Phœbe, Junior. A last Chronicle of Carlingford

Front matter

PHŒBE, JUNIOK. Jl l?ast dhrsttticU of Carlingforb, PDA' iooir. PHŒBE, JUNIOR. % fast Cjpmid. of tfarlhtgfbrl.. B_ MRS. OLIPIIANT, LONDON: HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS, 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. a n g a » CI.AY AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS. PHŒBE, JUNIOK & ILast Chronicle of Carltaflfortf. CHAPTEK I. THE PASTOE'S PEOGEESS. Miss Phœbe Tozee, the only daughter of the chief deacon and leading member of the Dissenting connection in Carling ford, married, shortly after his appointment to the charge of Salem Chapel, in that town, the Eeverend Mr. Beecham, one of the most rising young men in the denomination. The marriage was in many ways satisfactory to the young lady's family, for Mr. Beecham was himself the son of respectable people in a good way of business, and not destitute of means ; and the position was one which they had always felt most suitable for their daughter, and to which she had been almost, it may be said, brought up.

It is, however, scarcely necessary to add that it was not quite so agreeable to the other leading members of the congregation. I should be very sorry to say that each family wished that preferment for its own favourite daughter ; for indeed there can be no doubt, as Mrs. Pigeon asserted vigorously, that a substantial grocer, whose father before him had established an excellent business, and who had paid for his pew in Salem as long as any one could recollect, and supported every charity, and paid up on all occasions when extra expense was necessary, was in every way a more desirable son-in-law than a poor minister who was always dependent on pleasing the chapel folks, and might have to turn out any day. Notwithstanding, however, the evident superiority of the establishment thus attained by Maria Pigeon, there is a certain something attached to the position of a clerical caste, even among such an independent body as the congregation at Salem Chapel, which has its own especial charms, and neither the young people who had been her companions nor the old people who had patronized and snubbed her, felt any satisfaction in seeing Phœbe thus advanced over them to the honours and glories inalienable from the position of minister's wife.

All her little airs of bridal vanity were considered as so many offensive manifestations of delight and exultation in her rise in life. Her trousseau, though pronounced by all competent judges not half so abundant or fine as Maria Pigeon's, still called forth comments which nobody ventured to indulge in, in respect to the grocer's blooming bride. A grocer's lady has a right to anything her parents can afford ; but to see a minister's wife swelling herself up, and trying to ape the quality, filled the town with virtuous indignation. The sight of young Mrs. Beecham walking about with her card-case in her hand, calling on the Miss Hemmingses, shaking hands with Mrs. Rider the doctor's wife, caused unmitigated disgust throughout all the hack streets of Carlingford ; and " that Phœbe a-sweeping in as if the chapel belonged to her," was almost more than the oldest sitter could bear.

Chapter II. The Leading Iieubee

Me. Coppeehead, to whom so much allusion has been made, was a well-known man in other regions besides that of the Crescent Chapel. His name, indeed, may be said to have gone to the ends of the earth, from whence he had conducted lines of railway, and where he had left docks, bridges, and light houses to make him illustrious. He was one of the greatest contractors for railways and other public works in England, and, by consequence, in the world. He had no more than a very ordinary education, and no manners to speak of; but at the same time he had that kind of faculty which is in practical work what genius is in literature, and, indeed, in its kind is genius too, though it neither refines nor even (oddly enough) enlarges the mind to which it belongs. He saw the right track for a road through a country with a glance of his eye ; he mastered all the points of nature which were opposed to him in the rapidest survey, though scientifically he was great in no branch of knowledge.

He could rule his men as easily as if they were so many children ; and, indeed, they were children in his hands. All these gifts made it apparent that he must have been a remarkable and able man ; but no stranger would have guessed as much from his appearance or his talk. There were people, indeed, who knew him well, and who remained incredulous and bewildered, trying to persuade themselves that his success must be owing to pure luck, for that he had nothing else to secure it. The cause of this, perhaps, was that he knew nothing. about books, and was one of those jeering cynics who are so common under one guise or another. Fine cynics are endurable, and give a certain zest often to society, which might become too civil without them ; but your coarse cynic is not pleasant. Mr. Copperhead's eye was as effectual in quenching emotion of any but the coarsest kind as water is against fire.

