A PAIR OF NATURAL ENEMIES.
After the evening at Grange Lane which has been described, Reginald May
met Northcote in the street several times, as was unavoidable,
considering the size of the place, and the concentration of all business
in Carlingford within the restricted length of the High Street. The two
young men bowed stiffly to each other at first; then by dint of seeing
each other frequently, got to inclinations a little more friendly, until
at length one day when Northcote was passing by the College, as Reginald
stood in the old doorway, the young chaplain feeling magnanimous on his
own ground, and somewhat amused by the idea which suddenly presented
itself to him, asked his Dissenting assailant if he would not come in
and see the place. Reginald had the best of it in every way. It was he
who was the superior, holding out a hand of favour and kindness to one
who here at least, was beneath him in social consideration; and it was
he who was the assailed, and, so to speak, injured party, and who
nevertheless extended to his assailant a polite recognition, which,
perhaps, no one else occupying the same position would have given. He
was amused by his own magnanimity, and enjoyed it, and the pleasure of
heaping coals of fire upon his adversary's head was entirely delightful
to him.
"I know you do not approve of the place or me," he said, forgetting in
that moment of triumph all his own objections to it, and the ground upon
which these objections were founded. "Come in and see it, will you? The
chapel and the rooms are worth seeing. They are fair memorials of the
past, however little the foundation may be to your mind."
He laughed as he spoke, but without ill-humour; for it is easy to be
good-humoured when one feels one's self on the gaining, not the losing
side. As for Northcote, pride kept him from any demonstration of
unwillingness to look at what the other had to show. He would not for
worlds have betrayed himself. It was expedient for him, if he did not
mean to acknowledge himself worsted, to put on a good face and accept
the politeness cheerfully. So that it was on the very strength of the
conflict which made them first aware of each other's existence, that
they thus came together. The Dissenter declared his entire delight in
being taken to see the place, and with secret satisfaction, not easily
put into words, the Churchman led the way. They went to all the rooms
where the old men sat, some dozing by the fire, some reading, some busy
about small businesses; one had a turning-lathe, another was
illuminating texts, a third had a collection of curiosities of a
heterogeneous kind, which he was cleaning and arranging, writing neat
little labels in the neatest little hand for each article.
"The charity of our ancestors might have been worse employed," said
Reginald. "A home for the old and poor is surely as fine a kind of
benevolence as one could think of--if benevolence is to be tolerated at
all."
"Ye-es," said Northcote. "I don't pretend to disapprove of benevolence.
Perhaps the young who have a future before them, who can be of use to
their country, are better objects still."
"Because they will pay," said Reginald; "because we can get something
out of them in return; while we have already got all that is to be had
out of the old people? A very modern doctrine, but not so lovely as the
old-fashioned way."
"I did not mean that," said the other, colouring. "Certainly it ought to
pay; everything, I suppose, is meant to pay one way or other. The life
and progress of the young, or the gratified sentiment of the benefactor,
who feels that he has provided for the old--which is the noblest kind of
payment? I think the first, for my part."
"For that matter, there is a large and most flourishing school, which
you will come across without fail if you work among the poor. Do you
work among the poor? Pardon my curiosity; I don't know."
"It depends upon what you call the poor," said the other, who did not
like to acknowledge the absence of this element in Salem Chapel; "if you
mean the destitute classes, the lowest level, no; but if you mean the
respectable, comfortable--"
"Persons of small income?" said Reginald. "I mean people with no incomes
at all; people without trades, or anything to earn a comfortable living
by; labouring people, here to-day and away to-morrow; women who take in
washing, and men who go about hunting for a day's work. These are the
kind of people the Church is weighted with."
"I don't see any trace of them," said the Nonconformist. "Smooth lawns,
fine trees, rooms that countesses might live in. I can't see any trace
of them here."
"There is no harm in a bit of grass and a few trees, and the rooms are
cheaper in their long continuance than any flimsy new rubbish that could
be built."
"I know I am making an unfortunate quotation," said Northcote; "but
there is reason in it. It might be sold for so much, and given to the
poor."
"Cheating the poor, in the first place," said Reginald, warmly concerned
for what he felt to be his own; "just as the paddock an old horse dies
in might bear a crop instead, and pay the owner; but what would become
of the old horse?"
