Phoebe, Junior Part 9

"Ursula has come back!" cried the little ones, who had returned from their tea-party, running to meet their father at the door.

Mr. May was very good, except by moments, to his younger children. He was not, indeed, an unkind father to any of them; but he had never forgiven Providence for leaving him with his motherless family upon his hands, a man so utterly unfit for the task. Perhaps he did not put this exactly into words, but he felt it deeply, and had never got over it.

There were so many things that he could have done better, and there were so many people who could have done this better; and yet it was precisely to him, not a person adapted to the charge of children, that it had been given to do it! This seemed to argue a want of judgment in the regulation of mortal affairs, which irritated him all the more because he was a clergyman, and had to persuade other people that everything that happened to them was for the best. He was a man of some culture, and literary power, and wrote very pleasant "thoughtful" papers for some of the Church magazines; but these compositions, though very easy to read, were only brought into the world by elaborate precautions on the part of the family, which scarcely dared to speak above its breath when papa was "writing;" for on such occasions he could be very savage, as the occasional offender knew. He was a man with an imposing person, good-looking, and of very bland and delightful manners, when he chose.

But yet he had never made friends, and was now at fifty-five the inc.u.mbent of St. Roque, with a small income and a humble position in the church hierarchy of Carlingford. He preached better than any other of the Carlingford clergymen, looked better, had more reputation out of the place; and was of sufficiently good family, and tolerably well connected. Yet he never got on, never made any real advance in life.

n.o.body could tell what was the cause of this, for his opinions were moderate and did not stand in his way--indeed within the limits of moderation he had been known to modify his principles, now inclining towards the high, then towards the low, according as circ.u.mstances required, though never going too far in either direction. Such a man ought to have been successful, according to all rules, but he was not.

He was generally in debt and always needy. His eldest son, James, was in India, doing well, and had often sent a contribution towards the comfort of the family, and especially to help Reginald at College. But James had married a year before, and accordingly was in a less favourable position for sending help. And indeed these windfalls had never produced much effect upon the family, who heard of James' gifts vaguely without profiting by them. All this _donna a penser_ to the elder children.

Having no softening medium of a mother's eyes to look at their father through, they were more bold in judging him than, perhaps, they ought to have been; and he did not take pains to fascinate his children, or throw the glamour of love into their eyes. He took it for granted, frankly and as a part of nature, that he himself was the first person to be considered in all matters. So he was, of course--so the father, the bread-winner, the head of the family, ought to be; and when he has a wife to keep him upon that pedestal, and to secure that his worship shall be respected, it becomes natural, and the first article of the family creed; but somehow when a man has to set forth and uphold this principle himself, it is less successful; and in Mr. May's case it was not successful at all. He was not severe or tyrannical, so that they might have rebelled. He only held the conviction quite honestly and ingeniously, that his affairs came first, and were always to be attended to. Nothing could be said against this principle--but it tells badly in the management of a family unless, indeed, as we have said, it is managed through the medium of the mother, who takes away all imputation of selfishness by throwing an awful importance and tender sanct.i.ty over all that happens to be desirable or necessary for "papa."

Mr. May had no wife to watch over the approaches of his study, and talk of him with reverential importance to her children. This was not his fault, but his misfortune. Bitterly had he mourned and resented the blow which took her from him, and deeply felt the loss she was to him. This was how he spoke of it always, the loss to him; and probably poor Mrs.

May, who had adored and admired her husband to the last day of her life, would have been more satisfied with this way of mourning for her than any other; but naturally Ursula, who thought of the loss to herself and the other children, found fault with this limitation of the misfortune.

A man who has thus to fight for himself does not appear in an amiable aspect to his family, to whom, as to all young creatures, it seemed natural that _they_ should be the first objects; and as they were a great trouble and burden to him, perhaps the children did not always bear their most amiable aspect to their father. Both looked selfish to the other, and Mr. May, no doubt, could have made out quite as good a case as the children did. He thought all young people were selfish, taking everything they could, trying to extract even the impossible from the empty purse and strained patience of their elders; and they thought that he was indifferent to them, thinking about himself, as it is a capital sin in a parent to do; and both of them were right and both wrong, as indeed may be said in every case to which there are two sides.

