A PUBLIC MEETING.
Phoebe's philosophy, however, was put to the test when, after the young
pastor had taken tea and got himself away from the pressing
hospitalities of the Tozers, her grandfather also disappeared to put on
his best coat in order to attend the Meeting. Mrs. Tozer, left alone
with her granddaughter, immediately proceeded to evolve her views as to
what Phoebe was expected to do.
"I never see you out o' that brown thing, Phoebe," she said; "ain't you
got a silk dress, child, or something that looks a bit younger-looking?
I'd have thought your mother would have took more pride in you. Surely
you've got a silk dress."
"Oh, yes, more than one," said Phoebe, "but this is considered in better
taste."
"Taste, whose taste?" cried the old lady; "my Phoebe didn't ought to care
for them dingy things, for I'm sure she never got no such example from
me. I've always liked what was bright-looking, if it was only a print. A
nice blue silk now, or a bright green, is what you'd look pretty in with
your complexion. Go now, there's a dear, and put on something very nice,
something as will show a bit; you're going with your grandfather to this
Meeting."
"To the Meeting? oh, I hope not," said Phoebe with fervour.
"And why should you hope not? isn't it natural as a young creature like
you should get out a bit when she can, and see what's to be seen? I
don't hold with girls moping in a house. Besides, it's very instructive,
as I've always heard: and you as is clever, of course you'll understand
every word. Mr. Northcote is a nicish-looking sort of young man.
Ministers mayn't be much," said Mrs. Tozer, "though just see how your
papa has got on, my dear. Nobody else as Phoebe could have married would
have got up in the world like that; you may make a deal more money in
trade, but it ain't so genteel, there's always that to be said. Now it's
just as well as you should have your chance with the rest and let
yourself be seen, Phoebe. Run, there's a darling, and put on something
bright, and a nice lace collar. You can have mine if you like. I
shouldn't grudge nothing, not a single thing I've got, to see you
looking as nice as the best there; and so you will if you take a little
pains. I'd do up my hair a bit higher if I was you; why, Phoebe, I
declare! you haven't got a single pad. Now what is the use of neglecting
yourself, and letting others get ahead of you like that?"
"Pads are going out of fashion, grandmamma," said Phoebe gravely, "so are
bright colours for dresses. You can't think what funny shades we wear in
town. But must I go to this Meeting? I should not like to leave you
alone. It is so much nicer for me to be here."
"You _are_ a good girl, you are," said Mrs. Tozer admiringly, "and me as
was frightened for a fine lady from London! But Tozer would say as it
was my doing. He would say as it wasn't natural for a young creature;
and, bless you, they'll all be there in their best--that Pigeon and the
others, and Mrs. Tom. I just wish I could go too, to see you outshine
'em all, which you'll do if you take pains. Take a little more pains
with your hair, Phoebe, mount it up a bit higher, and if you want
anything like a bit of lace or a brooch or that, just you come to me. I
should like Mrs. Tom to see you with that brooch as she's always wanting
for Minnie. Now why should I give my brooch to Minnie? I don't see no
reason for it, for my part."
"Certainly not, grandmamma," said Phoebe, "you must wear your brooches
yourself, that is what I like a great deal better than giving them
either to Minnie or me."
"Ah, but there ain't a many like you, my sweet," cried the old woman,
wiping her eyes. "You're my Phoebe's own daughter, but you're a touch
above her, my darling, and us too, that's what you are. Run now and
dress, or I don't know what Tozer will say to me. He's set his heart on
showing you off to-night."
Thus adjured, Phoebe went away reluctantly. It is unnecessary to say that
her disinterestedness about her grandmother's brooch was not perhaps so
noble as it appeared on the outside. The article in question was a kind
of small warming-pan in a very fine solid gold mount, set with large
pink topazes, and enclosing little wavy curls of hair, one from the head
of each young Tozer of the last generation. It was a piece of jewelry
very well known in Carlingford, and the panic which rose in Phoebe's
bosom when it was offered for her own personal adornment is more easily
imagined than described. She went upstairs feeling that she had escaped,
and took out a black silk dress at which she looked lovingly.
