“Is that your last word?” said the father, curiously repeating, without being aware of it, his question of the previous night.
“That’s my last word,” said the son, contemplating his father sullenly from under the heavy lids of his obstinate eyes.
“Very well,” said Mr. Copperhead; “then come along to breakfast, for I’m hungry, and we can talk it over there.”
XLV
The Last
This is how Phoebe’s difficulties ended. Contrary to her every expectation, Mr. Copperhead made a great brag of her powers wherever he went. “Money is money,” he said, “but brains is brains, all the same—we can’t get on without ’em—and when you want to make a figure in the world, sir, buy a few brains if they fall in your way—that’s my style. I’ve done with stupid ones up till now; but when I see there’s a want of a clever one, I ain’t such a fool as to shut my eyes to it. They cost dear, but I’m thankful to say I can afford that, ay, and a good deal more.” Thus everything was satisfactorily arranged. Tozer and his wife cried together for joy on the wedding-day, but they did not expect to be asked to that ceremony, being well aware that Phoebe, having now completely entered into the regions of the great, could not be expected to have very much to say to them. “Though I know, the darling, as she’d just be the same if she was here, and wouldn’t let nobody look down upon you and me,” said the old woman.
“She’s a wonderful girl, she is,” said old Tozer. “Wind us all round her little finger, that’s what she could do—leastways, except when there was principle in it, and there I stood firm. But I’ve done things for Phoebe as I wouldn’t have done for no other breathing, and she knew it. I wouldn’t give in to her though about church folks being just as good as them as is more enlightened. That’s agin’ reason. But I’ve done things for ’em along of her!—Ah! she’s a wonderful girl is Phoebe—Phoebe, Junior, as I always call her. There ain’t her match between here and London, and that’s what I’ll always say.”
But we will not try to describe the glory and joy that filled Mr. Beecham’s house in the Terrace, when Mrs. Clarence Copperhead went back there with all their friends to the wedding-breakfast, which was in the very best style, and regardless of expense. Even at that moment it gave Phoebe a little pang to see her mother in the bright colours which she loved, but which made her so much pinker and fatter than was needful. Little Mrs. Copperhead, in dim neutral tints, looked like a little shadow beside the pastor’s buxom wife, and was frightened and ill at ease and sad to the heart to lose her boy, who had been all she possessed in the world. Sophy Dorset, specially asked for the purpose with Ursula May, who was a bridesmaid, looked on with much admiration at the curious people, so rich, so fine, and so overwhelming, among whom her father had found it so remarkable to meet not one person whom he knew. “Now, Ursula,” she said, “if you had played your cards properly that beautiful bridegroom and that nice little house in Mayfair, and the privilege, perhaps, of writing M.P. after your name some time or other, might all have been yours instead of Miss Beecham’s. Why did you let her carry off the prize?”
“Cousin Sophy!” cried Ursula indignantly. “As if I ever thought of him as a prize! But I know you are only laughing at me. The strange thing is that she likes him, though I am sure she knew very well that Reginald—Oh, when one thinks how many people there are in this world who do not get what they wish most—and how many people there are—” Ursula paused, involved in her own antithesis, and Sophy ended it for her with a sigh.
“Who do—and the one is no happier than the other, most times, little Ursula; but you don’t understand that, and as you are going to be one of the blessed ones, you need not take to making reflections; that is my privilege, my dear.”
“Oh, Cousin Sophy, why were not you one of those blessed ones too?” cried Ursula, clasping her arms suddenly round her kind friend. This, be it understood, was after the breakfast was over, and when, in the deep gloom which generally concludes a wedding day, everybody had gone home. The two were in a magnificent large bedchamber in Portland Place, in the vast silent mansion of the Copperheads, where at present there was nothing more cheerful than the bridegroom’s soft-eyed mother, taking herself dreadfully to task for not being happy, and trying not to cry, though there was to be a great dinner and entertainment that night.
“Don’t you know?” said Sophy, putting her aside with a certain proud coldness, and a momentary laugh, “he I loved proved false; that is to say, in simple language, he turned out so poor a creature that it is very good of me not to despise humanity for his sweet sake. Never mind. If all had gone well, and he had been a real man instead of the sham image of one, I don’t suppose I should have ever been among the blessed ones. Anne is, who never thought of such mysteries at all; and so you will be, my little Ursula—very happy. I am sure of it—though how you can manage to be happy, my dear, marrying a man who is not a good Churchman, it is not for me to say.”
“Cousin Sophy, have I been brought up in a way to make me so fond of Churchmen?” said Ursula solemnly. She could not have told how much or how little she knew about her father’s behaviour, and the “shock to his mental system;” but vaguely and by instinct there