"Ursula has come!" cried the two little ones. Amy and Robin could read their father's face better than they could read those instruments of torture called printed books, and they saw that he was in a good humour, and that they were safe to venture upon the playful liberty of seizing him, one by each hand, and dragging him in. He was a tall man, and the sight of him triumphantly dragged in by these imps, the youngest of whom was about up to his knees, was pretty, and would have gone to the heart of any spectator. He was not himself unconscious of this, and when he was in a good humour, and the children were neat and tolerably dressed, he did not object to being seen by the pa.s.sers-by dragged up his own steps by those two little ones. The only pa.s.sers-by, however, on this occasion were a retired shopkeeper and his wife, who had lately bought one of the oldest houses in Grange Lane, and who had come out for a walk as the day was fine. "Mark my words, Tozer," the lady was saying, "that's a good man though he's a church parson. Them as children hangs onto like that, ain't got no harm in them."

"He's a rum un, he is," said Mr. Tozer in reply. It was a pity that the pretty spectacle of the clergyman with his little boy and girl should have been thus thrown away upon a couple of Dissenters, yet it was not without its effect. Amy pulled one arm and Robin pulled the other. They were dark-haired children like all the Mays, and as this peculiarity is rare among children, it gave these two a certain piquancy.

"Well, well," he said, "take me to Ursula," and after he had kissed his newly-arrived daughter, he sat down in the faded drawing-room with much geniality, and took one child on each knee.

"I hope you have enjoyed yourself, Ursula," he said; "of course, we have missed you. Janey has done her best, but she is not very clever at housekeeping, nor does she understand many things that people require, as you have learned to do."

"Oh, I am so glad you have missed me!" said Ursula, "I mean sorry; I have enjoyed myself very, very much. The Dorsets were so kind, kinder than anybody ever was before."

"And, papa, they have sent me a new dress."

"And me too, papa," chirruped little Amy on his knee.

"You too, Mouse! it was very kind of them; and you went to the Tower and did all the lions, Ursula? that is the lot of country cousins, and the Dorsets would spare you nothing, I suppose."

"We went to much better things," said Ursula, producing her theatres and her ball as she had done before. "And, oh, papa, I like them so much. I wish we lived a little nearer. Those poor little Indian children, I fear they will be too much for Cousin Anne; they look so pale and so peevish, not like our children here."

"Well, they are not pale at all events," said Mr. May, putting them down; "run and play like good children. You will have heard that we have had something happening to us, even in this quiet place, while you were away."

"Oh, I was so astonished," said Ursula, "but Reginald doesn't seem to like it. That is so odd; I should have thought he would have been overjoyed to get something. He used to talk so about having no interest."

"Reginald is like a great many other people. He does not know his own mind," said Mr. May, his countenance overcasting. Ursula knew that sign of coming storms well enough, but she was too much interested to forbear.

"What is a sinecure, papa?" she asked, her brother's last word still dwelling in her mind.

"A piece of outrageous folly," he cried, getting up and striding about the room, "all springing from the foolish books boys read now-a-days, and the nonsense that is put into their minds. Mean! it means that your brother is an a.s.s, that is what it means. After all the money that has been spent upon him--"

"But, papa, we have not spent much, have we? I thought it was his scholarship?" said Ursula with injudicious honesty. Her father turned upon her indignantly.

"I am not aware that I said we. _We_ have nothing to spend upon any one, so far as I know. I said I--the only person in the house who earns any money or is likely to do so, if Reginald goes on in this idiotical way."

Ursula grew red. She was Mr. May's own daughter, and had a temper too.

"If I could earn any money I am sure I would," she cried, "and only too glad. I am sure it is wanted badly enough. But how is a girl to earn any money? I wish I knew how."

"You little fool, no one was thinking of you. Do a little more in the house, and n.o.body will ask you to earn money. Yes, this is the shape things are taking now-a-days," said Mr. May, "the girls are mad to earn anyhow, and the boys, forsooth, have a hundred scruples. If women would hold their tongues and attend to their own business, I have no doubt we should have less of the other nonsense. The fact is everything is getting into an unnatural state. But if Reginald thinks I am going to maintain him in idleness at his age--"

"Papa, for Heaven's sake don't speak so loud, he will hear you!" said Ursula, letting her fears of a domestic disturbance overweigh her prudence.

"He will hear me? I wish him to hear me," said Mr. May, raising his voice. "Am I to be kept from saying what I like, how I like, in my own house, for fear that Reginald should hear me, forsooth! Ursula, I am glad to have you at home; but if you take Reginald's part in his folly, and set yourself against the head of the family, you had better go back again and at once. _He_ may defy me, but I shall not be contradicted by a chit of a girl, I give you my word for that."