"But grandmamma would think it was no better than this," she said to
herself, and after much searchings of heart she chose a costume of
Venetian blue, one soft tint dying into another like the lustre on a
piece of old glass, which in her own opinion was a great deal too good
for the occasion. "Some one will tread on it to a certainty, and the
colours don't show in candle-light; but I must try to please
grandmamma," she said heroically. When it was put on with puffings of
lace such as Mrs. Tozer had never seen, and was entirely ignorant of the
value of, at the throat and sleeves, Phoebe wrapt a shawl round her in
something of the same dim gorgeous hue, covered with embroidery, an
Indian rarity which somebody had bestowed upon Mrs. Beecham, and which
no one had used or thought of till Phoebe's artistic eye fell upon it. It
was a great deal too fine for Carlingford. An opera-cloak bought in
Oxford Street for a pound or two would have much more impressed the
assembly to which Phoebe was bound. Mrs. Tozer inspected her when she
went downstairs, with awe, yet dissatisfaction.
"I dare say as it's all very fine, and it ain't like other folks,
anybody can see; but I'd dress you different, my dear, if you was in my
hands," said the old woman, walking round and round her. As for Tozer,
he too showed less admiration than if he had known better.
"I got a fly, thinking as you'd have some fallal or other on you; but,
bless my heart, you could have walked in that gown," he said. So that
Phoebe's toilette, which would have been mightily admired in a London
drawing-room, could not be said to be a success. She was somewhat
discouraged by this, notwithstanding that she knew so very much better;
and accordingly set out in the fly with her grandfather in his best
coat, feeling, generally, in a depressed condition.
"It is clear that I must take to the pinks and blues to please them,"
she said to herself with a sigh. She could triumph over the slight that
might be shown to herself in consequence of her relations; but those
sneers at her dress went to Phoebe's heart.
The Music Hall was full of a miscellaneous crowd when Phoebe, following
her grandfather, went in; and the seats allotted to these important
people were on the platform, where, at least, Tozer's unacknowledged
object of showing her off could be amply gratified. This arrangement did
not, on the whole, displease Phoebe. Since she must be exhibited, it
seemed better, on the whole, to be exhibited there, than in a less
distinguished place; and all the speakers knew her, which was something.
She sat down with some complaisance, and let her Indian scarf droop from
her shoulders, and her pretty dress show itself.
"I declare if that isn't Phoebe, junior," said Mrs. Tom audibly, in the
middle of the hall, "making a show of herself; but, Lord bless us, for
all their grandeur, how she do dress, to be sure. A bit of a rag of an
old shawl, and a hat on! the same as she wears every day. I've got more
respect for them as comes to instruct us than that."
And, indeed, Mrs. Tom was resplendent in a red _sortie de bal_, with a
brooch almost as big as that envied one of Mrs. Tozer's stuck into her
gown, and a cap covered with flowers upon her head. This was the usual
fashion of the Salem ladies on such rare occasions. The meeting of the
Disestablishment Society was to them what a ball is to worldly-minded
persons who frequent such vanities. The leading families came out _en
masse_ to see and to be seen. It would be wrong to say that they did not
enter into all the arguments and recognise the intellectual feast set
before them; no doubt they did this just as well as if they had come in
their commonest attire; but still the seriousness of the occasion was,
no doubt, modified by being thus made into a dissipation. The men were
not so fine, perhaps, because it is more difficult for men to be
fine--but they were all in their Sunday clothes; and the younger ones
were in full bloom of coloured satin cravats and fine waistcoats. Some
of them were almost as fine a sight as the ladies in their ribbons and
flowers.
"I suppose by the look of them this must be an influential
community--people of some pretensions," said an obese elderly minister,
who had seated himself by Phoebe, and whose eyes were dazzled by the
display. "I never expected all this dress in a quiet country place."
"Oh, yes! they are people of much pretension," said Phoebe gravely.