People might be angry in his presence— it was the only passion he comprehended ; but tenderness, sympathy, sorrow, all the more generous sentiments, fled and concealed themselves w*hen this large, rich, costly man came by. People who were brought much in contact with him became ashamed of having any feel ings at all ; his eye upon them seemed to convict them of hum bug. Those eyes were very light grey, prominent, with a jeer in them which was a very powerful moral instrument. His own belief was that he could " spot " humbug wherever he saw it, and that nothing could escape him ; and, I suppose, so much humbug is there in this world tbat his belief was justified. But there are few more awful people than those ignoble spectators whose jeer arrests the moisture in the eye, and strangles the outcry on their neighbour's lip.

Mr. Copperhead had risen from the ranks ; yet not altogether from the ranks. His father before him had been a contractor, dealing chiefly with canals and roads, and the old kind of public works ; a very rough personage indeed, but one to whose fingers gold had stuck, perhaps because of the clay with which they were alsvays more or less smeared. This ancestor had made a beginning to the family, and given his son a name to start with. Our Mr. Copperhead had married young, and had several sons, who were all in busiuess, and all doing well ; less vigorous, but still moderately successful copies of their father. When, how ever, he had thus done his duty to the State, the first Mrs. Copperhead having died, he did the only incomprehensible action of his life — he married a second time, a feeble, pretty, pink-and-white little woman, who had been his daughter's governess ; married her without rhyme or reason, as all his friends and connections said.

The only feasible motive for this second union seemed to be a desire on Mr. Copperhead's part to have something belonging to him which he could always jeer at, and in this way the match was highly successful. Mrs. Copperhead the second was gushing and susceptible, and as good a butt as could be imagined. She kept him in practice when nobody else was at hand. She was one of those naturally refined but less than half-educated, timid creatures who are to he found now and then painfully earning the bread which is very bitter to them in richer people's houses, and preserving in their little silent souls some fetish in the shape of a scrap of gentility, which is their sole comfort, or almost their sole com fort. Mrs. Copperhead's fetish was the dear recollection that she was " an officer's daughter ; " or rather this had been her fetish in the days when she had nothing, and was free to plume herself on the reflected glory.

Whether in the depths of her luxurious abode, at the height of her good fortune, she still found comfort in the thought, it would be hard to tell. Everybody who had known her in her youth thought her the most fortunate of women. Her old school companions told her story for the encouragement of their daughters, as they might have told a fairy tale. To see her rolling in her gorgeous carriage, or bowed out of a shop where all the daintiest devices of fashion had been placed at her feet, filled passers-by with awe and envy. She could buy what ever she liked, festoon herself with finery, surround herself with the costliest knick-knacks ; the more there were of them, and the costlier they were, the better was Mr. Copperhead pleased. She had everything that heart could desire. Poor little woman !

What a change from the governess-chrysalis who was snubbed by her pupil and neglected by everybody ! and yet I am not sure that she did not — so inconsistent is human nature — look back to those melancholy days with a sigh. This lady was the mother of Clarence Copperhead, the young man who was at Oxford, her only child, upon whom (of course) she doted with the fondest folly ; and whom his father jeered at more than at any one else in the world, more even than at his mother, yet was prouder of than of all his other sons and all his possessions put together. Clarence, whom I will not describe, as he will, 1 trust, show himself more effectually by his actions, was like his mother in disposition, or so, at least, she made herself happy by thinking ; but by some freak of na ture he was like his father in person, and carried his mouse's heart in a huge frame, somewhat hulking and heavy-shouldered, with the same roll which distinguished Mr. Copperhead, and which betrayed something of the original navvy who was the root of the race.

