Phoebe, Junior Part 34

"The large family ain't objectionable if you make 'em work," said Mr.

Copperhead; "it all depends on that. There's always objections, you know," he said, with a jocular grin, "to pretty girls like that daughter of yours put straight in a young fellow's way. You won't mind my saying it? They neither work themselves nor let others work--that sort. I think we could get on with a deal fewer women, I must allow. There's where Providence is in a mistake. We don't want 'em in England; it's a waste of raw material. They're bad for the men, and they ain't much good for themselves, that I can see."

"You are a little hard upon the ladies, Mr. Copperhead."

"Not I--we can't do without 'em of course, and the surplus we ought to export as we export other surpluses; but I object to them in a young man's way, not meaning anything unpleasant to you. And perhaps if I had been put up to it sooner--but let's hope there's no mischief done. What is this now? some of your antiquities, I suppose. Oh yes, let's have a look at it; but I confess it's the present age I like best."

"This is the College," cried Mr. May, swallowing certain sensations which impaired his sense of friendliness; "but not an educational college, a foundation for old men--decayed citizens, as they are called--founded in the fifteenth century. My son is the chaplain, and will be very glad to show it you. There are twelve old men here at present, very comfortably looked after, thanks to the liberal arrangements of the founder. They attend chapel twice a day, where Reginald officiates. It is very agreeable to me to have him settled so near me."

"Cunning I call it," said Mr. Copperhead, with his hoa.r.s.e laugh; "does you credit; a capital snug nest--nothing to do--and pay--pay good now?

those old fellows generally managed that; as it was priests that had the doing of it, of course they did well for their own kind. Good Lord, what a waste of good money all this is!" he continued, as they went into the quadrangle, and saw the little park beyond with its few fine trees; "half-a-dozen nice villas might be built on this site, and it's just the sort of place I should fancy where villas would pay. Why don't the Corporation lay hands on it? And your son lives here? Too dull for me; I like a little movement going on, but I dare say he likes it; and with how much a year?"

"Two hundred and fifty; and some advantages beside--"

"Bravo!" said Mr. Copperhead, "now how many curates could you get for that two and a-half? I've got a great respect for you, Mr. May; you know what's what. That shows sense, that does. How do you do, sir? fine old place you've got here--capital snug appointment. I've just been saying to your father I admire his sense, looking out for you a nice fat easy appointment like this."

Reginald turned from red to white, and then to portentous blackness. The subject was of all others the one least likely to please him.

"It is not very fat," he said, with a look of offence, quite undeserved by the chief sufferer, towards his father, "nor very easy. But come in.

It is rather an interesting old place. I suppose you would like to see the Chapel, and the old captain's rooms; they are very fine in their way."

"Thank you; we've been seeing a deal already, and I feel tired. I think I'll--let you off the chapel. Hallo! here's another old friend--Northcote, by George! and what are _you_ doing here I should like to know, a blazing young screamer of the Liberation Society, in a high and dry parson's rooms? This is as good as a play."

"I suppose one is not required to stay at exactly the same point of opinion all one's life," said Northcote, with a half-smile.

"By George! but you are though, when you're a public man; especially when you're on a crusade. Haven't I heard you call it a crusade? I can tell you that changing your opinion is just the very last thing the public will permit you to do. But I shan't tell for my part--make yourself easy. Clarence, don't you let it out; your mother, fortunately, is out of the way. The world shall never know through me that young Northcote, the anti-state Churchman, was discovered hob-n.o.bbing with a snug chaplain in a sinecure appointment. Ha, ha! had you there."

"To do Northcote justice," said Mr. May; "he began life in Carlingford by pointing out this fact to the neighbourhood; that it was a sinecure, and that my son and I--"

"Would it not be more to the point to inspect the chapel?" said Reginald, who had been standing by impatiently playing with a big key; upon which Mr. Copperhead laughed more loudly than before.

"We'll not trouble the chapel," he said, "railway stations are more in my way; you are all a great deal finer than I am, and know a deal more, I suppose; but my roughness has served its purpose on the whole, better perhaps for some things--yes, for some things, Clar, and you may thank your stars, old boy. If you had been a parson's son, by George! there would have been no fat appointment waiting for you."

"After all, my son's appointment is not so very fat," said Mr. May, forcing a laugh. "It is not so much as many a boy at school gets from his father."