And then the proceedings began. Old Mr. Green, the grocer, whose son had
married Maria Pigeon, and who had long been retired from business,
occupying a house in the country and "driving his carriage," was in the
chair; and the proceedings went on according to the routine of such
assemblies, with differing degrees of earnestness on the part of the
speakers. To most of these gentlemen it was the ordinary occupation of
their lives; and they made their hearers laugh at well-known stories,
and enjoyed their own wit, and elicited familiar cheers, and made hits
such as they had made for years on the same subject, which was a
comfortable _cheval de bataille_, not at all exciting to themselves,
though they were quite willing to excite their audience, if that
audience would allow itself to be excited. Things jogged on thus for the
first hour very pleasantly! the Meeting was not excited, but it was
amused and enjoyed itself. It was an intellectual treat, as Pigeon said
to Brown, and if the younger people did not like it so well as they
would have liked a ball, the elder people liked it a great deal better,
and the hall rang with applause and with laughter as one speaker
succeeded another. It was pleasant to know how unstable "the Church" was
on her foundation; that aristocratical Church which looked down upon
Dissent, and of which the poorest adherent gave himself airs much above
Chapel folks; and how much loftier a position the Nonconformist held,
who would have nothing to say to State support.
"For my part," said one of the speakers, "I would rather abandon my
sacred calling to-morrow, or make tents as St. Paul did in its exercise,
than put on the gilded fetters of the State, and pray or preach as an
Archbishop told me; nay, as a Cabinet Council of godless worldlings
directed. There are many good men among the clergy of the Church of
England; but they are slaves, my friends, nothing but slaves, dragged at
the chariot wheels of the State; ruled by a caste of hard-headed
lawyers; or binding themselves in the rotten robes of tradition. It is
we only who can dare to say that we are free!"
At this sentiment, the Meeting fairly shouted with applause and delight
and self-complacency; and the speaker, delighted too, and tasting all
the sweetness of success, gave place to the next, and came and sat down
by Phoebe, to whose society the younger men were all very glad to escape.
"Miss Beecham, you are fashionably calm," whispered the orator, "you
don't throw yourself, like the rest of us, into this great agitation."
"Have you a leading member?" whispered Phoebe back again; "and does he
never drag you at his chariot wheels? Have you deacons that keep you up
to the mark? Have you people you must drink tea with when they ask you,
or else they throw up their sittings? I am thinking, of course, of
papa."
"Have I deacons? Have I leading members? Miss Beecham, you are cruel--"
"Hush!" said Phoebe, settling herself in her chair. "Here is somebody who
is in dreadful earnest. Don't talk, Mr. Northcote is going to speak."
Thus it will be seen that the Minister's daughter played her _rôle_ of
fine lady and _bel esprit_ very fairly in an atmosphere so unlike the
air that fine ladies breathe. Phoebe paid no more attention to the
discomfited man at her elbow. She gathered up her shawl in her hand with
a seeming careless movement, and let it drop lightly across her knee,
where the gold threads in the embroidery caught the light; and she took
off her hat, which she had thought proper to wear to show her sense that
the Meeting was not an evening party; and prepared herself to listen.
Her complexion and her hair, and the gold threads in the rich Indian
work, thus blazed out together upon the startled audience. Many of them
were as much struck by this as by the beginning of Mr. Northcote's
speech, though it was very different from the other speeches. The others
had been routine agitation, this was fiery conviction, crude, and
jumping at conclusions, but still an enthusiasm in its way. Mr.
Northcote approached his subject gradually, and his hearers, at first
disappointed by the absence of their familiar watch-words, were dull,
and bestowed their attention on Phoebe; but before he had been speaking
ten minutes Phoebe was forgotten even by her uncle and aunt, the two
people most interested in her. It would be dangerous to repeat to a
reader, probably quite uninterested in the controversy, Mr. Northcote's
speech, in which he laid hold of some of those weak points which the
Church, of course, has in common with every other institution in the
world. Eloquence has a way of evaporating in print, even when the report
is immediate. But his peroration was one which startled his hearers out
of a calm abstract interest to all that keen personal feeling which
accompanies the narrative of facts known to an audience, and affecting
people within their own locality.
