“Mr. Northcote!” Ursula had been struggling to break in all the time; but while he spoke her words dispersed, her feelings softened, and at the end she found nothing but that startled repetition of his name with which to answer him. No doubt if he had given her time the eloquence would have come back; but he was too much in earnest to be guilty of such a mistake.
“What can I say about it?” cried the young man. “It has filled me with shame and with happiness. I have been taken in my own trap—those whom I attacked as you say—went out of my way to attack, and abused like a fool because I knew nothing about them—have shown me what the Bible means. Your father and brother knew what I had done, they met me separately, quite independent of each other, and both of them held out their hands to me; why, except that I had offended them, I cannot tell. A stranger, belonging to an obscure class, I had no claim upon them except that I had done what ought to have closed their house against me. And you know how they have interpreted that. They have shown me what the Bible means.”
The two girls sat listening, both with their heads bent towards him, and their eyes fixed upon his face. When he stopped, Janey got up with her work in her lap, and coming a little nearer to Ursula, addressed her in a wondering voice.
“Is it papa he is talking of like that?” she said, under her breath.
“Yes,” he said, fervently, turning to her. “It is your father. He has made charity and kindness real things to me.”
“Poor papa!” said Ursula, whose tears were arrested in her eyes by the same surprised sensation, half-pleasure, half-pain, which hushed even Janey’s voice. They were “struck,” as Mrs. Hurst had said, but by such a strange mingling of feelings that neither knew what to make of them. Northcote did not understand what they meant; their words conveyed a slight shock of surprise, but no distinct idea to him; and when Janey, too much impressed to settle down again, went away after a while musingly, carrying her work in the upper skirt of her gown, held like a market-woman’s apron by her elbow against her side; and he found himself to have attained in the very confusion of his intentions to what he wished, i.e., an interview with Ursula by herself, he was almost too much agitated to take advantage of it. As for Ursula, she had floated a hundred miles away from that sensation of last night which, had no stronger feeling come in to bewilder her, would have made his errand very plain to her mind. She had ceased to think about him, she was thinking with a certain tenderness, and wondering, half-awed, half-amused, self-questioning, about her father. Was he so good as this? had he done this Christian action? were they all perhaps doing papa injustice? She was recalled to herself by Northcote’s next proceeding. He went to the door and closed it after Janey, who had left it open, of course, and then he came to the back of the chair on which stood the great basket of darning. His voice was tremulous, his eyes liquid and shining with emotion.
“Will you forgive me, since they have forgiven me? and may I ask you something?” he said.
XXXIV
An Extravagance
Mr. May did not take any particular notice of what was going on around him among the young people. Nobody could have been more startled than he, had he been told of the purpose with which Horace Northcote, the Dissenting minister, had paid his early morning visit; and though he had a half-scornful, half-amused glimmer of insight into the feelings of his son, and saw that Clarence Copperhead was heavily veering the same way, it did not occur to him that any crisis was approaching. He was enjoying himself in his way, and he had not done that for a long time. He dearly liked the better way of living, the more liberal strain of housekeeping and expenditure; he liked the social meetings in the evening, the talk after dinner with the three young men, the half-fatherly flirtation with Phoebe, which she too enjoyed much, avowedly preferring him, with pretty coquetry, to the others. All this was very pleasant to him; and the additional money in his pocket was very pleasant, and when the post came in, one of these April mornings, and brought a letter from James, enclosing a draft for fifty pounds, his satisfaction was intense. The sight of the money brought an itching to his fingers, a restlessness about him generally. And yet it was not all that might have been desired, only fifty pounds! he had been buoying himself up by vain thoughts of how James this time, having been so long writing, would send a larger sum, which would at once tide him over the Tozer business, and on this account had been giving himself no trouble about it. Never before had he been so insouciant, although never before had the risk been so great. He had suffered so much about it last time, probably, that was why he took it so easily now; or was it because his trust in the chapter of accidents had grown greater since he was more dependent on it? or because of the generally expanded sense of living in him which made anxiety uncongenial anyhow? Whatever the cause was, this was the effect. A momentary disappointment when he saw how little James’s draft was—then a sense
