Phoebe, Junior Part 33

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

AN EXTRAVAGANCE.

Mr. May did not take any particular notice of what was going on around him among the young people. n.o.body could have been more startled than he, had he been told of the purpose with which Horace Northcote, the Dissenting minister, had paid his early morning visit; and though he had a half-scornful, half-amused glimmer of insight into the feelings of his son, and saw that Clarence Copperhead was heavily veering the same way, it did not occur to him that any crisis was approaching. He was enjoying himself in his way, and he had not done that for a long time. He dearly liked the better way of living, the more liberal strain of housekeeping and expenditure; he liked the social meetings in the evening, the talk after dinner with the three young men, the half-fatherly flirtation with Phoebe, which she too enjoyed much, avowedly preferring him, with pretty coquetry, to the others. All this was very pleasant to him; and the additional money in his pocket was very pleasant, and when the post came in, one of these April mornings, and brought a letter from James, enclosing a draft for fifty pounds, his satisfaction was intense. The sight of the money brought an itching to his fingers, a restlessness about him generally. And yet it was not all that might have been desired, only fifty pounds! he had been buoying himself up by vain thoughts of how James this time, having been so long writing, would send a larger sum, which would at once tide him over the Tozer business, and on this account had been giving himself no trouble about it. Never before had he been so _insouciant_, although never before had the risk been so great. He had suffered so much about it last time, probably, that was why he took it so easily now; or was it because his trust in the chapter of accidents had grown greater since he was more dependent on it? or because of the generally expanded sense of living in him which made anxiety uncongenial anyhow? Whatever the cause was, this was the effect. A momentary disappointment when he saw how little James's draft was--then a sense of that semi-intoxication which comes upon a poor man when a sum of money falls into his hands--gradually invaded his soul. He tried to settle down to his writing, but did not feel equal to the effort. It was too little for the purpose, he said to himself, for which he wanted it; but it was enough to do a great many pleasant things with otherwise. For the first time he had no urgent bills to swallow it up; the very grocer, a long-suffering tradesman who made less fuss than the others, and about whom Ursula made less fuss, had been pacified by a payment on account of the Copperhead money, and thus had his mouth stopped. Barring that bill, indeed, things were in a more comfortable state than they had been for a long time in the May household; and putting that out of account, James's money would have been the nearest approach to luxury--reckoning luxury in its most simple form as money to spend without any absolutely forestalling claim upon it--which Mr. May had known for years. It is so seldom that poor people have this delicious sense of a little, ever so little surplus! and it would be hard to say how he could entertain the feeling that it was an overplus.

There was something of the fumes of desperation perhaps, and impending fate in the lightness of heart which seized upon him. He could not keep still over his writing. He got up at last, and put James's draft into his pocket-book, and got his hat to go out. It was a fine morning, full of that exhilaration which belongs only to the spring. He went to the bank, and paid in the money, getting a small sum at the same time for his own immediate use; but somehow his restlessness was scarcely satisfied by that very legitimate piece of business, and he extended his walk into the town, and strayed, half by chance, half by intention, to the old furniture shop at the other end of the High Street, which was a favourite resort of the higher cla.s.ses in Carlingford, and where periodically there was an auction, at which sometimes great bargains were to be had. Mr. May went into this dangerous place boldly. The sale was going on; he walked into the midst of temptation, forgetting the prayer against it, which no doubt he had said that morning. And as evil fate would have it, a carved book-case, the very thing he had been sighing for, for years, was at that moment the object of the auctioneer's praises. It was standing against the wall, a n.o.ble piece of furniture, in which books would show to an advantage impossible otherwise, preserved from dust and damp by the fine old oak and gla.s.s door. Mr. May's heart gave a little jump. Almost everybody has wished for something unattainable, and this had been the object of his desires for years. He gave a little start when he saw it, and hurried forward.

The bidding had actually begun; there was no time to think and consider, if he wished to have a chance, and it was going cheap, dead cheap.

After a minute or two of compet.i.tion the blood rose to his cheeks, he got thoroughly excited. The effect of this excitement was two-fold--not only did it drive all thought of prudence out of his head, but it raised by several pounds the price of the book-case, which, had he gone about it coolly, he might have had at a much cheaper rate. When he suddenly woke up to find himself the owner of it, a thrill of consternation ran over him--it was all so sudden; and it was perfectly innocent, if only he had any money; and to be sure he had James's money, which was not enough to do anything else--certainly not to do the thing he wanted it for. He tried to laugh at himself for the little thrill of alarm that ran through him; but it was too late to recede; and he gave his cheque for the money and his directions as to having it sent to the Parsonage, with a quake at his heart, yet a little flourish of satisfaction.