Ursula was silent; she grew pale now after her redness of hasty and unconsidered self-defence. Oh, for Cousin Anne to shield and calm her; what a difference it made to plunge back again thus into trouble and strife.

"He thinks it better to be idle at his father's expense than to do a little work for a handsome salary," said Mr. May; "everything is right that is extracted from his father's pocket, though it is contrary to a high code of honour to accept a sinecure. Fine reasoning that, is it not? The one wrongs n.o.body, while the other wrongs you and me and all the children, who want every penny I have to spend; but Reginald is much too fine to think of that. He thinks it quite natural that I should go on toiling and stinting myself."

"Papa, it may be very wrong what he is doing; but if you think he wants to take anything from you--"

"Hold your tongue," said her father; "I believe in deeds, not in words.

He has it in his power to help me, and he chooses instead, for a miserable fantastic notion of his own, to balk all my care for him. Of course the hospital was offered to him out of respect for me. No one cares for _him_. He is about as much known in Carlingford as--little Amy is. Of course it is to show their respect to me. And here he comes with his fantastic nonsense about a sinecure! Who is he that he should make such a fuss? Better men than he is have held them, and will to the end of the chapter. A sinecure! what does he call a sinecure?"

"That is just what I want to know," said Ursula under her breath, but her father did not, fortunately, hear this e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n. Reginald had gone out, and happily was not within hearing, and Mr. May calmed down by degrees, and told Ursula various circ.u.mstances about the parish and the people which brought him down out of his anger and comforted her after that pa.s.sage of arms. But the commotion left him in an excitable state, a state in which he was very apt to say things that were disagreeable, and to provoke his children to wrath in a way which Ursula thought was very much against the scriptural rule.

"Things in the parish are going on much as usual," he said, "Mrs. Sam Hurst is as kind as ever."

"Indeed!" said Ursula with a suppressed snort of anger. Mr. May gave the kind of offensive laugh, doubly offensive to every woman, which men give when their vanity is excited, and when there is, according to the common expression, a lady in the case.

"Yes, she is very kind," he said with a twinkle in his eye. "She has had the children to tea a great many times since you have been away. To show my sense of her kindness, you must ask her one of these days. A woman who understands children is always a valuable friend for a man in my position--and also, Ursula, for a girl in yours."

"She may understand children, but they are not fond of her," said Ursula, with a gleam of malice which restored her father to good humour.

He had no more idea of marrying a second time than of flying. He was tenderly attached in his way to his wife's memory, and quite sufficiently troubled by the number of dwellers in his house already; but he rather liked, as a good-looking man in his wane generally does, to think that he could marry if he pleased, and to hold the possibility over the heads of his household, as a chastis.e.m.e.nt of all their sins against him which he could use at any time. All the Mays grew hot and angry at the name of Mrs. Sam Hurst, and their fear and anger delighted their father. He liked to speak of her to provoke them, and partly for that, partly for other reasons of his own, kept up a decorous semi-flirtation with his neighbour who lived next door, and thus excited the apprehensions and resentment of the girls every day of their lives.

When Ursula thought of Mrs. Sam Hurst she wished for the Dorsets no more. It was above all things, she felt, her duty to be here on the spot to defend the family from that woman's machinations. The idea put energy into her. She ceased to be tired, ceased to feel herself, "after her journey," capable of nothing but sitting still and hearing of all that had been done since she went away.

In the course of the evening, however, Ursula took advantage of a quiet moment to look into the dictionary and make herself quite safe about the meaning of the word sinecure. It was not the first time she had heard it, as may be supposed. She had heard of lucky people who held sinecures, and she had heard them denounced as evil things, but without entering closely into the meaning. Now she had a more direct interest in it, and it must be confessed that she was not at all frightened by the idea, or disposed to reject it as Reginald did. Ursula had not learnt much about public virtue, and to get a good income for doing nothing, or next to nothing, seemed to her an ideal sort of way of getting one's livelihood. She wished with a sigh that there were sinecures which could be held by girls. But no, in that as in other things "gentlemen" kept all that was good to themselves; and Ursula was disposed to treat Reginald's scruples with a very high hand. But she did not choose that her father should attack him with all these disagreeable speeches about maintaining him in idleness, and taunts about the money that had been spent on his education. That was not the way to manage him, the girl felt; but Ursula resolved to take her brother in hand herself, to argue with him how foolish it was, to point out to him that if he did not take it some one else would, and that the country would not gain anything while he would lose, to laugh at his over delicacy, to show him how delightful it would be if he was independent, and what a help to all his brothers and sisters. In short, it seemed quite simple to Ursula, and she felt her path mapped out before her, and triumphed in every stage of her argument, inventing the very weakest replies for Reginald to make.

