SOCIETY.
Notwithstanding such little social crosses, however, the society at the
Parsonage, as thus constituted, was very agreeable. Mr. May, though he
had his faults, was careful of his daughter. He sat in the drawing-room
every evening till she retired, on the nights their visitors came, and
even when it was Clarence only who remained, an inmate of the house, and
free to go and come as he pleased. Ursula, he felt, must not be left
alone, and though it is uncertain whether she fully appreciated the care
he took of her, this point in his character is worth noting. When the
young party went out together, to skate, for instance, as they did, for
several merry days, Reginald and Janey were, he considered, sufficient
guardians for their sister. Phoebe had no chaperon--"Unless you will take
that serious office upon you, Ursula," she said, shrugging her shoulders
prettily; but she only went once or twice, so well was she able, even
when the temptation was strongest, to exercise self-denial, and show her
perfect power of self-guidance. As for old Tozer and his wife, the idea
of a chaperon never entered their homely head. Such articles are
unnecessary in the lower levels of society. They were anxious that their
child should enjoy herself, and could not understand the reason of her
staying at home on a bright frosty day, when the Mays came to the door
in a body to fetch her.
"No, if they'd have gone down on their knees, nor if I had gone down on
mine, would that girl have left me," cried the old lady, with tears in
her eyes. "She do behave beautiful to her old granny. If so be as I
haven't a good night, no power on earth would make that child go
pleasuring. It's 'most too much at her age."
But Phoebe confided to Ursula that it was not altogether anxiety about
her grandmother.
"I have nobody of my own to go with. If I took grandpapa with me, I
don't think it would mend matters. Once or twice it was possible, but
not every day. Go and enjoy yourself, dear," she said, kissing her
friend.
Ursula was disposed to cry rather than to enjoy herself, and appealed to
Reginald, who was deeply touched by Phoebe's fine feeling. He took his
sister to the ice, but that day he went so far as to go back himself to
No. 6, actually into the house, to make a humble protest, yet to
insinuate his admiration. He was much impressed by, and approved highly
of this reticence, having a very high standard of minor morals for
ladies, in his mind, like most young men.
"She is not one of the girls who rush about everywhere, and whom one is
sick of seeing," he said.
"I think it is very silly," cried Janey. "Who cares for a chaperon! and
why shouldn't Phoebe have her fun, like the rest, instead of shutting
herself up in a stuffy room with that dreadful old Mrs. Tozer?"
Her brother reproved her so sharply for this speech that Janey withdrew
in tears, still asking "Why?" as she rushed to her room. Clarence
Copperhead, for his part, stroked his moustache and said it was a bore.
"For she is the best skater of all the ladies here," he said. "I beg
your pardon, Miss Ursula. She's got so much go in her, and keeps it up
like fun. She's the best I know for keeping a fellow from getting tired;
but as it's Thursday, I suppose she'll be there in the evening."
Clarence never called them anything but Miss Ursula and Miss Phoebe,
dropping the prefix in his thoughts. He felt that he was "a little sweet
upon" them both; and, indeed, it had gleamed dully across his mind that
a man who could marry them both need never be bored, but was likely
always to find something "to do." Choice, however, being necessary, he
did not see his way so clearly as to which he would choose. "The
mountain sheep are sweeter, but the valley sheep are fatter," he said to
himself, if not in these immortal words, yet with full appreciation of
the sentiment. Ursula began to understand dinners with a judicious
intelligence, which he felt was partly created by his own instructions
and remarks; but in the evening it was Phoebe who reigned supreme. She
was so sensible that most likely she could invent a _menu_ all out of
her own head, he thought, feeling that the girl who got him through the
"Wedding March" with but six mistakes, was capable of any intellectual
feat. He had not the slightest doubt that it was in his power to marry
either of the girls as soon as he chose to intimate his choice; and in
the mean time he found it very agreeable to maintain a kind of mental
possibility of future proprietorship of them both.
And thus the pleasant life ran on in the most agreeable absorption and
abstraction from the world outside. "Don't ask any one else; why should
we have any one else?" they all said, except Janey, who had condescended
to appear in the evening in her best frock, though she was not admitted
at dinner, and who thought a few additional guests, and a round game now
and then, would be delightful variations upon the ordinary programme;
but the others did not agree with her. They became more and more
intimate, mingling the brother and sister relationship with a something
unnamed, unexpressed, which gave a subtle flavour to their talks and
flirtations. In that incipient stage of love-making this process is very
pleasant even to the spectators, full of little excitements and
surprises, and sharp stings of momentary quarrel, and great revolutions,
done with a single look, which are infinitely amusing to the lookers-on.
