it must be allowed, into the additional income brought by Clarence Copperhead. The first quarter's payment was spent, and more than spent, before it came. The money that was to be laid up for that bill of Tozer's – perhaps – had now no saving peradventure left in it; for the second half would not be due till two months after the Tozer bill, and would but be half, even if procurable at once. Mr. May felt a slight shock while this gleamed across his mind, but only for a moment. There was still a month, and a month is a long time, and in the mean time James was almost certain to send something, and his Easter offerings might, probably would, this year be something worth having. Why they should be better than usual this year Mr. May did not explain to himself; his head was a little turned it must be supposed by the momentary chance of having more money in his hands than he used to have. Already he had got into the habit of ordering what he wanted somewhat recklessly, without asking himself how the things he ordered were to be paid for, and, as so often happened, followed up that first tampering with the rules of right and wrong by a general recklessness of the most dangerous kind. He was not so much alone as he had been; his house, in which he was infinitely more amiable than of old, had become more pleasant to him; he liked his life better. His son was independent with an income of his own, and therefore he felt much more respect for him, and treated him as a companion. His daughter had developed, if not in the way of entrées, a talent for dinners which raised her very much in his eyes; and naturally the regard shown to her by the visitors reacted upon Mr. May, though it had not crossed his mind as yet that any one could be in love with Ursula. All this made him happier in spite of himself. When you begin to esteem and be proud of your children your life is naturally happier than when you scoff and jeer at them, and treat them as creatures of inferior mould to yourself. Mr. May found out all at once that Reginald was a fine young fellow, that Ursula was pretty and pleasant, and that droll Janey, with her elf-locks and angles, was amusing at least, if no more. As for the little ones, they were considerably thrust into a corner when the elder youth forced itself into the front. They learned their lessons in corners, and had their tea by themselves, and were much humbled and subdued from the moment in which their school-books and toys had meandered over the whole house, and their looks and likings had been just as important as anything else. When there is no mother to protect them, the elder sister's first lover marks a terribly critical period for the children of the house. They were banished from the drawing-room, except on special occasions, when they came en grande tenue, in their best things, and were jeered at by Mr. Copperhead. He called them “the kids,” both Amy and Robin were aware, and they resented it unspeakably. Thus the inward happiness of the Mays confined itself to the upper regions of the family. Even Betsy regretted the days when, if she had more to do, she had at least “her kitchen to herself,” and nobody to share the credit. There was more fuss and more worry, if a trifle less labour, and the increase in consequence which resulted from being called cook, instead of maid-of-all-work, was scarcely so sweet in possession as had seemed in prospect.

“Them late dinners” were the object of her perpetual railings; “oh, how much more comfortable it was, if gentry would but think so, to have your dinner at two, and get done with your washing up before you was cleaned, or had any occasion to bother yourself about your cap!” When little Amy cried over the loneliness of “the children's tea,” which they frequently had to pour out for themselves, Betty gave her a cake and a kiss, and felt disposed to cry too.

“And she don't know, poor child, not the half,” said Betty, which was a kind of oracular sentence difficult for Betty herself to understand. The children had nothing to do with the late dinner; they were sent to bed earlier than they used to be, and scolded if any distant sounds of romps made itself audible at seven o'clock when their elders were dining; and then when the little ones went injured to bed, and Johnnie, indignant, worked at his lessons by himself in a corner of the old nursery, deeply aware that his school-boy boots and jacket were quite unfit for the drawing-room, the grown-up young people ran lightly upstairs, all smiles and pleasure, and those delightful evenings began.

The children sometimes could not get to sleep for the piano and the raspings of the fiddle, which sounds of mirth suggested nothing but the wildest enjoyment to them; and when the door opened now and then, bursts of laughter and mingling voices would come out like the sounds the Peri heard at the gates of Paradise. The elder ones were happy; their little atoms of individual life had all united for the moment into one sunshiny and broad foundation, on which everything seemed to rest with that strange sense of stability and continuance, which such a moment of happiness, though it carries every element of change in it, almost invariably brings. It felt as if it might go on for ever, and yet the very sentiment that inspired it made separation and convulsion inevitable – one of those strange paradoxes which occur every day.

Thus the year crept round, and winter melted away with all its amusements, and spring began. Mr. Northcote's time at Salem Chapel was more than half over, a fact on which the congregation congratulated itself much.

“If so be as he had a settled charge of his own, I shouldn't be sorry to see him gone to-morrow,” said one of the recent members.