"Half-quarter of this space would do quite as well for your pensioners,
and they might do without--"
"A chaplain!" said Reginald, laughing in spite of himself. "I know you
think so. It is a sinecure."
"Well, I think they may say their prayers for themselves; a young man
like you, full of talent, full of capability--I beg your pardon," said
Northcote, "you must excuse me, I grudge the waste. There are so many
things more worthy of you that you might do."
"What, for example?"
"Anything almost," cried the other; "digging, ploughing,
building--anything! And for me too."
This he said in an undertone; but Reginald heard, and did not carry his
magnanimity so far as not to reply.
"Yes," he said; "if I am wasted reading prayers for my old men, what are
you, who come to agitate for my abolition? _I_ think, too, almost
anything would be better than to encourage the ignorant to make
themselves judges of public institutions, which the wisest even find too
delicate to meddle with. The digging and the ploughing might be a good
thing for more than me."
"I don't say otherwise," said the young Dissenter, following into the
old fifteenth-century chapel, small but perfect, the young priest of the
place. They stood together for a moment under the vaulted roof, both
young, in the glory of their days, both with vague noble meanings in
them, which they knew so poorly how to carry out. They meant everything
that was fine and great, these two young men, standing upon the
threshold of their life, knowing little more than that they were
fiercely opposed to each other, and meant to reform the world each in
his own way; one by careful services and visitings of the poor, the
other by the Liberation Society and overthrow of the State Church; both
foolish, wrong and right, to the utmost bounds of human possibility. How
different they felt themselves standing there, and yet how much at one
they were without knowing it! Northcote had sufficient knowledge to
admire the perfect old building. He followed his guide with a certain
humility through the details, which Reginald had already learned by
heart.
"There is nothing so perfect, so beautiful, so real now-a-days," said
the young Churchman, with a natural expansion of mind over the beauty to
which he had fallen heir. It seemed to him, as he looked up at the tall
windows with their graceful tracery, that he was the representative of
all who had worked out their belief in God within these beautiful walls,
and of all the perpetual worshippers who had knelt among the old brasses
of the early founders upon the worn floor. The other stood beside him
with a half envy in his mind. The Dissenter did not feel himself the
heir of those centuries in the same unhesitating way. He tried to feel
that he was the heir of something better and more spiritual, yet felt a
not ungenerous grudge that he could not share the other kinship too.
"It is very beautiful and noble," he said. "I should like to feel for it
as you do; but what I should like still better would be to have the same
clear certainty of faith, the same conviction that what they were doing
was the only right thing to do which made both building and prayer so
unfaltering in those days. We can't be so sure even of the span of an
arch now."
"No--nor can you be content with the old span, even though it is clearly
the best by all rules," said Reginald. The other smiled; he was the most
speculative of the two, being perhaps the most thoughtful; and he had no
fifteenth-century chapel to charm, nor old foundation to give him an
anchor. He smiled, but there was a little envy in his mind. Even to have
one's life set out before one within clear lines like this, would not
that be something? If it had but been possible, no doubt saying prayers
for the world, even with no better than the old men of the College to
say amen, had something more beautiful in it than tours of agitation for
the Liberation Society; but Northcote knew that for him it was not
possible, any more than was the tonsure of Reginald's predecessor, who
had said mass when first those pinnacles were reared towards heaven.
After he had smiled he sighed, for the old faith was more lovely than
all the new agitations; he felt a little ashamed of the Liberation
Society, so long as he stood under that groined and glorious roof.
"May!" said some one, coming in suddenly. "I want you to go to the
hospital for me. I am obliged to go off to town on urgent
business--convocation work; and I must get a lawyer's opinion about the
reredos question; there is not a moment to lose. Go and see the people
in the pulmonary ward, there's a good fellow; and there are two or three
bad accidents; and that old woman who is ill in Brown's cottage, you saw
her the other day; and the Simmonds in Back Grove Street. I should have
had a day's work well cut out, if I had not had this summons to town;
but the reredos question is of the first importance, you know."
"I'll go," said Reginald. There is nothing more effectual in showing us
the weakness of any habitual fallacy or assumption than to hear it
sympathetically, through the ears, as it were, of a sceptic. Reginald,
seeing Northcote's keen eyes gleam at the sound of the Rector's voice,
instinctively fell into sympathy with him, and heard the speech through
him; and though he himself felt the importance of the reredos, yet he
saw in a moment how such a question would take shape in the opinion of
the young Dissenter, in whom he clearly saw certain resemblances to
himself. Therefore he assented very briefly, taking out his note-book to
put down the special cases of which the Rector told him. They had a
confidential conversation in a corner, during which the new-comer
contemplated the figure of Northcote in his strange semi-clerical
garments with some amaze. "Who is your friend?" he said abruptly, for he
was a rapid man, losing no time about anything.