The house became a real domestic centre, thought of by each and all with
tender sentiment, such as made its owners somewhat proud of it, they
could scarcely tell why. Even Mr. May felt a certain complacence in the
fact that the young men were so fond of the Parsonage, and when he heard
complaints of the coldness and dullness of domestic intercourse, smiled,
and said that he did not feel it so, with that pleasant sense of
something superior in himself to cause this difference, which is sweet
to the greatest Stoic; for he was not as yet enlightened as to the
entire indifference of the little circle to any charm in him, and would
have been utterly confounded had any one told him that to the grave and
reflective Northcote, whom he had treated with such magnanimous charity,
binding him (evidently) by bonds of gratitude to himself for ever, it
was little Ursula, and not her father, who was the magnet of attraction.
Mr. May was a clever man, and yet it had not occurred to him that any
comparison between his own society and that of Ursula was possible.
Ursula! a child! He would have laughed aloud at the thought.
But all this pleasant society, though father and daughter both agreed
that it cost nothing, for what is a cake and a cup of tea? and the late
dinners and the extra maid, and the additional fires, and general
enlargement of expenditure made immense inroads, it must be allowed,
into the additional income brought by Clarence Copperhead. The first
quarter's payment was spent, and more than spent, before it came. The
money that was to be laid up for that bill of Tozer's--perhaps--had now
no saving peradventure left in it; for the second half would not be due
till two months after the Tozer bill, and would but be half, even if
procurable at once. Mr. May felt a slight shock while this gleamed
across his mind, but only for a moment. There was still a month, and a
month is a long time, and in the mean time James was almost certain to
send something, and his Easter offerings might, probably would, this
year be something worth having. Why they should be better than usual
this year Mr. May did not explain to himself; his head was a little
turned it must be supposed by the momentary chance of having more money
in his hands than he used to have. Already he had got into the habit of
ordering what he wanted somewhat recklessly, without asking himself how
the things he ordered were to be paid for, and, as so often happened,
followed up that first tampering with the rules of right and wrong by a
general recklessness of the most dangerous kind. He was not so much
alone as he had been; his house, in which he was infinitely more amiable
than of old, had become more pleasant to him; he liked his life better.
His son was independent with an income of his own, and therefore he felt
much more respect for him, and treated him as a companion. His daughter
had developed, if not in the way of _entrées_, a talent for dinners
which raised her very much in his eyes; and naturally the regard shown
to her by the visitors reacted upon Mr. May, though it had not crossed
his mind as yet that any one could be in love with Ursula. All this made
him happier in spite of himself. When you begin to esteem and be proud
of your children your life is naturally happier than when you scoff and
jeer at them, and treat them as creatures of inferior mould to yourself.
Mr. May found out all at once that Reginald was a fine young fellow,
that Ursula was pretty and pleasant, and that droll Janey, with her
elf-locks and angles, was amusing at least, if no more. As for the
little ones, they were considerably thrust into a corner when the elder
youth forced itself into the front. They learned their lessons in
corners, and had their tea by themselves, and were much humbled and
subdued from the moment in which their school-books and toys had
meandered over the whole house, and their looks and likings had been
just as important as anything else. When there is no mother to protect
them, the elder sister's first lover marks a terribly critical period
for the children of the house. They were banished from the
drawing-room, except on special occasions, when they came _en grande
tenue_, in their best things, and were jeered at by Mr. Copperhead. He
called them "the kids," both Amy and Robin were aware, and they resented
it unspeakably. Thus the inward happiness of the Mays confined itself to
the upper regions of the family. Even Betsy regretted the days when, if
she had more to do, she had at least "her kitchen to herself," and
nobody to share the credit. There was more fuss and more worry, if a
trifle less labour, and the increase in consequence which resulted from
being called cook, instead of maid-of-all-work, was scarcely so sweet in
possession as had seemed in prospect.
"Them late dinners" were the object of her perpetual railings; "oh, how
much more comfortable it was, if gentry would but think so, to have your
dinner at two, and get done with your washing up before you was cleaned,
or had any occasion to bother yourself about your cap!" When little Amy
cried over the loneliness of "the children's tea," which they frequently
had to pour out for themselves, Betty gave her a cake and a kiss, and
felt disposed to cry too.