“Settled charge! You take my word,” said Mrs. Pigeon, who was getting old, but always continued a woman of spirit, “he'll never have a settled charge in our connection. He carries on here, 'cause he can't help hisself, but he ain't cut out for a pastor, and he's a deal too thick with them Church folks. A parson, too! I'd 'a thought he had more pride.”

“Nay, now, but I don't wish him no harm,” said the first speaker; “he's a civil spoken gentleman if he ain't so free and so pleasant as a body looks for.”

“Civil spoken!” said the other; “one of our own ministers in our own connection! Bless you! they're our servants, that's what they are. I'd like to see one on 'em as 'ud take upon him to be civil spoken to me.”

“Well, I wouldn't go as far as that,” cried Mrs. Brown; “we pays 'em their salary, and we 'as a right to a civil word: but a minister's a minister, and I'll show him respect as long as he deserves it. I ain't one for being too hard upon ministers, especially when they're young men, as has their temptations like, we all know.”

“I don't know what you call temptations,” said Mrs. Pigeon; “licking the dust under the feet of a Church parson! and after speaking up so bold against young May and them old cheats at the College. I wish he was gone from here, that's what I wish, and our old pastor (if we can't get none better) back again. He was one as knew his place, and wouldn't have set his foot inside one of them Parsonages. Parsonages, indeed! kept up with our money. If ever there was an iniquity on this earth it's a State Church, and all the argufying in the world won't put that out of me.”

It happened that Northcote was in the poulterer's shop, talking to the poulterer himself at this moment, and he heard the conclusion of this speech delivered with much unction and force. Such sentiments would have charmed him three months ago, and probably he would have thought this uneducated but strenuous partisan an extremely intelligent woman. He hurried away now with an uncomfortable smile. If an opinion is the right opinion, why should it have an air of absurdity thrown upon it by being thus uttered in ungrammatical language by a poulterer's wife? Truth is the same by whomsoever stated; but yet, was not dogmatism on any subject the sign of an inexperienced and uncultivated, or a rude and untutored mind? What did this woman know of the Parsonage, which she supposed she helped to pay for? What had he himself known three months ago of Reginald May, whom he had assaulted so savagely? This Church family, which Mrs. Pigeon knew no better than to abuse, with what divine charity it had received himself, notwithstanding his public sin against it. When he thought of that public sin, Northcote's countenance glowed with shame, and it continued to glow with a more agreeable warmth when he escaped into thought of the goodness which the Mays had shown him. Had there ever been such goodness? Was there ever so sweet a home of the heart as that faded, homely drawing-room? His heart beat high, his steps quickened; they carried him down Grange Lane in a path so often trod that he felt there must be a special track of his own under the garden walls, going Parsonage way.

CHAPTER XXXII

LOVE-MAKING

Mrs. Sam Hurst had been a long time out of Carlingford; she had been paying visits among her friends, with whom, though the young Mays would never believe it, she was very popular, for she was not ill-natured in her gossip, and she was often amusing in the fulness of her interest in other people. It was April when she came back, and the early warmth and softness of the spring were beginning to be felt in Grange Lane; the doors of the houses began to be left open, and the girls at the Parsonage had taken to running out and in without their hats, gleaming through the little shrubbery in front, and round to the back garden. One evening it was so mild that they all (which comprehensive term, sometimes extended to “the whole party,” began to be commonly used among them with that complacence in the exclusiveness of their little coterie, which every “set” more or less feels) came downstairs in a body, and wandered about among the laurel-bushes in the spring moonlight. There was Ursula and Mr. Northcote, Phœbe and Reginald, and Clarence Copperhead, with Janey behind, who followed where they went, but did not enjoy the ceremony. It was bad enough in the drawing-room; but moonlight, who cared about moonlight? Janey said to herself indignantly. She was the only one who looked up to Mrs. Hurst's window, where there was a faint light, and when the voices became audible Janey perceived some one come behind the curtain and look out. The girl was divided between her faithful family feud against Mrs. Hurst, and a vague sense of satisfaction in her presence as a Marplot, who one way or other would infallibly interfere.

