Phoebe, Junior

by Mrs. Oliphant

“All this for Northcote,” he said, when she ran up for a moment, done up in a big white apron, her face crimson with the fire and anxiety combined: “for Miss Beecham has been here before, and you made no fuss about her then.”

“She came to tea,” said Ursula. “And I got a cake, which was all any one could do; but a dinner is a very different thing.” Indeed she had by this time come to share her father's opinion, that dinner was the right and dignified thing in all cases, and that they had been hitherto living in a very higgledy-piggledy way. The dinner had gone to her head.

“Then it is for Northcote, as I say,” said Reginald. “Do you know who he is?”

“A Dissenter,” said Ursula, with a certain languor; “but so, you know, is Mr. Copperhead, and he is the chief person here now-a-days. Papa thinks there is nobody like him. And so is Phœbe.”

“Oh, have you come so far as that?” said Reginald, with a little tinge of colour in his face. He laughed, but the name moved him. “It is a pretty fresh sort of country name, not quite like such an accomplished person.”

“Oh, that is just like you men, with your injustice! Because she is clever you take it amiss; you are all jealous of her. Look at her pretty colour and her beautiful hair; if that is not fresh I should like to know what is. She might be Hebe instead of Phœbe,” said Ursula, who had picked up scraps of classical knowledge in spite of herself.

“You are a little goose,” said Reginald, pinching her ear, but he liked his sister for her generous partizanship. “Mind you don't come to dinner with cheeks like that,” he said. “I like my sister to be herself, not a cook-maid, and I don't believe in entrées;” but he went away smiling, and with a certain warmth in his breast. He had gone up and down Grange Lane many times at the hour of sunset, hoping to meet Phœbe again, but that sensible young woman had no mind to be talked of, and never appeared except when she was certain the road was clear. This had tantalized Reginald more than he chose to avow, even to himself. Pride prevented him from knocking at the closed door. The old Tozers were fearful people to encounter, people whom to visit would be to damn himself in Carlingford; but then the Miss Griffiths were very insipid by the side of Phœbe, and the variety of her talk, though he had seen so little of her, seemed to have created a new want in his life. He thought of a hundred things which he should like to discuss with her—things which did not interest Ursula, and which the people about him did not understand much. Society at that time, as may be presumed, was in a poor way in Carlingford. The Wentworths and Wodehouses were gone, and many other nice people; the houses in Grange Lane were getting deserted, or falling into inferior hands, as was apparent by the fact that the Tozers—old Tozer, the butterman—had got one of them. The other people were mostly relics of a bygone state of things: retired old couples, old ladies, spinsters, and widows—excellent people, but not lively to talk to—and the Griffiths, above mentioned, put up with in consideration of tolerable good looks and “fun,” became tiresome when anything better was to be had. The mere apparition of Phœbe upon the horizon had been enough to show Reginald that there were other kinds of human beings in the world. It had not occurred to him that he was in love with her, and the idea of the social suicide implied in marrying old Tozer's granddaughter, had not so much as once entered his imagination. Had he thought of it, he would have pulled that imagination up tight, like an unruly horse, the thing being too impossible to bear thinking of. But this had never entered his mind. He wanted to see Phœbe to talk to her, to be near her, as something very new, captivating and full of interest—that was all. No one else within his sphere could talk so well. The Rector was very great indeed on the reredos question, and the necessity of reviving the disused “Church” customs; but Reginald could not go so far as he did as to the importance of the reredos, and was quite in doubt whether it was not as well for most people to “direct” themselves by their own consciences as to be directed by the spiritual head of the parish, who was not over wise in his own concerns. His father, Reginald knew, could be very agreeable among strangers, but he seldom chose to be so in his own house. All this made the advent of Phœbe appear to him like a sudden revelation out of a different world. He was an Oxford man, with the best of education, but he was a simpleton all the same. He thought he saw in her an evidence of what life was like in those intellectual professional circles which a man may hope to get into only in London. It was not the world of fashion he was aware, but he thought in his simplicity that it was the still higher world of culture and knowledge, in which genius, and wit, and intellect stood instead of rank or riches. How Tozer's granddaughter had got admission there, he did not ask himself, but this was what he thought, and to talk to her was a new sensation. He was quite unconscious of anything more.

Nobody knew when Ursula took her place at the head of the table in her pretty white dress, which she had worn at the Dorsets', how much toil and anxiety the preparations had given her. At the last moment, when her mind was so far clear of the entrées, &c.—as clear as the mind of an inexperienced dinner-giver can be, until the blessed moment when they are eaten and done with—she had to take Sarah in hand, who was not very clear about the waiting, and to instruct her according to her own very imperfect knowledge how to fulfil her duties.

“Think it is not a dinner-party at all, but only just our ordinary luncheon, and don't get fluttered; and when I look at you like this come quite close, and I will whisper what you are to do. And oh, Sarah, like a good creature, don't break anything!” said Ursula almost with tears.

These were all the directions she could give, and they, it must be allowed, were somewhat vague. The excitement was becoming to her. She sat down with a dreadful flutter in her heart, but with her eyes shining and sparkling. Clarence Copperhead, who extended an arm very carelessly to take her downstairs, absolutely certain of being a more important person than his guest Northcote, was roused for the first time to the consciousness that she was very pretty, which he had not found out before. “But no style,” he said to himself. Phœbe was the one who had style. She sat between Mr. May and the stranger, but devoted herself to her host chiefly, displaying a gentle contempt of the younger men in his presence. No anxiety was in her mind about the dinner. She did not follow the fate of those entrées round the table with terrible palpitations, as poor Ursula did; and, alas, the entrées were not good, and Ursula had the mortification to see the dishes she had taken so much trouble with, rejected by one and another. Reginald ate some, for which she blessed him, and so did Phœbe, but Mr. May sent his plate away with polite execrations.