"It is not my friend at all; it is my enemy who denounced me at the
Dissenters' meeting."
"Pah!" cried the Rector, curling up his nostrils, as if some
disagreeable smell had reached him. "A Dissenter here! I should not have
expected it from you, May."
"Nor I either," said Reginald; but his colour rose. He was not disposed
to be rebuked by any rector in Carlingford or the world.
"Are you his curate," said Northcote, "that he orders you about as if
you were bound to do his bidding? I hope, for your own sake, it is not
so."
Now it was Reginald's turn to smile. He was young, and liked a bit of
grandiloquence as well as another.
"Since I have been here," he said, "in this sinecure, as you call
it--and such it almost is--I have been everybody's curate. If the others
have too much work, and I too little, my duty is clear, don't you
think?"
Northcote made no reply. Had he known what was about to be said to him,
he might have stirred up his faculties to say something; but he had not
an idea that Reginald would answer him like this, and it took him aback.
He was too honest himself not to be worsted by such a speech. He bowed
his head with genuine respect. The apology of the Churchman whom he had
assaulted, filled him with a kind of reverential confusion; he could
make no reply in words. And need it be said that Reginald's heart too
melted altogether when he saw how he had confounded his adversary? That
silent assent more than made up for the noisy onslaught. That he should
have thus overcome Northcote made Northcote appear his friend. He was
pleased and satisfied beyond the reach of words.
"Will you come to the hospital with me?" he said; and they walked out
together, the young Dissenter saying very little, doing what he could to
arrange those new lights which had suddenly flashed upon his favourite
subject, and feeling that he had lost his landmarks, and was confused in
his path. When the logic is taken out of all that a man is doing, what
is to become of him? This was what he felt; an ideal person in
Reginald's place could not have made a better answer. Suddenly somehow,
by a strange law of association, there came into his mind the innocent
talk he had overheard between the two girls who were, he was aware,
May's sisters. A certain romantic curiosity about the family came into
his mind. Certainly they could not be an ordinary family like others.
There must be something in their constitution to account for this sudden
downfall, which he had encountered in the midst of all his theories. The
Mays must be people of a different strain from others; a peculiar race,
to whom great thoughts were familiar; he could not believe that there
was anything common or ordinary in their blood. He went out in silence,
with the holder of the sinecure which he had so denounced, but which now
seemed to him to be held after a divine fashion, in a way which common
men had no idea of. Very little could he say, and that of the most
commonplace kind. He walked quite respectfully by the young clergyman's
side along the crowded High Street, though without any intention of
going to the hospital, or of actually witnessing the kind of work
undertaken by his new friend. Northcote himself had no turn that way. To
go and minister at a sick-bed had never been his custom; he did not
understand how to do it; and though he had a kind of sense that it was
the right thing to do, and that if any one demanded such a service of
him he would be obliged to render it, he was all in the dark as to how
he could get through so painful an office; whereas May went to it
without fear, thinking of it only as the most natural thing in the
world. Perhaps, it is possible, Northcote's ministrations, had he been
fully roused, would have been, in mere consequence of the reluctance of
his mind, to undertake them, more real and impressive than those which
Reginald went to discharge as a daily though serious duty; but in any
case it was the Churchman whose mode was the more practical, the more
useful. They had not gone far together, when they met the Rector
hurrying to the railway; he cast a frowning, dissatisfied look at
Northcote, and caught Reginald by the arm, drawing him aside.
"Don't be seen walking about with that fellow," he said; "it will injure
you in people's minds. What have you to do with a Dissenter--a
demagogue? Your father would not like it any more than I do. Get rid of
him, May."
"I am sorry to displease either you or my father," said Reginald
stiffly; "but, pardon me, in this respect I must judge for myself."
"Don't be pig-headed," said the spiritual ruler of Carlingford; but he
had to rush off for his train, and had no time to say more. He left
Reginald hot and angry, doubly disposed, as was natural, to march
Northcote over all the town, and show his intimacy with him. Get rid of
an acquaintance whom he chose to extend his countenance to, to please
the Rector! For a man so young as Reginald May, and so lately made
independent, such an act of subserviency was impossible indeed.