"Ah, you mean my boy at school! he's an extravagant dog. His mother and he, sir, are made of different clay from me; they are porcelain and I am delft. They want fine velvet cupboards to stand themselves in, while I'm for the kitchen dresser. That's the difference. But I can afford it, thank Heaven. I tell Clarence that he may thank his stars that I can afford it, and that he isn't born a poor man's son. He has been plucked at Oxford, you know," he said, with a big laugh, thrusting forth his chest as Clarence thrust forth his shirt-front, with an apparent complacency over the very plucking. My son can afford to be plucked, he seemed to say. He got up as he spoke, and approaching the fireplace turned his back to it, and gathered up his coat-tails under his arm. He was no taller than Mr. May, and very little taller than Reginald; but they both shrank into insignificance beside the big self-a.s.sertive figure. He looked about the room as if he was thinking of "buying up"

the whole contents of it, and thought very little of them. A glance of contempt, a shrug more implied than actual, testified his low opinion of everything around. When he withdrew his eyes from the furniture he shook out his leg, as Clarence had done his, and gave a pull to his trousers that they might sit properly. He had the word "Rich" painted in big letters all over him, and he seemed to feel it his vocation to show this sense of superiority. Clarence by his side, the living copy of the great man's appearance and manners, strutted and put himself forward like his father, as a big calf might place itself beside the parent cow. Mr.

Copperhead did not look upon his offspring, however, with the cow's motherly complacency. He laughed at him openly, with cynical amus.e.m.e.nt.

He was clever in his way, and Clarence was stupid; and besides he was the proprietor, and Clarence, for all he was porcelain, was his goods and chattels. When he looked at him, a wicked leer of derision awoke in his eye.

"Yes, my boy," he said, "thank your stars; you would not make much of it if you were a poor man. You're an ornament that costs dear; but I can afford you. So, Northcote, you're changing your opinions--going over to the Church, eh? Extremes meet, they say; I shouldn't have thought it--"

"I am doing nothing of the kind," said Northcote stoutly. He was not in a mood to be taken to task by this Mammon of unrighteousness, and indeed had at all times been a great deal too independent and unwilling to submit to leading members of the connection. Mr. Copperhead, however, showed no resentment. Northcote too, like Clarence, had a father before him, and stood on quite a different footing from the ordinary young pastor, whose business it was to be humble and accept all that his betters might portion out.

"Well," he said, "you can afford to please yourself, and that's always something. By the way, isn't it time to have something to eat? If there is a good hotel near--"

"Luncheon will be waiting at my house," said Mr. May, who was still doing his best to please the man upon whom he had built such wild hopes, "and Ursula will be waiting."

"Ah, ah, the young lady! so she will. I wouldn't miss that for something; but I don't like putting you to so much expense. My son here has an excellent appet.i.te, as you must have found out by this time, and for my part so have I. I think it a thousand pities to put you to this trouble--and expense."

"Pray don't think of that," said Mr. May with courtesy, which belied his feelings, for he would have liked nothing so well as to have knocked down his complacent patron. He led the way out, almost with eagerness, feeling Mr. Copperhead to be less offensive out of doors than within four walls. Was this the sort of man to be appealed to for help as he had thought? Probably his very arrogance would make him more disposed towards liberality. Probably it would flatter his sense of consequence, to have such a request made to him. Mr. May was very much at sea, letting I dare not wait upon I would; afraid to speak lest he should shut this door of help by so doing, and afraid to lose the chance of any succour by not speaking. He tried hard, in spite of all his difficulties, to be smooth and agreeable to a man who had so much in his power; but it was harder work than he could have thought.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

FATHER AND SON.

Ursula had prepared a very careful luncheon for the stranger. She thought him disagreeable, but she had not looked at him much, for, indeed, Ursula's mind was much unsettled. Horace Northcote had spoken to her that morning, after Mrs. Hurst's visit and her retaliation upon him, as no man yet had ever spoken to her before. He had told her a long story, though it was briefly done, and could have been expressed in three words. He was not of her species of humanity; his ways of thinking, his prejudices, his traditions, were all different from hers, and yet that had happened to him which happens all over the world in every kind of circ.u.mstances--without knowing how it was, he had got to love her. Yes, he knew very well how it was, or rather, he knew when it was, which is all that is to be expected from a lover. It was on the evening of the _entrees_, the first dinner-party, and he had gone on ever since, deeper and deeper, hearing her say many things which he did not agree in, and tracing her life through a score of little habits which were not congenial to his, yet loving her more and more for all that was new to him, and even for the things which were uncongenial. He had told her all this, and Ursula had listened with a kind of awe, wondering at the ardour in the young man's eyes, and the warmth with which he spoke; wondering and trembling a little. She had guessed what he meant the night before, as has been said, and this had touched her with a little thrill of awakened feeling; but the innocent girl knew no more about pa.s.sion than a child, and when she saw it, glowing and ardent, appealing to her, she was half-alarmed, half-overawed by the strange sight. What answer could she make to him? She did not know what to say. To reject him altogether was not in Ursula's heart; but she could not respond to that strange, new, overwhelming sentiment, which put a light in his eyes which she dared not meet; which dazzled her when she ventured a glance at him. "Was he to go away?" he asked, his voice, too, sounding musical and full of touching chords. Ursula could not tell him to go away either. What she did say to him, she never quite knew; but at least, whatever it was, it left him hopeful, if unsatisfied.