"Just what I have been wanting for years," he said, as he examined his new acquisition, and the people about looked at him with additional respect he felt, not being used to see Mr. May so prompt in payment, and so ready with his money. This pleased him also. He walked home with his head a little turned still, although there was a quake and flutter underneath. Well! he said to himself, who could call it an extravagance?

a thing he had wanted for years--a thing which was a necessity, not for luxury, but everyday use--a thing which was not dear, and which was very handsome and substantial, and _really good_; how could any one say it was extravagant? Ursula might stare with her big eyes, but she was only a silly little girl, and women always were silly about expenses, alarmed by a big bold handsome purchase, though there was n.o.body better at the art of frittering away money in pretty nothings. When he got home, he began at once nervously to clear the s.p.a.ce where it should stand. What an improvement it would be! and his books were getting spoiled daily in those unsightly, open shelves, entirely spoiled. It was exciting to antic.i.p.ate its arrival, and the admiration and commotion in the house.

He called in Betsy and gave her orders about it; how, if it came when he was absent, it was to be put in that particular place, no other.

"And mind that great care is taken, for it is valuable, and a beautiful piece of furniture," he said.

"La, sir!" said Betsy, who was thunderstruck, though she knew it was not "her place" to show any feeling. He did not think it was necessary to appeal to Ursula on the same subject, but was rather glad to get out again, feeling the restlessness which had not been dissipated, but rather the reverse. He went and saw one or two poor people, to whom he was much more tolerant and kind than his wont, for in general Mr. May was not attracted towards the poor; and he gave them a shilling or two of the money he had drawn at the bank that morning--though somehow it had acquired a certain value in his eyes, and it was with a grudge that he took it out of his pocket. I must not spend this, he said to himself; but gave the shillings as a kind of t.i.the or propitiatory offering to Providence, that things might go well with him. Why should not things go well with him? He was not a bad man, he wronged n.o.body. He had done nothing to-day that a saint might not have done; he wanted the book-case, and he had the money, a sum not big enough for any more important purpose; but which was far better disposed of so than frittered away in nothings, as no doubt it would have otherwise been. By the afternoon, when the book-case arrived, he had convinced himself that it was not only quite reasonable, but a most lucky chance, a thing he could scarcely have hoped for, the opportunity and the money both coming in such exact accord with each other. When he returned from his walk the girls were looking at it, Ursula somewhat scared, Janey in open raptures.

"It is very nice indeed, papa," said the elder girl; "but it must have cost a deal of money."

"Be thankful that you haven't got to pay for it," he said, brusquely. He was not disposed to stand criticism. How it filled up his bare room, and made it, Mr. May thought, all at once into a library, though the old writing-table and shabby chairs looked rather worse perhaps than before, and suggested renewal in the most urgent way. To make it all of a piece, to put a soft Turkey carpet instead of the drugget, how pleasant it would be!--not extravagant, only a natural inclination towards the seemly, and a desire to have things around him becoming his position. No doubt such things were things which he ought to have in his position; a gentleman and a scholar, how humiliating it was that nothing but the barest elements of comfort should be within his reach. This was not how life ought to be; a poor creature like Clarence Copperhead, without birth, or breeding, or brains, or anything but money, was able to gratify every wish, while he--his senior, his superior! Instead of blaming himself, therefore, for his self-indulgence, Mr. May sympathized with himself, which is a much less safe thing to do; and accordingly, it soon began to appear to him that his self-denial all this time in not giving himself what he wanted had been extreme, and that what he had now done, in conceding himself so harmless a gratification, was what he ought to have done years ago. It was his own money sent to him by his dutiful son without conditions; and who had any right to interfere?

When he was at dinner, Betsy came behind his chair under pretence of serving him; Betsy, whose place was in the kitchen, who had no right to show in the dining-room at all, and whose confused toilette had caught Ursula's eye and filled her with horror.

"Please, sir," she said, breathing hot on Mr. May's ear, till he shrank with sensitive horror. "Cotsdean's in the kitchen. He says as how he must see you; and I can't get him away."

"Ah, Cotsdean? tell him if he has anything to say to me, to write it down."