Before they entered the hospital, however, another encounter happened of
a very different character. Strolling along in the centre of the
pavement, endeavouring after the almost impossible combination of a yawn
and a cigar, they perceived a large figure in a very long great-coat,
and with an aspect of languor and _ennui_ which was unmistakable a
hundred yards off. This apparition called a sudden exclamation from
Northcote.
"If it was possible," he said, "I should imagine I knew that man. Are
there two like him? but I can't fancy what he can be doing here."
"_That_ fellow!" said Reginald. "It's a pity if there are two like him.
I can't tell you what a nuisance he is to me. His name is Copperhead;
he's my father's pupil."
"Then it _is_ Copperhead! I thought there could not be another. He gives
a sort of odd familiar aspect to the place all at once."
"Then you are a friend of his!" said Reginald, with a groan. "Pardon the
natural feelings of a man whose father has suddenly chosen to become a
coach. I hate it, and my dislike to the thing is reflected on the person
of the pupil. I suppose that's what my antipathy means."
"He does not merit antipathy. He is a bore, but there is no harm in him.
Ah! he is quickening his pace; I am afraid he has seen us; and anybody
he knows will be a godsend to him, I suppose."
"I am off," said Reginald; "you will come again? that is," he added,
with winning politeness, "I shall come and seek you out. We are each the
moral Antipodes of the other, Miss Beecham says--from which she argues
that we should be acquainted and learn the meaning of our differences."
"I am much obliged to Miss Beecham."
"Why, Northcote!" said Clarence Copperhead, bearing down upon them in
his big grey Ulster, like a ship in full sail. "Morning, May; who'd have
thought to see you here. Oh, don't turn on my account! I'm only taking a
walk; it don't matter which way I go."
"I am very much hurried. I was just about to hasten off to an
appointment. Good-bye, Northcote," said Reginald. "We shall meet again
soon, I hope."
"By Jove! this is a surprise," said Clarence; "to see you here, where I
should as soon have thought of looking for St. Paul's; and to find you
walking about cheek by jowl with that muff, young May, who couldn't be
civil, I think, if he were to try. What is the meaning of it? I suppose
you're just as much startled to see me. I'm with a coach; clever, and a
good scholar and a good family, and all that; father to that young
sprig: so there ain't any mystery about me. What's brought you here?"
"Work," said Northcote, curtly. He did not feel disposed to enter into
any kind of explanation.
"Oh, work! Now I do wonder that a fellow like you, with plenty of money
in your pocket, should go in for work as you do. What's the good of it?
and in the Dissenting parson line of all things in the world! When a
fellow has nothing, you can understand it; he must get his grub somehow.
That's what people think of you, of course. Me, I don't do anything, and
everybody knows I'm a catch, and all that sort of thing. Now I don't say
(for I don't know) if your governor has as much to leave behind him as
mine--But halt a bit! You walk as if we were going in for athletics, and
doing a two mile."
"I'm sorry to see you so easily blown," said Northcote, not displeased
in his turn to say something unpleasant. "What is it? or are you only
out of training?"
"That's it," said Clarence, with a gasp. "I'm awfully out of training,
and that's the fact. We do, perhaps, live too well in Portland Place;
but look here--about what we were saying--"
"Do you live with the Mays?"
"Worse luck! It's what you call plain cooking; and bless us all, dinner
in the middle of the day, and the children at table. But I've put a stop
to that; and old May ain't a bad old fellow--don't bother me with work
more than I like, and none of your high mightiness, like that fellow.
I'll tell you what, Northcote, you must come and see me. I haven't got a
sitting-room of my own, which is a shame, but I have the use of their
rooms as much as I like. The sisters go flying away like a flock of
pigeons. I'll tell you what, I'll have you asked to dinner. Capital fun
it will be. A High Church parson cheek by jowl with a red-hot Dissenter,
and compelled to be civil. By Jove! won't it be a joke?"
"It is not a joke that either of us will enjoy."
"Never mind, _I'll_ enjoy it, by Jove!" said Copperhead. "He daren't say
no. I'd give sixpence just to see you together, and the Bashaw of two
tails--the young fellow. They shall have a party; leave it all to me."