Phoebe, Junior Part 19

"That Tozer girl!" Ursula gave a little shriek, and grew first red and then pale with horror and dismay.

"Yes; I told you about her; so well dressed and looking so nice. That was she; with the very same dress, such a charming dress! so much style about it. Who is she, Ursula? Mr. May, tell me who is she? You can't imagine how much I want to know."

Ursula dropped into a chair, looking like a little ghost, faint and rigid. She said afterwards to Janey that she felt in the depths of her heart that it must be true. She could have cried with pain and disappointment, but she would not give Mrs. Sam Hurst the pleasure of making her cry.

"There must be some mistake," said Reginald, interposing. "This is a lady--my sister met her in town with the Dorsets."

"Oh, does she know the Dorsets too?" said the inquirer. "That makes it still more interesting. Yes, that is the girl that is with the Tozers; there can be no mistake about it. She is the granddaughter. She was at the Meeting last night. I had it from the best authority--on the platform with old Tozer. And, indeed, Mr. May, how any one that had been there could dare to look you in the face!--"

"I was there myself," said Mr. May. "It amused me very much. Tell me now about this young person. Is she an impostor, taking people in, or what is it all about? Ursula looks as if she was in the trick herself, and had been found out."

"I am _sure_ she is not an impostor," said Ursula. "An impostor! If you had seen her as I saw her, at a great, beautiful, splendid ball. I never saw anything like it. I was n.o.body there--n.o.body--and neither were Cousin Anne and Cousin Sophy--but Miss Beecham! It is a mistake, I suppose," the girl said, raising herself up with great dignity; "when people are always trying for news, they get the wrong news sometimes, I don't doubt. You may be sure it is a mistake."

"That's me," said Mrs. Sam Hurst, with a laugh; "that is one of Ursula's a.s.saults upon poor me. Yes, I confess it, I am fond of news; and I never said she was an impostor. Poor girl, I am dreadfully sorry for her. I think she is a good girl, trying to do her duty to her relations. She didn't choose her own grandfather. I dare say, if she'd had any say in it, she would have made a very different choice. But whether your papa may think her a proper friend for you--being Tozer's granddaughter, Miss Ursula, that's quite a different business, I am bound to say."

Again Ursula felt herself kept from crying by sheer pride, and nothing else. She bit her lips tight; she would not give in. Mrs. Hurst to triumph over her, and to give her opinion as to what papa might think proper! Ursula turned her back upon Mrs. Hurst, which was not civil, fearing every moment some denunciation from papa. But nothing of the kind came. He asked quite quietly after a while, "Where did you meet this young lady?" without any perceptible inflection of anger in his tone.

"Why, papa," cried Janey, distressed to be kept so long silent, "everybody knows where Ursula met her; no one has heard of anything else since she came home. She met her of course at the ball. You know; Reginald, _you_ know! The ball where she went with Cousin Anne."

"Never mind Cousin Anne; I want the name of the people at whose house it was."

"Copperhead, papa," said Ursula, rousing herself. "If Cousin Anne does not know a lady from a common person, who does, I wonder? It was Cousin Anne who introduced me to her (I think). Their name was Copperhead, and they lived in a great, big, beautiful house, in the street where amba.s.sadors and quant.i.ties of great people live. I forget the name of it; but I know there was an amba.s.sador lived there, and Cousin Anne said----"

"Copperhead! I thought so," said Mr. May. "When Ursula has been set a-going on the subject of Cousin Anne, there is nothing rational to be got from her after that for an hour or two. You take an interest in this young lady," he said shortly, turning to Mrs. Sam Hurst, who stood by smiling, rather enjoying the commotion she had caused.

"Who, I? I take an interest in anybody that makes a stir, and gives us something to talk about," said Mrs. Hurst, frankly. "You know my weakness. Ursula despises me for it, but you know human nature. If I did not take an interest in my neighbours what would become of me--a poor lone elderly woman, without either chick or child?"