Full of the inspiration of this purpose, she felt that it was in every way well that she had come home. With Reginald settled close by, going away no longer, standing by her in her difficulties, and even perhaps, who could tell? taking her to parties, and affording her the means now and then of asking two or three people to tea, the whole horizon of her life brightened for Ursula. She became reconciled to Carlingford. All that had to be done was to show Reginald what his duty was, and how foolish he was to hesitate, and she could not allow herself to suppose that _when it was put before him properly_ there could long remain much difficulty upon that score.

CHAPTER XI.

PHBE'S PREPARATIONS.

A few days after Ursula's return home, another arrival took place in Carlingford. Phoebe Beecham, after considering the case fully, and listening with keen interest to all the indications she could pick up as to the peculiarities of her grandfather's house, and the many things in life at Carlingford which were "unlike what she had been used to," had fully made up her mind to dare the difficulties of that unknown existence, and to devote herself in her mother's place to the care of her grandmother and the confusion of Mrs. Tom. This was partly undertaken out of a sense of duty, partly out of that desire for change and the unknown, which has to content itself in many cases with the very mildest provision, and partly because Phoebe's good sense perceived the necessity of the matter. She was by no means sure what were the special circ.u.mstances that made "Mrs. Tom" disagreeable to her mother, but she was deeply sensible of the importance of preventing Mrs. Tom from securing to herself and her family all that Mr. and Mrs. Tozer had to leave. Phoebe was not mercenary in her own person, but she had no idea of giving up any "rights," and she felt it of the utmost importance that her brother, who was unfortunately by no means so clever as herself, should be fully provided against all the contingencies of life. She was not concerned about herself in that particular. Phoebe felt it a matter of course that she should marry, and marry well. Self-confidence of this a.s.sured and tranquil sort serves a great many excellent purposes--it made her even generous in her way. She believed in her star, in her own certain good-fortune, in herself; and therefore her mind was free to think and to work for other people. She knew very well by all her mother said, and by all the hesitations of both her parents, that she would have many disagreeable things to encounter in Carlingford, but she felt so sure that nothing could really humiliate _her_, or pull her down from her real eminence, that the knowledge conveyed no fears to her mind.

When this confidence in her own superiority to all debasing influences is held by the spotless princess in the poem, it is the most beautiful of human sentiments, and why it should not be equally elevated when entertained by a pink and plump modern young woman, well up in all nineteenth century refinements, and the daughter of the minister of the Crescent Chapel, it would be hard to say. Phoebe held it with the strongest faith.

"Their ways of thinking, perhaps, and their ways of living, are not those which I have been used to," she said; "but how does that affect me? I am myself whatever happens; even if poor dear grandmamma's habits are not refined, which I suppose is what you mean, mamma, that does not make me unrefined. A lady must always be a lady wherever she is--Una,"

she continued, using strangely enough the same argument which has occurred to her historian, "is not less a princess when she is living among the satyrs. Of course, I am not like Una--and neither are they like the wild people in the wood."

Mrs. Beecham did not know much about Una, except that she was somebody in a book; but she kissed her daughter, and a.s.sured her that she was "a real comfort," and devoted herself to her comfort for the few days that remained, doing everything that it was possible to do to show her love, and, so to speak, grat.i.tude to the good child who was thus throwing herself into the breach. The Beechams were in no want of money to buy what pleased them, and the mother made many additions to Phoebe's wardrobe which that young lady herself thought quite unnecessary, not reflecting that other sentiments besides that of simple love for herself were involved.

"They shall see that my daughter is not just like one of their common-looking girls," Mrs. Beecham said to her husband; and he shared the feeling, though he could not but think within himself that her aspect was of very much more importance than the appearance of Phoebe Tozer's child could possibly be as _his_ daughter.

"You are quite right, my dear," he replied, "vulgar people of that sort are but too ready to look down upon a pastor's family. They ought to be made to see the difference."

The consequence of this was that Phoebe was fitted out like a young princess going on her travels. Ursula May would have been out of her wits with delight, had half these fine things come her way; but Phoebe took them very calmly.