“Two hundred and fifty; and some advantages beside—”
“Bravo!” said Mr. Copperhead, “now how many curates could you get for that two and a-half? I’ve got a great respect for you, Mr. May; you know what’s what. That shows sense, that does. How do you do, sir? fine old place you’ve got here—capital snug appointment. I’ve just been saying to your father I admire his sense, looking out for you a nice fat easy appointment like this.”
Reginald turned from red to white, and then to portentous blackness. The subject was of all others the one least likely to please him.
“It is not very fat,” he said, with a look of offence, quite undeserved by the chief sufferer, towards his father, “nor very easy. But come in. It is rather an interesting old place. I suppose you would like to see the Chapel, and the old captain’s rooms; they are very fine in their way.”
“Thank you; we’ve been seeing a deal already, and I feel tired. I think I’ll—let you off the chapel. Hallo! here’s another old friend—Northcote, by George! and what are you doing here I should like to know, a blazing young screamer of the Liberation Society, in a high and dry parson’s rooms? This is as good as a play.”
“I suppose one is not required to stay at exactly the same point of opinion all one’s life,” said Northcote, with a half-smile.
“By George! but you are though, when you’re a public man; especially when you’re on a crusade. Haven’t I heard you call it a crusade? I can tell you that changing your opinion is just the very last thing the public will permit you to do. But I shan’t tell for my part—make yourself easy. Clarence, don’t you let it out; your mother, fortunately, is out of the way. The world shall never know through me that young Northcote, the anti-state Churchman, was discovered hobnobbing with a snug chaplain in a sinecure appointment. Ha, ha! had you there.”
“To do Northcote justice,” said Mr. May; “he began life in Carlingford by pointing out this fact to the neighbourhood; that it was a sinecure, and that my son and I—”
“Would it not be more to the point to inspect the chapel?” said Reginald, who had been standing by impatiently playing with a big key; upon which Mr. Copperhead laughed more loudly than before.
“We’ll not trouble the chapel,” he said, “railway stations are more in my way; you are all a great deal finer than I am, and know a deal more, I suppose; but my roughness has served its purpose on the whole, better perhaps for some things—yes, for some things, Clar, and you may thank your stars, old boy. If you had been a parson’s son, by George! there would have been no fat appointment waiting for you.”
“After all, my son’s appointment is not so very fat,” said Mr. May, forcing a laugh. “It is not so much as many a boy at school gets from his father.”
“Ah, you mean my boy at school! he’s an extravagant dog. His mother and he, sir, are made of different clay from me; they are porcelain and I am delft. They want fine velvet cupboards to stand themselves in, while I’m for the kitchen dresser. That’s the difference. But I can afford it, thank Heaven. I tell Clarence that he may thank his stars that I can afford it, and that he isn’t born a poor man’s son. He has been plucked at Oxford, you know,” he said, with a big laugh, thrusting forth his chest as Clarence thrust forth his shirtfront, with an apparent complacency over the very plucking. My son can afford to be plucked, he seemed to say. He got up as he spoke, and approaching the fireplace turned his back to it, and gathered up his coattails under his arm. He was no taller than Mr. May, and very little taller than Reginald; but they both shrank into insignificance beside the big self-assertive figure. He looked about the room as if he was thinking of “buying up” the whole contents of it, and thought very little of them. A glance of contempt, a shrug more implied than actual, testified his low opinion of everything around. When he withdrew his eyes from the furniture he shook out his leg, as Clarence had done his, and gave a pull to his trousers that they might sit properly. He had the word “Rich” painted in big letters all over him, and he seemed to feel it his vocation to show this sense of superiority. Clarence by his side, the living copy of the great man’s appearance and manners, strutted and put himself forward like his father, as a big calf might place itself beside the parent cow. Mr. Copperhead did not look upon his offspring, however, with the cow’s motherly complacency. He laughed at him openly, with cynical amusement. He was clever in his way, and Clarence was stupid; and besides he was the proprietor, and Clarence, for all he was porcelain, was his goods and chattels. When he looked at him, a wicked leer of derision awoke in his eye.
“Yes, my boy,” he said, “thank your stars; you would not make much of it if you were a poor man. You’re an ornament that costs dear; but I can afford you. So, Northcote, you’re changing your opinions—going over to the Church, eh? Extremes meet, they say; I shouldn’t have thought it—”
“I am doing nothing of the kind,” said Northcote stoutly. He was not in a mood to be taken to task by this Mammon of unrighteousness, and indeed had at all times been a great deal too independent and unwilling to submit to leading members of the connection. Mr. Copperhead, however, showed no resentment. Northcote too, like Clarence,