"And she don't know, poor child, not the half," said Betty, which was a
kind of oracular sentence difficult for Betty herself to understand. The
children had nothing to do with the late dinner; they were sent to bed
earlier than they used to be, and scolded if any distant sounds of romps
made itself audible at seven o'clock when their elders were dining; and
then when the little ones went injured to bed, and Johnnie, indignant,
worked at his lessons by himself in a corner of the old nursery, deeply
aware that his school-boy boots and jacket were quite unfit for the
drawing-room, the grown-up young people ran lightly upstairs, all smiles
and pleasure, and those delightful evenings began.
The children sometimes could not get to sleep for the piano and the
raspings of the fiddle, which sounds of mirth suggested nothing but the
wildest enjoyment to them; and when the door opened now and then, bursts
of laughter and mingling voices would come out like the sounds the Peri
heard at the gates of Paradise. The elder ones were happy; their little
atoms of individual life had all united for the moment into one sunshiny
and broad foundation, on which everything seemed to rest with that
strange sense of stability and continuance, which such a moment of
happiness, though it carries every element of change in it, almost
invariably brings. It felt as if it might go on for ever, and yet the
very sentiment that inspired it made separation and convulsion
inevitable--one of those strange paradoxes which occur every day.
Thus the year crept round, and winter melted away with all its
amusements, and spring began. Mr. Northcote's time at Salem Chapel was
more than half over, a fact on which the congregation congratulated
itself much.
"If so be as he had a settled charge of his own, I shouldn't be sorry to
see him gone to-morrow," said one of the recent members.
"Settled charge! You take my word," said Mrs. Pigeon, who was getting
old, but always continued a woman of spirit, "he'll never have a settled
charge in our connection. He carries on here, 'cause he can't help
hisself, but he ain't cut out for a pastor, and he's a deal too thick
with them Church folks. A parson, too! I'd 'a thought he had more
pride."
"Nay, now, but I don't wish him no harm," said the first speaker; "he's
a civil spoken gentleman if he ain't so free and so pleasant as a body
looks for."
"Civil spoken!" said the other; "one of our own ministers in our own
connection! Bless you! they're our servants, that's what they are. I'd
like to see one on 'em as 'ud take upon him to be civil spoken to me."
"Well, I wouldn't go as far as that," cried Mrs. Brown; "we pays 'em
their salary, and we 'as a right to a civil word: but a minister's a
minister, and I'll show him respect as long as he deserves it. I ain't
one for being too hard upon ministers, especially when they're young
men, as has their temptations like, we all know."
"I don't know what you call temptations," said Mrs. Pigeon; "licking the
dust under the feet of a Church parson! and after speaking up so bold
against young May and them old cheats at the College. I wish he was gone
from here, that's what I wish, and our old pastor (if we can't get none
better) back again. He was one as knew his place, and wouldn't have set
his foot inside one of them Parsonages. Parsonages, indeed! kept up with
our money. If ever there was an iniquity on this earth it's a State
Church, and all the argufying in the world won't put that out of me."
It happened that Northcote was in the poulterer's shop, talking to the
poulterer himself at this moment, and he heard the conclusion of this
speech delivered with much unction and force. Such sentiments would have
charmed him three months ago, and probably he would have thought this
uneducated but strenuous partisan an extremely intelligent woman. He
hurried away now with an uncomfortable smile. If an opinion is the
right opinion, why should it have an air of absurdity thrown upon it by
being thus uttered in ungrammatical language by a poulterer's wife?
Truth is the same by whomsoever stated; but yet, was not dogmatism on
any subject the sign of an inexperienced and uncultivated, or a rude and
untutored mind? What did this woman know of the Parsonage, which she
supposed she helped to pay for? What had he himself known three months
ago of Reginald May, whom he had assaulted so savagely? This Church
family, which Mrs. Pigeon knew no better than to abuse, with what divine
charity it had received himself, notwithstanding his public sin against
it. When he thought of that public sin, Northcote's countenance glowed
with shame, and it continued to glow with a more agreeable warmth when
he escaped into thought of the goodness which the Mays had shown him.
Had there ever been such goodness? Was there ever so sweet a home of the
heart as that faded, homely drawing-room? His heart beat high, his steps
quickened; they carried him down Grange Lane in a path so often trod
that he felt there must be a special track of his own under the garden
walls, going Parsonage way.