She rounded off this forlorn description of herself with a hearty laugh, in which Janey, who had a secret kindness for their merry neighbour, though she feared her "for papa," joined furtively. Mr. May, however, did not enter into the joke with the sympathy which he usually showed to Mrs. Hurst. He smiled, but there was something _distrait_ and pre-occupied in his air.

"How sorry we all are for you," he said; "your position is truly melancholy. I am glad, for your sake, that old Tozer has a pretty granddaughter to beguile you now and then out of recollection of your cares."

There was a sharp tone in this which caught Mrs. Hurst's ear, and she was not disposed to accept any sharpness from Mr. May. She turned the tables upon him promptly.

"What a disgraceful business that Meeting was! Of course, you have seen the paper. There ought to be some way of punishing those agitators that go about the country, taking away people's characters. Could not you bring him up for libel, or Reginald? I never knew anything so shocking.

To come to your own town, your own neighbourhood, and to strike you through your son! It is the nastiest, most underhanded, unprincipled attack I ever heard of."

"What is that?" asked Reginald.

He was not easily roused by Carlingford gossip, but there was clearly more in this than met the eye.

"An Anti-State Church Meeting," said Mr. May, "with special compliments in it to you and me. It is not worth our while to think of it. Your agitators, my dear Mrs. Hurst, are not worth powder and shot. Now, pardon me, but I must go to work. Will you go and see the sick people in Back Grove Street, Reginald? I don't think I can go to-day."

"I should like to know what was in the paper," said the young man, with an obstinacy that filled the girls with alarm. They had been in hopes that everything between father and son was to be happy and friendly, now that Reginald was about to do what his father wished.

"Oh, you shall see it," said Mrs. Hurst, half alarmed too; "but it is not anything, as your father says; only we women are sensitive. We are always thinking of things which, perhaps, were never intended to harm us. Ursula, you take my advice, and don't go and mix yourself up with Dissenters and that kind of people. The Tozer girl may be very nice, but she is still Tozer's granddaughter, after all."

Reginald followed the visitor out of the room, leaving his sisters very ill at ease within, and his father not without anxieties which were so powerful, indeed, that he relieved his mind by talking of them to his daughters--a most unusual proceeding.

"That woman will set Reginald off at the nail again," he cried; "after he had begun to see things in a common-sense light. There was an attack made upon him last night on account of that blessed chaplaincy, which has been more trouble to me than it is worth. I suppose he'll throw it up now. But I wash my hands of the matter. I wonder how you girls can encourage that chattering woman to come here."

"Papa!" cried Janey, ever on the defensive, "we _hate_ her! It is you who encourage her to come here."

"Oh, hush!" cried Ursula, with a warning glance; it was balm to her soul to hear her father call Mrs. Hurst _that woman_. "We have been to see the house," she said; "it was very nice. I think Reginald liked it, papa."

"Ah, well," said Mr. May, "girls and boys are queer articles. I dare say the house, if he likes it, will weigh more with him than justice or common sense. So Copperhead was the people's name? What would be wanted, do you think, Ursula, to make Reginald's room into a comfortable room for a pupil? Comfortable, recollect; not merely what would do; and one that has been used, I suppose, to luxury. You can look over it and let me know."

"Are we going to take a pupil, papa?" cried Janey, with widening eyes.

"I don't know what you could teach him," he said. "Manners, perhaps? Let me know, Ursula. The room is not a bad room; it would want a new carpet, curtains, perhaps--various things. Make me out a list. The Copperheads have a son, I believe. Did you see him at that fine ball of yours?"

"Oh! papa, he danced with me twice; he was very kind," said Ursula, with a blush; "and he danced all the night with Miss Beecham. It must be a falsehood about her being old Tozer's granddaughter. Mr. Clarence Copperhead was always by her side. I think Mrs. Hurst must have made it all up out of her own head."

Mr. May gave a little short laugh.

"Poor Mrs. Hurst!" he said, recovering his temper; "how bitter you all are against her. So he danced with you twice? You must try to make him comfortable, Ursula, if he comes here."