And since that time her mind had been in a strange confusion, a confusion strange but sweet. Gratified vanity is not a pretty t.i.tle to give to any feeling, and yet that mixture of gratification and grat.i.tude, and penetrating pleasure in the fact of being elevated from an often-scolded and imperfect child to an admired and worshipped woman is, perhaps, of all the sensations that feminine youth is conscious of, the most poignant in its sweetness. It went through her whole life; sometimes it made her laugh when she was all alone, and there was nothing of a laughter-producing nature in her way; and sometimes it made her cry, both the crying and the laughter being one. It was strange, very strange, and yet sweet. Under the influence of this, and of the secret homage which Northcote paid her whenever they met; and which she now understood as she had never understood it before, the girl's whole nature expanded, though she did not know. She was becoming sweet to the children, to puzzled Janey, to every one around her. Her little petulances were all subdued. She was more sympathetic than she had ever been before. And yet she was not in love with her lover. It was only that the sunshine of young life had caught her, that the highest gratification of youth had fallen to her share unawares. All this might have been, and yet some one else come in to secure Ursula's real love; but in the mean time she was all the happier, all the better for the love which she did not return.

This is a digression from our immediate subject, which was the luncheon prepared for Mr. Copperhead. Ursula sent up an urgent message for Phoebe, who came to her in her prettiest morning dress, very carefully arranged, but with a line of care upon her brow.

"I will come if you wish it, dear," she said; "but I don't want to meet Mr. Copperhead. I don't like him."

"Neither do I like him," cried Ursula. "He said something disagreeable the little moment he was here. Oh, I don't remember what it was, but something. Please stay. What am I to do with them all by myself? If you will help me, I may get through."

Phoebe kissed her with a tremulous kiss; perhaps she was not unwilling to see with her own eyes what the father of Clarence meant, and what brought him here. She sat down at the window, and was the first to see them coming along the street.

"What a gentleman your father looks beside them," cried Phoebe; "both of them, father and son; though Clarence, after all, is a great deal better than his father, less like a British sn.o.b."

Ursula came and stood by her, looking out.

"I don't think he is much better than his father," she said.

Phoebe took her hand suddenly and wrung it, then dropped it as if it had hurt her. What did it all mean? Ursula, though rays of enlightenment had come to her, was still perplexed, and did not understand.

Mr. Copperhead did not see her till he went to luncheon, when Phoebe appeared with little Amy May looking like a visitor, newly arrived. She had run upstairs after that first sight of him from the window, declaring herself unable to be civil to him except at table. The great man's face almost grew pale at the sight of her. He looked at Ursula, and then at Clarence, and laughed.

"'Wheresoever the carcase is the eagles are gathered together,'" he said. "That's Scripture, ain't it, Miss Ursula? I am not good at giving chapter and verse."

"What does it mean?" asked Ursula.

She was quite indifferent to Mr. Copperhead, and perfectly unconscious of his observation. As for Phoebe, on the contrary, she was slightly agitated, her placid surface ruffled a little, and she looked her best in her agitation. Mr. Copperhead looked straight at her across the table, and laughed in his insolent way.

"So you are here too, Miss Phoebe!" he said. "I might think myself in the Crescent if I didn't know better. I met young Northcote just now, and now you. What may you be doing here, might one ask? It is what you call a curious coincidence, ain't it, Clarence and you both here?"

"I said so when Mr. Clarence came," said Phoebe. "_I_ came to take care of my grandmother, who is ill; and it was a very lucky thing for me that I had met Miss May at your ball, Mr. Copperhead."

"By Jove, wasn't it!" said Clarence, roused to some dull sense of what was going on. "We owe all the fun we have had here to that, so we do.

Odd, when one thinks of it; and thought so little of it then, didn't we?

It's a very queer world."

"So you've been having fun here?" said his father. "I thought you came here to work; that's how we old fellows get taken in. Work! with young ladies dangling about, and putting things into your head! I ought to have known better, don't you think so, Miss Ursula? _You_ could have taught me a thing or two."

"I?" said Ursula, startled. "I don't know what I could teach any one. I think Mr. Clarence Copperhead has kept to his hours very steadily. Papa is rather severe; he never would take any excuse from any of us when we were working with him."