He bad his father's large face too, and a tendency towards those demonstrative and offensive whiskers which are the special inheritance of the British Philistine. But instead of the large goggle eyes, always jeering and impudent, which lighted up the paternal countenance, Clarence had a pair of mild brown orbs, repeated from his mother's faded face, which introduced the oddest discord into his physiognomy generally. In the family, that is to say among the step brothers and step-sisters who formed Mr. Copperhead's first family, the young fellow bore no other name than that of the curled darling, though, indeed, he was as far from being curled as any one could be. He was not clever ; he had none of the energy of his race, and promised to be as useless in an office as he would have been in a cutting or a yard full of men.

I am not sure that this fact did not increase secretly his father's exultation and pride in him. Mr. Copperhead was fond of costly and useless things ; he liked them for their cost, with an additional zest in his sense of the huge vulgar use and profit of most things in his own life. This tendency, more than any appreciation of the beautiful, made him what is called a patron of art. It swelled his personal importance to think that he was able to hang up thousands of pounds, so to speak, on his walls, knowing all the time that he could make thousands more by the money had he invested it in more useful ways. The very fact that he could afford to refrain from investing it, that he could let it lie there useless, hanging by so many cords and ribbons, was sweet to him. And so also it was sweet to him to possess a perfectly useless specimen of humanity, which had cost him a great deal, and promised to cost him still more.

He had plenty of useful sons as he had of useful money. The one who was of no use was the apex and glory of the whole. But these three made up a strange enough family party, as may be supposed. The original Copperheads, the first family, who were all of the same class and nature, would have made a much noisier, less peaceable household ; but they would have been a much jollier and really more harmonious one. Mr. Copperhead himself somewhat despised his elder sons, who were like himself, only less rich, less vigorous, and less self-as sertive. He saw, oddly enough, the coarseness of their manners, and even of their ways of thinking ; but yet he was a great deal more comfortable, more at his ease among them, than he was when seated opposite his trembling, deprecating, frightened little wife, or that huge youth who cost him so much and returned him so little.

Now and then, at regular periodical intervals, the head of the family would go down to Blackheath to dine and spend the night with his son Joe, the second and the favourite, where there were romping children and a portly, rosy young matron, and loud talk about City dinners, contracts, and estimates. This refreshed him, and he came home with many chuckles over the imperfections of the family. " My sons buy their wives by the hundred-weight," he would say jocularly at breakfrst the day after ; " thirteen stone if she is a pound, is Mrs. Joe. Expensive to keep up in velvet and satin, not to speak of mutton and beef. Your mother comes cheap," he would add aside to Clarence, with a rolling laugh. Thus he did not in the least exempt his descendants from the universal ridicule which he poured on all the world ; but when he sat down opposite his timid little delicate wife, and by his University man, who had very little on the whole to say for himself, Mr. Copperhead felt the increase in gentility as well as the failure in jollity.

" You are a couple of ghosts after Joe and his belongings, you two. Speak louder, I say, young fel low. You don't expect me to hear that penny-whistle of yours," he would say, chuckling at them, with a mixture of pride and disdain. They amused him by their dulness and silence, and personal awe of him. He was quite out of his element between these two, and yet the very fact pleasantly excited his pride. "I speak as gentlemen generally speak," said Clarence, who was sometimes sullen when attacked, and who knew by experience that his father was rarely offended by such an argument. " And I am sure, dear, your papa would never wish you to do otherwise," said anxious Mrs. Copperhead, casting a furtive frightened glance at her husband. He rolled out a mighty laugh from the head of the table where he was sitting.

He contemplated them with a leer that would have been insulting, had he not been the husband of one and the father of the other. The laugh and the look called forth some colour on Mrs. Copperhead's cheek, well as she was used to them ; but her son was less susceptible, and ate his breakfast steadily, and did not care. " A pretty pair you are," said Mr. Copperhead. " I like your gentility. How much foie gras would you eat for breakfast, I wonder, my lad, if you had to work for it ? Luckily for you, I wasn't brought up to talk, as you say, like a gentleman. I'd like to see you managing a field of navvies with that nice little voice of yours — ay, or a mob before the hustings, my boy. You're good for nothing, you are ; a nice delicate piece of china for a cupboard, like your mother before you.