"Which he's done, sir," said Betsy, producing a little bit of paper rolled tightly together, "but I wasn't to give it till I'd asked you to see him. Oh, please see him, sir, like a dear good gentleman. He looks like a man as is going off his head."

"He is a fool," said Mr. May, taking the paper, but setting his teeth as he did so. Evidently he must get rid of this fellow--already beginning to trouble him, as if he was not the best person to know when and how far he could go.

"Tell him I'll attend to it, he need not trouble himself," he said, and put the paper into his pocket, and went on with his dinner. Cotsdean, indeed! surely there had been enough of him. What were his trumpery losses in comparison with what his princ.i.p.al would lose, and how dare that fellow turn up thus and press him continually for his own poor selfish safety? This was not how Mr. May had felt three months before; but everything changes, and he felt that he had a right to be angry at this selfish solicitude. Surely it was of as much consequence to him at least as to Cotsdean. The man was a fussy disagreeable fool, and nothing more.

And as it happened they sat late that night at dinner, without any particular reason, because of some discussion into which Clarence and Reginald fell, so that it was late before Mr. May got back to his room, where his books were lying in a heap waiting their transportation. They seemed to appeal to him also, and ask him reproachfully how they had got there, and he went to work arranging them all with all the enthusiasm natural to a lover of books. He was a book-lover, a man full of fine tastes and cultured elegant ways of thinking. If he had been extravagant (which he was not) it would have been in the most innocent, nay delightful and laudable way. To attach any notion of criminality, any suspicion of wrong-doing to such a virtuous indulgence, how unjust it would be! There was no company upstairs that evening. Copperhead had strolled out with Reginald to smoke his cigar, much against the will of the latter, and was boring him all the way to the College with accounts of his own lavish expenditure, and how much he had given for this and that; his cameos, his diamond studs, the magnificent dressing-case which was the wonder of the Parsonage. "Hang it all, what is the good of having money if you don't spend it?" said Clarence, and Reginald, who had not much money to spend, felt as near hating him as it was in his nature to do. Thus Mr. May was released from duty in the drawing-room, where Ursula, palpitating with many thoughts which were altogether new to her, sat doing her darning, and eluding as well as she could Janey's questions. Janey was determinedly conversational that night. She drove Ursula nearly out of her senses, and kept Johnnie--who had crept into the drawing-room in high delight at finding it for once free to him--from learning his lessons.

"Oh, how nice it is to be by ourselves," said Janey, "instead of all those new people. I don't mind Phoebe; but strange men in the house, what a nuisance they are, always getting in one's way--don't you think so, Ursula?"

Ursula made no reply, and after awhile even Janey sank into silence, and the drawing-room, usually so gay, got a cold and deserted look. The new life which had come in had left its mark, and to go back to what had once been so pleasant in the past was no longer possible. Johnnie and Janey might like it, having regained their former places, but to Ursula the solitude was horrible. She asked herself, with a great blush and quiver, what she would do if that temporary filling up of new interests and relationships was to fall away, as was likely, and leave her to the old life unbroken, to Janey's childish society and questions, and papa's imperious and unmodified sway. She grew pale and chill at the very thought.

But Mr. May, as we have said, was off duty. He forgot all about Cotsdean and the note in his pocket, and set to work with the most boyish simplicity of delight to arrange his books in his new shelves. How well they looked! never before had their setting done them justice. There were books in gorgeous bindings, college prizes which had never shown at all, and which now gleamed out in crimson and gold from behind the gla.s.s, and made their owner's heart beat with pleasure. Alas! to think how much innocent pleasure is denied us by the want of that small sum of money! and worse still, how an innocent pleasure becomes the reverse of innocent when it is purchased by the appropriation of something which should have been employed elsewhere. Perhaps, however, the sense of guilt which he kept under, added zest in Mr. May's mind to the pleasure of his acquisition; he was s.n.a.t.c.hing a fearful joy, Heaven knows how soon the penalty might overwhelm him. In the mean time he was determined to take the good of it, and enjoy what he had gained.