"I have only been in this place three days," said the speaker, "but in
that short time I have heard of one of the most flagrant abuses which I
have been indicating to you. There is in this town, as you all know, an
institution called the College; what was its original object I do not
know. Nests of idle pauperism, genteelly veiled under such a name, do
exist, I know, over all the country; but it is at least probable that
some educational purpose was in the mind of the pious founder who
established it. The pious founder! how immense are the revenues, how
incalculable the means of doing good, which have been locked up in
uselessness, or worse than uselessness, by men who have purchased a pass
into the kingdom of heaven at the last moment by such gifts, and become
pious founders just before they ceased to be miserable sinners! Whatever
may have been the original intention of the College, however, it is
clear that it was meant for something more than the pitiful use it is
put to now. This old foundation, ladies and gentlemen, which might
provide half the poor children in Carlingford with a wholesome
education, is devoted to the maintenance of six old men, need I say
Churchmen?" (here the speaker was interrupted by mingled hisses and
ironical "hear, hears")--"and a chaplain to say their prayers for them.
Six old men: and one able-bodied parson to say their prayers for them.
What do you think of this, my friends? I understand that this heavy and
onerous duty has been offered--not to some other mouldy old gentleman,
some decayed clergyman who might have ministered in peace to the decayed
old burghers without any interference on my part: for a refuge for the
aged and destitute has something natural in it, even when it is a wrong
appropriation of public money. No, this would have been some faint
approach perhaps to justice, some right in wrong that would have closed
our mouths. But no! it is given to a young gentleman, able-bodied, as I
have said, who has appeared more than once in the cricket-field with
your victorious Eleven, who is fresh from Oxford, and would no more
condescend to consider himself on a footing of equality with the humble
person who addresses you, than I would, having the use of my hands,
accept a disgraceful sinecure! Yes, my friends, this is what the State
Church does. She so cows the spirit and weakens the hearts of her
followers that a young man at the very beginning of his career, able to
teach, able to work, able to dig, educated and trained and cultured, can
stoop to accept a good income in such a position as this. Think of it!
Six old men, able surely, if they are good for anything, to mumble their
prayers for themselves somehow; yet provided with an Oxford scholar, an
able-bodied young man, to read the service for them daily! He thinks it
very fine, no doubt, a good income and a good house for life, and
nothing to do but to canter over morning and evening prayer at a
swinging pace, as we have all heard it done: morning prayer, let us see,
half an hour--or you may throw in ten minutes, in case the six should
mumble their Amens slowly--and twenty minutes for the evening, one hour
a day. Here it is under your very eyes, people of Carlingford, a
charming provision for the son of one of your most respected clergymen.
Why, it is in your newspaper, where I read it! Can I give a more
forcible instance of the way in which a State Church cuts honesty and
honour out of men's hearts."
A great many people noticed that when Mr. Northcote ended this with a
thundering voice, some one who had been listening near the door in an
Inverness cape, and hat over his brows, gave himself a sudden impetuous
shake which shook the crowd, and turning round made his way out, not
caring whom he stumbled against. The whole assembly was in a hubbub when
the orator ceased, and whispers ran freely round among all the groups in
the front. "That's young May he means." "In course it's young May.
Infernal job, as I've always said." "Oh hush, Pigeon, don't swear! but
it do seem a black burning shame, don't it?" "Bravo, Mr. Nor'cote!"
called out old Tozer, on the platform, "that's what I call giving forth
no uncertain sound. That's laying it into them 'ot and 'ot."
This was the climax of the Meeting. Everything else was flat after such
a decided appeal to personal knowledge. Phoebe alone gave a frigid
reception to the hero of the evening.
"I dislike personalities," she said, pointedly. "They never do a cause
any good; and it isn't gentlemanly; don't you think so, Mr. Sloely;" and
she turned away from Northcote, who had come to speak to her, and
devoted herself to the man at her elbow, whom she had snubbed a little
while before. Mr. Northcote said to himself that this was untrue, and
brought up a hundred very good reasons why he should have employed such
an example, but the reproof stung him to the quick, for to be
ungentlemanly was the reproach of all others most calculated to go to
his heart.
But nobody knew how Mr. May went home in his Inverness cape, breathing
fire and flame, nor of the execution he did thereupon.