Mr. May, since the bargain was fairly concluded with the Copperheads, had thought a great deal about the three hundred a-year he was to get for his pupil. It almost doubled his income in a moment, and that has a great effect upon the imagination. It was true he would have another person to maintain on this additional income, but still that additional person would simply fill Reginald's place, and it did not at first occur to him that what was good enough for himself, Mr. May, of St. Roque's, was not good enough for any parvenu on the face of the earth. Therefore the additional income represented a great deal of additional comfort, and that general expansion of expenditure, not going into any special extravagances, but representing a universal ease and enlargement which was congenial to him, and which was one of the great charms of money in his eyes. To be sure, when he reflected on the matter, he felt that the first half-year of Clarence's payment ought to be appropriated to that bill, which for the present had brought him so much relief; but this would be so entirely to lose the benefit of the money so far as he was himself concerned, that it was only in moments of reflection that this appeared urgent. The bill to which Tozer's signature had been appended did not oppress his conscience. After all, what was it? Not a very large sum, a sum which when put to it, and with time before him, he could so easily supply; and as for any other consideration, it was really, when you came to think of it, a quite justifiable expedient, not to be condemned except by squeamish persons, and which being never known, could do no harm in the world. He had not harmed anybody by what he had done. Tozer, who was quite able to pay it over and over again, would never know of it; and in what respect, he asked himself, was it worse to have done this than to have a bill really signed by a man of straw, whose “value received” meant nothing in the world but a simple fiction? Cotsdean was no more than a man of straw; if left to himself, he could not pay anything, nor had he anything really to do with the business for which his name stood sponsor; and Tozer's name was merely placed there in the same fictitious way, without any trouble to Tozer, or burden of responsibility. What was the difference, except that it saved trouble and anxiety to everybody except the principal in the affair—he who ought to bear the brunt? Mr. May recognised this without doubt. It was he who had reaped the advantage; and whether Cotsdean was the instrument who knew all about it, or Tozer, who did not know anything about it, it was he, Mr. May, whose natural duty it was to meet the claim and pay the money. He was an honest man; if he was occasionally a little slow in his payments, no one could throw any doubt upon his character. But, of course, should any unforeseen emergency arise, the pupil at once made that straight. Mr. May felt that he had only to go to the bank, which generally did not encourage his visits, and tell them of his pupil, to have the money at once. Nobody could reject such unmistakeable security. So that really there was no further occasion for so much as thinking of Tozer; that was provided for; with the freest conscience in the world he might put it out of his mind. But how he could feel this so strongly, and at the same time revel in the consciousness of a fuller purse, more to enjoy, and more to spend, is a mystery which it would be difficult to solve. He did so, and many others have done so besides him, eating their cake, yet believing that they had their cake with the fullest confidence. He was a sensible man, rather priding himself on his knowledge of business, with much experience in human nature, and a thoughtful sense (fully evidenced in his writings) of all the strange inconsistencies and self-deceits of mankind; but he dropped into this strain of self-delusion with the calmest satisfaction of mind, and was as sure of his own good sense and kindness as if he had never in all his life taken a step out of the rigidest of the narrow ways of uprightness.
Some part of this illusion, however, was sharply dispelled at a very early date. Clarence Copperhead, who was not likely to err by means of too much consideration for the feelings of others, grumbled frankly at the mid-day meal.
“I don't understand a two o'clock dinner,” he said; “it's lunch, that's what I call it; and I won't be disagreeable about the kids, but I must have my dinner. Bless you! a man can't live without his dinner. What is he to do? It is the sort of thing you can look forward to, whatever happens. If it's a wet day, or anything of that sort, there's always dinner; and after it's over, if there's music or a rubber, why that's all very well; or if a man feels a bit sleepy, it doesn't matter. Why, dinner's your stand-by, wherever you are. I'd as soon do without my head, for my part.”
Ursula hastened to tell her father this with dismay in her looks.
“I've always heard that late dinners were so expensive; you require twice as many dishes. At two, one has only what is necessary; but at seven, you require to have fish, and soup, and entrées, and all sorts of things, besides the joint. It was disgraceful of him to say it!” cried Ursula; “and I think he ought to be made to follow our plan, whatever it is, and not do everything he likes here.”
“That is all very true,” said Mr. May; “but he is right about the dinner; it is a great deal more agreeable.”
“And expensive, papa.”
