“Don’t call them absurd,” said Reginald, “indeed I can enter into them perfectly well. I don’t know them, perhaps, in my own person; but I can perfectly understand the repugnance, the distress—”
“The words are too strong,” said Phoebe, “not so much as that; the—annoyance, perhaps, the nasty disagreeable struggle with one’s self and one’s pride; as if one were better than other people. I dislike myself, and despise myself for it; but I can’t help it. We have so little power over ourselves.”
“I hope you will let my sister do what she can to deliver you,” said Reginald; “Ursula is not like you; but she is a good little thing, and she is able to appreciate you. I was to tell you she had been called suddenly off to the Dorsets’, with whom my father and she have gone to pass the night—to meet, I believe, a person you know.”
“Oh, Clarence Copperhead; he is come then? How odd it will be to see him here. His mother is nice, but his father is—Oh, Mr. May! if you only knew the things people have to put up with. When I think of Mr. Copperhead, and his great, ugly, staring wealth, I feel disposed to hate money—especially among Dissenters. It would be better if we were all poor.”
Reginald said nothing; he thought so too. In that case there would be a few disagreeable things out of a poor clergyman’s way, and assaults like that of Northcote upon himself would be impossible; but he could scarcely utter these virtuous sentiments.
“Poverty is the desire of ascetics, and this is not an ascetic age,” he said at length, with a half-laugh at himself for his stiff speech.
“You may say it is not an ascetic age; but yet I suppose the Ritualists—. Perhaps you are a Ritualist yourself, Mr. May? I know as little personally about the church here, as you do about Salem Chapel. I like the service—so does papa—and I like above all things the independent standing of a clergyman; the feeling he must have that he is free to do his duty. That is why I like the church; for other things of course I like our own body best.”
“I don’t suppose such things can be argued about, Miss Beecham. I wish I knew something of my father’s new pupil. I don’t like having a stranger in the house; my father is fond of having his own way.”
“It is astonishing how often parents are so,” said Phoebe, demurely; “and the way they talk of their experience! as if each new generation did not know more than the one that preceded it.”
“You are pleased to laugh, but I am quite in earnest. A pupil is a nuisance. For instance, no man who has a family should ever take one. I know what things are said.”
“You mean about the daughters? That is true enough, there are always difficulties in the way; but you need not be afraid of Clarence Copperhead. He is not the fascinating pupil of a church-novel. There’s nothing the least like the Heir of Redclyffe about him.”
“You are very well up in Miss Yonge’s novels, Miss Beecham.”
“Yes,” said Phoebe; “one reads Scott for Scotland (and a few other things), and one reads Miss Yonge for the church. Mr. Trollope is good for that too, but not so good. All that I know of clergymen’s families I have got from her. I can recognize you quite well, and your sister, but the younger ones puzzle me; they are not in Miss Yonge; they are too much like other children, too naughty. I don’t mean anything disagreeable. The babies in Miss Yonge are often very naughty too, but not the same. As for you, Mr. May—”
“Yes. As for me?”
“Oh, I know everything about you. You are a fine scholar, but you don’t like the drudgery of teaching. You have a fine mind, but it interferes with you continually. You have had a few doubts—just enough to give a piquancy; and now you have a great ideal, and mean to do many things that common clergymen don’t think of. That was why you hesitated about the chaplaincy? See how much I have got out of Miss Yonge. I know you as well as if I had known you all my life; a great deal better than I know Clarence Copperhead; but then, no person of genius has taken any trouble about him.”
“I did not know I had been a hero of fiction,” said Reginald, who had a great mind to be angry. All this time they were walking briskly backward and forward before Tozer’s open door, the Anglican, in his long black coat, following the lively movements of Tozer’s granddaughter, only because he could not help himself. He was irritated, yet he was pleased. A young man is pleased to be thought of, even when the notice is but barely complimentary. Phoebe must have thought of him a good deal before she found him out in this way; but he was irritated all the same.
“You are, however,” she answered lightly. “Look at that blaze of crimson, Mr. May; and the blue which is so clear and so unfathomable. Winter is grander than summer, and even warmer—to look at; with its orange, and purple, and gold. What poor little dirty, dingy things we are down here, to have all this exhibited every evening for our delight!”
“That is true,” he said; and as he gazed, something woke in the young man’s heart—a little thrill of fancy, if not of love. It is hard to look at a beautiful sunset, and then see it reflected in a girl’s face, and not to feel something—which may be nothing, perhaps. His heart gave a small jump, not much to speak of. Phoebe did not talk like the other young ladies in Grange Lane.
“Mr. May, Mr. May!” she cried suddenly, “please go