When the books were all in he sat down at his table and surveyed it, rubbing his dusty hands. How much that is childish, how much that is fresh, and youthful, and innocent must be in the mind of a man (you would say) who could be thus excited about a book-case! and yet this was not the kind of man whom you would call unsophisticated and youthful. It was probably the state of suppressed excitement in which he was, the unreality of his position, that helped him to that sense of elation as much as anything else; for emotion is a Proteus ready to take any form, and pain itself sometimes finds vent in the quick blazing up of fict.i.tious delight, as much as in the moanings that seem more accordant with its own nature. He put his hand into his pocket for his pencil to make a note of the contents of the new shelves, and then he found Cotsdean's note, which he had not forgotten, but which he had felt no desire to remember. When he felt it between his fingers his countenance fell a little; but he took it out and read it with the smile still upon his face. It was a dirty little roll of paper, scribbled in pencil.

"Rev. Sir,

"I hope as you are not forgetting the 15th. Pleas excuse anxiety and bad writing, i am a poor nervous man I no, a word of answer just to say as it is all right will much oblidge.

"Rev. Sir, "Your humble servant, "T. COTSDEAN."

Betsy knocked at the door as he read this, with a request for an answer to Mr. Cotsdean's note. "Little Bobby, sir, is waiting for it in the kitchen."

"Give Bobby some supper," said Mr. May, "tell him to tell his father it's all right, and I shan't forget. You understand? He is a troublesome little fool; but it's all right, and I shan't forget, and give the child some supper, Betsy. He ought not to be out so late."

"He is a delicate little thing, sir, thankye, sir," said Betsy, half-frightened by her master's amiability; and he smiled and repeated,

"Tell him it's all right."

Was it all right, the 15th? Cotsdean must have made a mistake. Mr. May's countenance paled, and the laugh went off; he opened a drawer in his writing-table and took out a book, and anxiously consulted an entry in it. It was the 18th certainly, as clear as possible. Something had been written on the opposite page, and had blotted slightly the one on which these entries were written; but there it stood, the 18th April. Mr. May prided himself on making no mistakes in business. He closed the book again with a look of relief, the smile coming back once more to his face. The 18th, it was three days additional, and in the time there was no doubt that he would find out what was the right thing to do.

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

THE MILLIONNAIRE.

When Mr. May woke next morning, it was not the book-case he thought of, but that date which had been the last thing in his mind on the previous night. Not the 15th,--the 18th. Certainly he was right, and Cotsdean was wrong. Cotsdean was a puzzle-headed being, making his calculations by the rule of thumb; but he had put down the date, and there could be no possible mistake about it. He got up disposed to smile at the poor man's ignorance and fussy restlessness of mind. "I have never left him in the lurch, he may trust to me surely in the future," Mr. May said to himself, and smiled with a kind of condescending pity for his poor agent's timidity; after all, perhaps, as Cotsdean had so little profit by it, it was not wonderful that he should be uneasy. After this, it might be well if they did anything further of the sort, to divide the money, so that Cotsdean too might feel that he had got something for the risk he ran; but then, to be sure, if he had not the money he had no trouble, except by his own foolish anxiety, for the payment, and always a five-pound note or two for his pains. But Mr. May said to himself that he would do no more in this way after the present bill was disposed of; no, he would make a stand, he would insist upon living within his income. He would not allow himself to be subject to these perpetual agitations any more. It would require an effort, but after the effort was made all would be easy. So he said to himself; and it was the 18th, not the 15th, three days more to make his arrangements in. It had come to be the 12th now, and up to this moment he had done nothing, having that vague faith in the Indian mail which had been realized, and yet had not been realized. But still he had nearly a week before him, which was enough certainly. Anything that he could do in six months, he said to himself, he could easily do in six days--the mere time was nothing; and he smiled as he dressed himself leisurely, thinking it all over. Somehow everything looked perfectly easy to him this time; last time he had been plunged into tragic despair; now, and he did not know why, he took it quite easily; he seemed to fear nothing. There were various ways of getting the money as natural as the daylight, and in the mean time why should he make himself unhappy? As soon as he was ready he went to his room and had another look at the book-case which, with his best books in it, all in order and ranged in unbroken lines, looked everything a book-case ought to look. It made him feel more of a man somehow, more like the gentleman and scholar he had meant to be when he started in life; he had not intended then to be a poor district inc.u.mbent all his life, with a family of eight children. His book-case somehow transported him back to the days when he had thought of better things for himself, and when life had held an ideal for him. Perhaps at the best of times it had never been a very high ideal; but when a man is over fifty and has given up doing anything but struggle through each day as it comes, and get out of his work as best he may, doing what he must, leaving undone what he can, any ideal almost seems something higher than himself; but the recollection of what he had meant to be, came back to him strongly when he looked at his carved oak. It had not been carried out; but still he felt rehabilitated and better in his own opinion as he stood beside this costly purchase he had made, and felt that it changed his room and all his surroundings. It might have been almost wicked to run into such an extravagance, but yet it did him good.