"Is Mr. Clarence Copperhead coming here?"

Ursula was struck dumb by this piece of news. The grand house in Portland Place, and all Sophy Dorset's questions and warnings, came suddenly back to her mind. She blushed fiery red; she could not tell why. Coming here! How strange it would be, how extraordinary, to have to order dinner for him, and get his room in order, and have him in the drawing-room in the evenings! How should she know what to say to him? or would papa keep him always at work, reading Greek or something downstairs? All this flashed through her mind with the rapidity of lightning. Mr. May made no reply. He was walking up and down the room with his hands behind him, as was his habit when he was "busy." Being busy was separated from being angry by the merest visionary line in Mr.

May's case; his children never ventured on addressing him at such moments, and it is impossible to describe how glad they were when he withdrew to his own room before Reginald's return; but not a minute too soon. The young man came back, looking black as night. He threw himself into a chair, and then he got up again, and began also to walk about the room like his father. At first he would make no reply to the questions of the girls.

"It is exactly what I expected," he said; "just what I looked for. I knew it from the first moment."

It was Janey, naturally, who had least patience with this unsatisfactory utterance.

"If it was just what you expected, and you looked for it all the time, why should you make such a fuss now?" she cried. "I declare, for all you are young, and we are fond of you, you are almost as bad as papa."

Reginald did not take any notice of this address; he went on repeating the same words at intervals.

"A child might have known it. Of course, from the beginning one knew how it must be." Then he suddenly faced round upon Ursula, who was nearly crying in excitement and surprise. "But if they think I am to be driven out of a resolution I have made by what they say--if they think that I will be bullied into giving up because of their claptrap," he cried, looking sternly at her, "then you will find you are mistaken. You will find I am not such a weak idiot as you suppose. Give up! because some demagogue from a Dissenting Committee takes upon him to criticise my conduct. If you think I have so little self-respect, so little stamina,"

he said, fiercely, "you will find you have made a very great mistake."

"Oh, Reginald, _me_?" cried Ursula, with tears in her eyes; "did I ever think anything unkind of you? did I ever ask you to do anything that was disagreeable? You should not look as if it was me."

Then he threw himself down again on the old sofa, which creaked and tottered under the shock.

"Poor little Ursula!" he cried, with a short laugh. "Did you think I meant you? But if they thought they would master me by these means,"

said Reginald with pale fury, "they never made a greater mistake, I can tell you. A parcel of trumpery agitators, speechifiers, little petty demagogues, whom n.o.body ever heard of before. A fine thing, indeed, to have all the shopkeepers of Carlingford sitting in committee on one's conduct, isn't it--telling one what one ought to do? By Jupiter! It's enough to make a man swear!"

"I declare!" cried Janey loudly, "how like Reginald is to papa! I never saw it before. When he looks wicked like that, and sets his teeth--but I am not going to be pushed, not by my brother or any one!" said the girl, growing red, and making a step out of his reach. "I won't stand it. I am not a child any more than you."

Janey's wrath was appeased, however, when Reginald produced the paper and read Northcote's speech aloud. In her interest she drew nearer and nearer, and read the obnoxious column over his shoulder, joining in Ursula's cries of indignation. By the time the three had thus got through it, Reginald's own agitation subsided into that fierce amus.e.m.e.nt which is the frequent refuge of the a.s.saulted.

"Old Green in the chair! and old Tozer and the rest have all been sitting upon me," he said, with that laugh which is proverbially described as from the wrong side of the mouth, whatever that may be.

Ursula said nothing in reply, but in her heart she felt yet another stab. Tozer! This was another complication. She had taken so great a romantic interest in the heroine of that ball, which was the most entrancing moment of Ursula's life, that it seemed a kind of disloyalty to her dreams to give up thus completely, and dethrone the young lady in black; but what could the poor girl do? In the excitement of this question the personality of Reginald's special a.s.sailant was lost altogether: the girls did not even remember his name.