And thus the pleasant life ran on in the most agreeable absorption and abstraction from the world outside. “Don't ask any one else; why should we have any one else?” they all said, except Janey, who had condescended to appear in the evening in her best frock, though she was not admitted at dinner, and who thought a few additional guests, and a round game now and then, would be delightful variations upon the ordinary programme; but the others did not agree with her. They became more and more intimate, mingling the brother and sister relationship with a something unnamed, unexpressed, which gave a subtle flavour to their talks and flirtations. In that incipient stage of love-making this process is very pleasant even to the spectators, full of little excitements and surprises, and sharp stings of momentary quarrel, and great revolutions, done with a single look, which are infinitely amusing to the lookers-on. The house became a real domestic centre, thought of by each and all with tender sentiment, such as made its owners somewhat proud of it, they could scarcely tell why. Even Mr. May felt a certain complacence in the fact that the young men were so fond of the Parsonage, and when he heard complaints of the coldness and dullness of domestic intercourse, smiled, and said that he did not feel it so, with that pleasant sense of something superior in himself to cause this difference, which is sweet to the greatest Stoic; for he was not as yet enlightened as to the entire indifference of the little circle to any charm in him, and would have been utterly confounded had any one told him that to the grave and reflective Northcote, whom he had treated with such magnanimous charity, binding him (evidently) by bonds of gratitude to himself for ever, it was little Ursula, and not her father, who was the magnet of attraction. Mr. May was a clever man, and yet it had not occurred to him that any comparison between his own society and that of Ursula was possible. Ursula! a child! He would have laughed aloud at the thought.
But all this pleasant society, though father and daughter both agreed that it cost nothing, for what is a cake and a cup of tea? and the late dinners and the extra maid, and the additional fires, and general enlargement of expenditure made immense inroads, it must be allowed, into the additional income brought by Clarence Copperhead. The first quarter's payment was spent, and more than spent, before it came. The money that was to be laid up for that bill of Tozer's—perhaps—had now no saving peradventure left in it; for the second half would not be due till two months after the Tozer bill, and would but be half, even if procurable at once. Mr. May felt a slight shock while this gleamed across his mind, but only for a moment. There was still a month, and a month is a long time, and in the mean time James was almost certain to send something, and his Easter offerings might, probably would, this year be something worth having. Why they should be better than usual this year Mr. May did not explain to himself; his head was a little turned it must be supposed by the momentary chance of having more money in his hands than he used to have. Already he had got into the habit of ordering what he wanted somewhat recklessly, without asking himself how the things he ordered were to be paid for, and, as so often happened, followed up that first tampering with the rules of right and wrong by a general recklessness of the most dangerous kind. He was not so much alone as he had been; his house, in which he was infinitely more amiable than of old, had become more pleasant to him; he liked his life better. His son was independent with an income of his own, and therefore he felt much more respect for him, and treated him as a companion. His daughter had developed, if not in the way of entrées, a talent for dinners which raised her very much in his eyes; and naturally the regard shown to her by the visitors reacted upon Mr. May, though it had not crossed his mind as yet that any one could be in love with Ursula. All this made him happier in spite of himself. When you begin to esteem and be proud of your children your life is naturally happier than when you scoff and jeer at them, and treat them as creatures of inferior mould to yourself. Mr. May found out all at once that Reginald was a fine young fellow, that Ursula was pretty and pleasant, and that droll Janey, with her elf-locks and angles, was amusing at least, if no more. As for the little ones, they were considerably thrust into a corner when the elder youth forced itself into the front. They learned their lessons in corners, and had their tea by themselves, and were much humbled and subdued from the moment in which their school-books and toys had meandered over the whole house, and their looks and likings had been just as important as anything else. When there is no mother to protect them, the elder sister's first lover marks a terribly critical period for the children of the house. They were banished from the drawing-room, except on special occasions, when they came en grande tenue, in their best things, and were jeered at by Mr. Copperhead. He called them “the kids,” both Amy and Robin were aware, and they resented it unspeakably. Thus the inward happiness of the Mays confined itself to the upper regions of the family. Even Betsy regretted the days when, if she had more to do, she had at least “her kitchen to herself,” and nobody to share the credit. There was more fuss and more worry, if a trifle less labour, and the increase in consequence which resulted from being called cook, instead of maid-of-all-work, was scarcely so sweet in possession as had seemed in prospect.
“Them late dinners” were the object of her perpetual railings; “oh, how much more comfortable it was, if gentry would but think so, to have your dinner at two, and get done with your washing up before you was cleaned, or had any occasion to bother yourself about your cap!” When little Amy cried over the loneliness of “the children's tea,” which they frequently had to pour out for themselves, Betty gave her a cake and a kiss, and felt disposed to cry too.
“And she don't know, poor child, not the half,” said Betty, which was a kind of oracular sentence difficult for Betty herself to understand. The children had nothing to do with the late dinner; they were sent to bed earlier than they used to be, and scolded if any distant sounds of romps made itself audible at seven o'clock when their elders were dining; and then when the little ones went injured to bed, and Johnnie, indignant, worked at his lessons by himself in a corner of the old nursery, deeply aware that his school-boy boots and jacket were quite unfit for the drawing-room, the grown-up young people ran lightly upstairs, all smiles and pleasure, and those delightful evenings began.
The children sometimes could not get to sleep for the piano and the raspings of the fiddle, which sounds of mirth suggested nothing but the wildest enjoyment to them; and when the door opened now and then, bursts of laughter and mingling voices would come out like the sounds the Peri heard at the gates of Paradise. The elder ones were happy; their little atoms of individual life had all united for the moment into one sunshiny and broad foundation, on which everything seemed to rest with that strange sense of stability and continuance, which such a moment of happiness, though it carries every element of change in it, almost invariably brings. It felt as if it might go on for ever, and yet the very sentiment that inspired it made separation and convulsion inevitable—one of those strange paradoxes which occur every day.
Thus the year crept round, and winter melted away with all its amusements, and spring began. Mr. Northcote's time at Salem Chapel was more than half over, a fact on which the congregation congratulated itself much.
“If so be as he had a settled charge of his own, I shouldn't be sorry to see him gone to-morrow,” said one of the recent members.
“Settled charge! You take my word,” said Mrs. Pigeon, who was getting old, but always continued a woman of spirit, “he'll never have a settled charge in our connection. He carries on here, 'cause he can't help hisself, but he ain't cut out for a pastor, and he's a deal too thick with them Church folks. A parson, too! I'd 'a thought he had more pride.”
“Nay, now, but I don't wish him no harm,” said the first speaker; “he's a civil spoken gentleman if he ain't so free and so pleasant as a body looks for.”
“Civil spoken!” said the other; “one of our own ministers in our own connection! Bless you! they're our servants, that's what they are. I'd like to see one on 'em as 'ud take upon him to be civil spoken to me.”