“Well, perhaps it is a great deal to expect at your age; but if you read your cookery-book, as I have often said, when you were reading those novels, and learned how to toss up little dishes out of nothing, and make entrées, and so forth, at next to no expense—”
The tears came into Ursula's eyes at this unjust assault.
“Papa,” she said, “you ought to know better at your age. One forgives the boys for saying such silly things. How can I toss up little dishes out of nothing? If you only knew the price of butter, not to talk of anything else. Made dishes are the most expensive things! A leg of mutton, for instance; there it is, and when one weighs it, one knows what it costs; but there is not one of those entrées but costs shillings for herbs and truffles and gravy and forcemeat, and a glass of white wine here, and a half pint of claret there. It is all very well to talk of dishes made out of nothing. The meat may not be very much—and men never think of the other things, I suppose.”
“It is management that is wanted,” said Mr. May, “to throw nothing away, to make use of everything, to employ all your scraps. If you once have a good sauce—which is as easy as daylight when you take the trouble—you can make all sorts of things out of a cold joint; but women never will take the trouble, and that is the secret of poor dinners. Not one in fifty will do it. If you wanted really to help us, and improve my position, you might, Ursula. I can't afford to fall out with Copperhead, he is very important to me just at this moment; and perhaps it is better that I should give in to him at once about the late dinner.”
“You may say it is not my business,” said Ursula, “but we have already another maid, and now two dinners—for it is just the same as two dinners. He will not be any advantage to you like that, and why should he be so much harder to please than we are? Reginald never grumbled, who was much better bred and better educated than Mr. Copperhead.”
“And with so much money to keep up his dignity,” said her father mockingly. “No, it is not your business, the cookery-book is your business, and how to make the best of everything; otherwise I don't want any advice from you.”
“What did he say?” cried Janey, rushing in as soon as her father had left the room. Ursula, a very general consequence of such interviews, was sitting by the fire, very red and excited, with tears glistening in her eyes.
“Of course I knew what he would say; he says it is not my business, and there are to be late dinners, and everything that man chooses to ask for. Oh, it is so hard to put up with it!” cried Ursula, her eyes flashing through her tears. “I am to read up the cookery-book and learn to make entrées for them; but to say we can't afford it is not my business. I wonder whose business it is? It is I who have to go to the tradespeople and to bear it all if they grumble; and now this horrible man, who dares to tell me the coffee is not strong enough, as if I was a barmaid—”
“Barmaids don't have to do with coffee, have they?” said matter-of-fact Janey; “but the fact is he is not a gentleman; why should you mind? What does it matter what a person like that says or does? You said so yourself, he is not a bit a gentleman. I wonder what Cousin Anne and Cousin Sophy could mean.”
“It is not their fault; they think of his mother, who is nice, who sent those things; but Mr. Copperhead knew about the things, which was not so nice of her, was it? But never mind, we must try to make the best of it. Get the cookery-book, Janey; perhaps if you were to read it out loud, and we were both to try to fix our mind upon it—for something must be done,” said Ursula gravely. “Papa will never find it out till all the money is spent, but we shall be poorer than we were before we had the pupil. Who is that, Janey, at the door?”
It was Phœbe, who came in blooming from the cold, in a furred jacket, at which the girls looked with unfeigned admiration. “The skating will soon come on in earnest now,” she said; “grandmamma is better, and I thought I might come and see you. I had a long talk with your brother the other day, did he tell you? and I made him know Mr. Northcote, one of our people. I know you will turn up your pretty nose, Ursula, at a Dissenter.”
“I should think so,” cried Janey; “we have nothing to do with such people, being gentlefolks, have we, Ursula? Oh, I forgot! I beg your pardon, I didn't mean to say—”
Phœbe smiled upon her serenely. “I am not angry,” she said, “I understand all that; and in Carlingford I have no right, I suppose, to stand upon being a lady, though I always thought I was one. I am only a young woman here, and not so bad either for that, if you will promise, Janey, not to call me a young person—”
“Oh, Miss Beecham!”
“Mr. Copperhead is a Dissenter,” said Ursula, somewhat sullenly, “we put up with him because he is rich. Oh, it is all very disagreeable! I don't want to know any new people whatever they are; I find the old ones bad enough. Reginald hates him too, a big lazy useless being that treats one as if one were a chambermaid!”