However, thank Heaven, we've got the cupboard," he said with a laugh, looking round him ; " a nice big 'un, too, well painted and gilded ; and the time has come, through not talking like a gentleman, that I can afford you. You should hear Joe. When that fellow talks, his house shakes. Confounded bad style of house, walls like gingerbread. How the boards don't break like pie-crust under Mrs. Joe's fairy foot, I can't make out. By Jove, ma'am, one would think I starved you, to see you beside your daughterin-law. Always had a fine healthy appetite had Mrs. Joe." There was nothing to answer to this speech, and therefore a dead silence ensued. When the master of the house is so distinctly the master, silence is apt to ensue after his remarks. Mrs. Copperhead sipped her tea, and Clarence worked steadily through his breakfast, and the head of the family crumpled the Times, which he read at intervals.

All sorts of jokes had gone PHŒEE, JUNIOR. on at Joe's table the morning before, and there had been peals of laughter, and Mrs. Joe had even administered a slap upon her husband's ruddy cheek for some pleasantry or other. Mr. Copperhead, as he looked at his son and his wife, chuckled be hind the Times. When they thought he was occupied they made a few gentle remarks to each other. They had soft voices, with that indescribable resemblance in tone which so often exists between mother and son. Dresden china ; yes, that was the word ; and to see his own resemblance made in that delicate pate, and elevated into that region of superlative costliness, tickled Mr. Copperhead, and in the most delightful way. " How about your ball ? " was his next question, " or Clar ence's ball, as you don't seem to take much interest in it, ma'am ?

You are afraid of being brought in contact with the iron pots, eh ? You might crack or go to pieces, who knows, and what would become of me, a wretched widower." Mr. Copperhead himself laughed loudly at this joke, which did not excite any mirth from the others, and then he .repeated his question, " How about the ball ? " " The invitations are all sent out, Mr. Copperhead ; ninety five — I — I mean a hundred and thirty-five. I — I beg your pardon, they were in two lots," answered the poor woman nervously. " A hundred and thirty-eight — and there is — a few more — " " Take your time, ma'am, take your time, we'll get at the truth at last," said her husband ; aud he laid down his paper and looked at her. He was not angry nor impatient. The twinkle in his eye was purely humorous. Her stumblings amused him, and her nervousness.

But oddly enough, the most furious impatience could not have more deeply disconcerted her. " There are a few more — some old friends of mine," she went on, confused. " They were once rather — kind — took an in terest ; that is — " " Oh, the baronet and his daughters," said Mr. Copperhead, " by all means let's have the baronet and his daughters. Though as for their taking an interest — if you had not been a rich man's wife, ma'am, living in a grand house in Portland Place—" " It was not now," she said, hurriedly. " I do not suppose that any one takes an interest — in me now — " Mr. Copperhead laughed, and nodded his head. " Not many, ma'am, I should think — not many. You women must make up your minds to that. It's all very well to take au in terest in a pretty girl ; but when you come to a certain age — Well, let's proceed, the baronet — " " And his two girls — " " Ah, there's two girls ! that's for you, Clarence, my boy.

I thought there must be a motive. Think that fellow a good parti, eh ? And I would not say they were far wrong if he behaves himself. Make a note of the baronet's daughter, young man. Lord, what a world it is ! " said Mr. Copper head, reflectively. " I should not wonder if you had been scheming, too." " I would not for the world ! " cried the poor little woman, roused for once. " I would not for anything interfere with a marriage. That is the last thing you need fear from me. Whether it was a girl I was fond of, or a girl I disliked — so long as she was Clarence's choice. Oh, I know the harm that is done by other people's meddling — nothing, nothing, would induce me to interfere." Mr. Copperhead laid down his paper, and looked at her. I suppose, however little a man may care for his wife, he does not relish the idea that she married him for anything but love.