“She will say something to papa,” said Janey, her heart involuntary rising at the thought, though at the same time she shivered to think of the treachery involved to all the tenets of the family. Janey sat on the steps and listened to the others talking. No one pointed out the stars to her, or followed her about as Reginald followed Phœbe. As for Mr. Copperhead, Janey thought he was almost as lonely as she was. He had lighted his cigar, and was strolling up and down, interrupting both of the other pairs occasionally, breaking into the midst of Northcote's astronomical lecture abruptly, and stopping Phœbe herself in the middle of a sentence. Janey, watching sharply from the steps, noticed, as a spectator has it in her power to do, that whereas Northcote was extremely impatient of the interruption, and discovered immediately that the stars could be seen better from another spot, Phœbe took it quite sweetly, and addressed herself to him as she went on, which Reginald did not like, Janey was sure. Were they in love with each other? the girl asked herself – was this how it was managed? When the moon went under a cloud for a moment Clarence Copperhead's vast shirt-front made a kind of substitute down below. Janey lost the other two among the bushes, but she always beheld that orb of white moving backward and forward with two dark figures near. She felt sure Reginald did not want to have him in such close neighbourhood; but Phœbe's voice went on talking to both alike. Janey was half-pleased, and half-indignant. She had a jealous dislike, such as most girls have, to see her brother engrossed by any one, but no more did she like to see another man preferred to Reginald; she was jealous both ways. As she sat and watched, a slight little creak came to her sharp ears, and looking up she saw Mrs. Hurst's drawing-room window opened the very least little bit in the world. Ah! Janey said, with a long breath. There was nothing she would not have given to have talked it all over with Mrs. Hurst, and to hear what she would say, if she had not been the traditional adversary against whom all the family steeled their hearts.

That was a very pleasant evening; they all remembered it afterwards. It was the moment when Ursula discovered all in the darkness, when the moon was under that cloud, what Mr. Northcote meant. It flashed upon her like a sudden light, though they were standing in the shade of a great laurel. He did not make any declaration, nor say a word that she could remember. And yet all at once, by some magic which is not explainable, she found out that that was what he was meaning. This is not an admirable sentence; but it is difficult to know how to put it better. It was quite a strange discovery. It set her heart beating, thumping against her breast. She herself meant nothing whatever, and she never thought of any response, or of the time when he might ask her to make a response. The sensation of the moment was quite enough for Ursula. She was greatly startled, surprised, yet not surprised, touched and full of a wondering respect and sympathy, awe and half-amusement. Could it be possible, was that what it was? Though he was not conscious of betraying himself in any way, Northcote thought he had done something to offend her. Her shy silence and withdrawal from him went to his heart; never had her society been so sweet, never had he had her so completely to himself. What had he done to alarm or offend her? He went home with his head full of this, able to think of nothing else.

And Phœbe went home too, escorted by Reginald and Clarence together, to her grandfather's door, with her head buzzing with many thoughts. It was not her heart that was in a commotion, like little Ursula's. She was more experienced, though she was not much older, and had gone through such discoveries before now. But a much more perplexing accident had befallen her. Reginald May had fallen in love with her, and Clarence Copperhead, after considerable resistance and hanging off, was making up his mind to propose. Yes. Phœbe felt with unerring instinct that this was the state of affairs. He was making up his mind to propose. So much of her and so little of her had at length made an end of all the prudent hesitations that lay under the crisp pie-crust of that starched and dazzling shirt front. That he should never be able to speak a word to her without that May! that fellow! “the son of my coach!” poking himself in, was a thing which at length had fired his cool blood to fever heat. Nobody else could play his accompaniments like that, or pull him through the “Wedding March” like that; and who would look better at the head of a table, or show better at a ball, or get on better in society? No one he knew, certainly. It was true she was only a Minister's daughter, and without a penny; for the little fortune Mr. and Mrs. Beecham had carefully gathered together and preserved for their daughter, what was that to the Copperheads? – nothing, not a penny. But, on the other hand, Clarence felt that he himself, or rather his father, was rich enough to be able to afford a wife without money. There was no reason why he should marry money; and a wife like Phœbe, what a relief that would be, in the way of education! No need of any more coaching. She was clever, and fond of reading, and so forth. She would get everything up for him, if he went into parliament, or that sort of thing; why, she'd keep him posted up. “There ain't many girls that could do that,” he said to himself. She would save him worlds of trouble; save his money even, for coaches and that sort of thing cost money; and then that fellow May would be out of it; his nose would be put out of joint. These are not eloquent sentiments, but so it was that Clarence's natural feelings expressed themselves. He had intimated that he would see Miss Phœbe home, but May had stalked out side by side with him – had not left them for a moment; and Clarence determined that he would not stand it any longer. If there was no other way of shaking this fellow off, why, then he would make up his mind to it, and propose.