“Is it Clarence? It is not quite his fault. His mother is a lady, but his father is a brute,” said Phœbe, “thinking of nothing but his horrible money. Clarence is not so bad. It is because he has no imagination, and does not understand other people's feelings; he does not mean it, poor fellow; he goes trampling about with his big feet upon everybody's toes, and never is a bit the wiser. Here he is—he is coming in with your father. I suppose there must be a great deal in race,” she added with a soft little sigh, “Clarence looks a clown, and your father such a gentleman. I suppose I show just the same when I stand beside you.”
Now Phœbe was well aware that this was not the case, and Ursula's indignant disclaimer made her rather laugh, because it was so unnecessary, than be pleased by its vehemence. There was an old convex mirror opposite which reflected the girls in miniature, making a pretty picture of them as they sat together, Ursula with her dark locks, and Phœbe in her golden hair, and the tall sharp school-girl, Janey, all elbows and angles, short petticoats and grey stockings. Janey was the only one in whom there could have been suspected any inferiority of race; but her awkwardness was that of youth, and her disordered hair and dress belonged also to her age, for she was at that troublesome period when frocks are constantly getting too short, and sleeves too scanty. Janey was shuffling slowly round the visitor, admiring her at every point; her garments were not made as dresses were made in Carlingford. Their fit and their texture were alike too perfect for anything that ever came out of High Street. The furred jacket had not been seen in Grange Lane before. Perhaps it was because the cold had become more severe, an ordinary and simple reason—or because Clarence Copperhead, who knew her, and in whose eyes it was important to bate no jot of her social pretensions, was here; and the furred jacket was beyond comparison with anything that had been seen for ages in Carlingford. The deep border of fur round the velvet, the warm waddings and paddings, the close fit up to the throat, were excellencies which warranted Janey's tour of inspection. Phœbe perceived it very well, but did not confuse the girl by taking any notice, and in her heart she was herself slightly pre-occupied, wondering (as Ursula had done) what the man had come here for, and what he would say when he saw her. Both of these young women had a secret belief that something romantic, something more than the mere prose of reading in the first tutor's house that happened to have been suggested to him, had brought young Copperhead to such an unlikely place as Carlingford. Ursula had by this time learned to reject this hypothesis with much indignation at herself for having entertained it, but Phœbe still felt slightly fluttered by this possibility, and was eager for the entrance of Clarence. She would know at once what had brought him, she said to herself, the moment she caught his eye.
And though Mr. May had reconciled himself so completely to the Tozer business, the appearance of Tozer's granddaughter gave him a momentary shock. “What did you do with my grandfather's letter? he thought her eyes said, and the meeting confused and disturbed him. This, however, was only for a moment. He was a man to whom it was always possible to make himself agreeable to women, and though he felt so easy in his mind about Tozer, still it was evident that to conciliate Tozer's relation, and that so influential a relation, was on the whole a good thing to do. He was going up to her accordingly with outstretched hands, and the most amiable inquiries about her grandmother's health, when, to his surprise, he was frustrated by Clarence who had come in before him—his large person swelling out, as it always seemed to do when he presented himself upon a new scene, with importance and grandeur.
“Miss Beecham!” he said, “really, who would have thought it? Now look here, I came to Carlingford thinking there was not a soul I knew in the place; and here have you turned up all at once, and Northcote (you know Northcote?). It is very queer.”
“It is odd, isn't it?” said Phœbe quickly. “I was astonished to see Mr. Northcote, and though I heard you were coming I am not less surprised to see you.” “He has not come for me,” she said rapidly to herself, “nor for Ursula either; then who is it?” Phœbe demanded in the depths of her own bosom; that he should have come for nobody at all, but simply for his own purposes, to get a little information put into his head, seemed incredible to both the girls. Ursula, for her part, had been angry when she discovered his want of meaning, though why she would have found it hard to say. But Phœbe, for her part, was not angry. She took this like other things of the kind, with great and most philosophical calm, but she could not outgrow it all at once. For whom was it? His cousins, those Miss Dorsets? But they were much older, and not the kind of women for whom such an act was likely. Her mind wandered forth lively and curious in search of the necessary clue. She could not consent to the fact that no clue was necessary where no mystery was.
“I am glad to see that you venture out in this wintry weather,” said Mr. May; “you set us all a good example. I am always telling my girls that cold weather is no sufficient reason for staying indoors. I wish Ursula would do as you do.”
