PAPA.
"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
incumbent 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.
Nobody 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 circumstances
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 à 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 sanctity 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 passers-by dragged up his own
steps by those two little ones. The only passers-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 ass, 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 nobody 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 nobody, 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 ejaculation. Reginald had
gone out, and happily was not within hearing, and Mr. May calmed down by
degrees, and told Ursula various circumstances about the parish and the
people which brought him down out of his anger and comforted her after
that passage 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 chastisement 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.