"My people came down to the Hall last night," Clarence Copperhead said to him at breakfast, "and the Governor is coming over along with Sir Robert. He'd like to see you, I am sure, and I suppose they'll be going in for sight-seeing, and that sort of thing. He is a dab at sight-seeing, is the Governor. I can't think how he can stand it for my part."

"Then you must remember that I put myself at his orders for the day,"

said Mr. May graciously. "Sir Robert is not a bad guide, but I am a better, though it sounds modest to say it; and, Ursula, of course Mr.

Copperhead will take luncheon with us."

"Don't think of that," said Clarence, "he's queer and likes his own way.

Just as likely as not he'll think he ought to support the hotels of the place where he is--sort of local production, you know. I think it's nonsense, but that is how it is--that's the man."

"We shall look for him all the same," said Mr. May, with a nod at Ursula; and a sudden project sprang up in his mind, wild as projects so often are. This father whom his fancy, working upon what Clarence said, immediately invested with all the prodigal liberality of a typical rich man; this stranger to whom a hundred pounds was less then a penny was to himself, would give him the money he wanted. What so easy? He drew a long breath, and though he had not been aware that he was anxious, he was suddenly conscious of a sense of relief. Yes, to be sure, what so simple, what so likely? he would explain his monetary necessities lightly and with grace, and Mr. Copperhead would supply them. He was in the mildest state of desperation, the painless stage, as may be seen, when this strange idea entered into his head. He hugged it, though he was a man of the world and might have known better, and it produced a kind of elation which would have been a very strange spectacle to any looker-on who knew what it meant. The thing seemed done when he next thought of it ten minutes later, settled as if it had been so for years.

Mr. Copperhead would make it all right for him, and after that he would undertake such risks no more.

Mr. Copperhead, however, did not come for two days, though Ursula spent all the morning and a great deal of trouble in arranging a luncheon for him; but on the second morning he came, driven by Sir Robert, who had changed horses on the road, and who was in a somewhat irritated and excited condition, very glad to get rid of his visitor.

"I hope you don't mind having your toes trodden on, May," he said, privately; "that fellow is never happy but when he's insulting some one." And indeed Mr. Copperhead began this favourite pastime at once by making very big eyes at the sight of Ursula. "A-ha!" he said, rubbing his hands, and elevating his eyebrows; and he gave a meaning laugh as he shook hands with her, and declared that he did not expect to find young ladies here. "I haven't a great deal of education myself, and I never knew it could be carried on so pleasantly," he said. "You're a lucky young dog, Clar, that's what you are;" and the son laughed with the father at this excellent joke, though the rest of the company looked on with great gravity. Ursula, for her part, turned with wondering eyes from the new-comer to her old friend, Sir Robert.

"What does he mean?" she asked, with an appealing look.

"He is the greatest brute I know," said poor Sir Robert, under his breath; and he went off suddenly on the plea of business, leaving his unpleasant visitor in Mr. May's hands, who undertook the charge not unwillingly, being possessed by his own plan. Mr. Copperhead went all over Carlingford. He inspected the town-hall, the infirmary, and the church, with the business-like air of a man who was doing his duty.

"Poor little place, but well enough for the country," he said. "A country-town's a mistake in my opinion. If I had it in my power I'd raze them all to the ground, and have one London and the rest green fields.

That's your sort, Mr. May. Now you don't produce anything here, what's the good of you? All unproductive communities, sir, ought to be swept off the face of the earth. I'd let Manchester and those sort of places go on till they burst; but a bit of a little piggery like this, where there's nothing doing, no trade, no productions of any kind."

"We like it all the same," said Mr. May; "we small sort of people who have no enterprise like you--"

"I dare say you like it! To be sure, you can moon about here as much as you please, and make believe to do something, and there's n.o.body to contradict you. In a great centre of industry you couldn't live like that; you must work or you'll get pushed aside altogether; unless, of course, you're a millionnaire to start with," Mr. Copperhead added, with a noisy laugh.

"Which I am not certainly--very much the reverse--in short, a poor man with a large family, which I suppose is a thing about as objectionable in a centre of industry as anything can be."