“Papa, how can you talk so?” said Janey, indignant, “when you know very well it is not the cold that keeps Ursula in, but because she has so much to do.”
“Oh, yes, one knows the sort of things young ladies have to do,” said Clarence, with a laugh; “read stories, and look up pretty dresses for their parties, eh, Miss Janey? and consult the fashion-books. Oh, of course you will deny it; but my mother makes me her confidant, and I know that's what you all do.”
“To be sure,” said Phœbe, “we are not so clever as you are, and can't do so many things. We know no Latin or Greek to keep our minds instructed; we acknowledge our infirmity; and we couldn't play football to save our lives. Football is what you do in this season, when you don't hunt, and before the ice is bearing? We are poor creatures; we can't parcel out our lives, according as it is time for football or cricket. You must not be so severe upon girls for being so inferior to you.”
(“Oh, don't be too hard upon him,”) whispered Ursula, in a parenthesis, afraid that this irony should drive the pupil to desperation. (“Hard upon him! he will never find it out,”) Phœbe whispered back in the same tone.
“Oh, hang it all, I don't mean to be severe upon girls,” said Clarence, pulling his moustache with much complacency; “I am sorry for them, I can tell you. It ain't their fault; I know heaps of nice girls who feel it horribly. What can they do? they can't go in for cricket and football. There ought to be something invented for them. To be sure there is lawn-tennis, but that's only for summer. I should go mad, I think, if I had nothing to do.”
“But you have more brain and more strength, you see, than we have; and besides, we are used to it,” said Phœbe. “I am afraid, Ursula, grandmamma will want me, and I must go.”
Here Mr. May said something to his daughter which filled Ursula with excitement, mingled of pleasure and displeasure.
“Papa says, will you come to dinner to-morrow at seven? It appears there is some one you know coming—a Mr. Northcote. I don't know who he is, but it will be very kind if you will come on my account,” the girl concluded, whispering in her ear, “for how shall I ever get through a dinner-party? We never gave one in my life before.”
“Of course I will come,” said Phœbe. “Dinner-parties are not so common here that I should neglect the chance. I must thank Mr. May. But I hope you know who Mr. Northcote is,” she added, laughing. “I gave an account of myself loyally, before I permitted you to ask me; but Mr. Northcote—Oh, no! he does not belong to——the lower classes; but he is a fiery red-hot——”
“What?” cried eager Janey, pressing to the front. “Radical? I am a radical too; and Reginald used to be once, and so was Ursula. Oh, I wish it was to-night!” said Janey, clasping her hands.
“Not a radical, but a Dissenter; and you who are a clergyman, Mr. May! I like you, oh, so much for it. But I wonder what the people will say.”
“My dear Miss Beecham,” said the suave Churchman, quite ready to seize the chance of making a point for himself, “in the Church, fortunately, what the people say has not to be studied, as your unfortunate pastors, I am informed, have to do. While Mr. Copperhead is under my roof, I make his friends welcome—for his sake first, probably afterwards for their own.”
“Yes, I asked Northcote,” said Clarence; “I never thought they would have any objection. He's not a common Dissenter, like the most of those fellows that have nothing but their salaries. He's well off; he don't require, bless you, to keep people in good temper, and toady to 'em, like most do. He's as independent as I am; I don't say that he's quite as well off; but money always finds its level. I shouldn't have thought of asking May to receive a common Dissenting fellow, like the rest.”
Phœbe laughed. It did not occur to the accomplished scion of the house of Copperhead, nor to the two girls, who were not experienced enough to think of such things, what was the meaning expressed in Phœbe's laugh, which was not cheerful. Mr. May himself had the advantage of more discrimination.
“I hope you will find that, Dissenter or not, I know what is my duty to my friends,” he said. “What my guests may possess, or the exact nature of their opinions on all points, are not subjects to be discussed by me.”
“Oh, there is nothing to find fault with in you,” said Phœbe, with less than her usual universal courtesy; “you are always kind, Mr. May;” and then she laughed again. “Some people are very clever in finding out the vulnerable places,” she said.
“She is changed,” said Clarence, when she was gone. “She is not the jolly girl she used to be. She was always a very jolly girl; ready to help a fellow out of a scrape, you know. But Northcote's a fearfully clever fellow. You should just hear him talk. He and May will go at it hammer and tongs, as sure as fate.”