He contemplated her still with amused ridicule, but with some thing fiercer in his eyes. " Oh — h ! " he said, "you don't like other people to interfere ? not so much as to say, it's a capital match, eh ? You'll get so aud so, and so and so, that you couldn't have otherwise — carriages perhaps, and plenty of money in your pocket (which it may be you never had in your life before), and consideration, and one of the finest houses in London, let us say in Portland Place. You don't like that amount of good advice, eh ? Well, I do — I mean to interfere with my son, to that extent at least — you can do what you like. But as you're a person of prodigious influence, and strong will, and a great deal of character, and all that," Mr. Copperhead broke out with a rude laugh, " I'm afraid of you, I am— quite afraid."

Fortunately, just at this moment his brougham came round, and the great man finished his coffee at a gulp, and got up. "You look out for the baronet's daughters, then — " he said, " and see all's ready for this ball of yours ; while I go and work to pay the bills, that's my share. You do the ornamental, and I do the useful, ha, ha! I'll keep up my share." It was astonishing what a difference came upon the room the moment he disappeared. Somehow it had been out of harmony. His voice, his look, his heavy person, even his whiskers had been out of character. Now the air seemed to flutter after the closing of the door like water into which something offensive has sunk, and when the ripples of movement were over the large handsome room had toned down into perfect accord with its remaining inhabitants.

Mrs. Copperhead's eyes were rather red — not with tears, but with the inclination to shed tears, w'hich she carefully restrained in her son's presence. He still continued to eat steadily — he had an admirable appetite. But when he had finished everything on bis plate, he looked up and said, "I hope you don't mind, mamma ; I don't suppose you do ; but I don't like the way my father speaks to you." " Oh, my dear ! " cried the mother, with an affected little smile, " why should I mind ? I ought to know by this time that it's only your papa's way." " I suppose so — but I don't like it," said the young man, decisively. He did not notice, however, as after second thoughts he returned to the game-pie, that his mother's eyes were redder than ever.

Chapter III. Me

COPPEEHEAD'S BALL. This ball was an event, not only in Mr. Copperhead's house hold, but even in the connection itself, to which the idea of balls, as given by leading members of the flock, was somewhat novel. Not that the young people were debarred from that amusement, but it was generally attained in a more or less accidental manner, and few professing Christians connected with the management of the chapel had gone the length of giving such an entertainment openly and with design. Mr. Copperhead, however, was in a position to triumph over all such prejudices. He was so rich that any community would have felt it ought to extend a certain measure of indulgence to such a man. Very wealthy persons are like spoilt children, their caprices are allowed to be natural, and even when we are angry with them we excuse the vagaries to which money has a right.

This feeling of indulgence goes a very great way, especially among the classes engaged in money-making, who generally recognize a man's right to spend, and feel the sweetness of spending more acutely than the hereditary possessors of wealth. I do not believe that his superior knowledge of the best ways of using money profitably ever hinders a money-making man from lavish expenditure ; but it gives him a double zest in spending, and it makes him, generally, charitable towards the extravagances of persons still richer thanhimself. A ball, there was no doubt, was a worldly-minded entertainment, but still, the chapel refleeted, it is almost impossible not to be a little worldly-minded when you possess such a great share of the world's goods, and that, of course, it could not be for himself that Mr. Copperhead was doing this, but for his son.

His Son, these amiable casuists proceeded, was being brought up to fill a great position, and no doubt society did exact something, and as Mr. Copperhead had asked all the chief chapel people, his ball was looked upon with very indulgent eyes. The fact that the minister and his family were going staggered some of the more particular members a little, but Mr. Beecham took high ground on the subject and silenced the flock. " The fact that a minister of religion is one of the first persons invited, is sufficient proof of the way our friend means to manage everything," said the pastor. " Depend upon it, it would be good for the social relations of the country if your pastors and teachers were always present. It gives at once a character to all the proceedings." This, like every other lofty assertion, stilled the multitude.

Some of the elder ladies, indeed, groaned to hear, even at the prayer-meetings, a whisper between the girls about this ball and what they were going to wear ; but still it was Christmas, and all the newspapers, and a good deal of the light literature which is especially current at that season, persistently represented all the world as in a state of imbecile joviality, and thus, for the moment, every ob jection was put down. To nobody, however, was the question, what to wear, more interesting than to Phœbe, junior, who was a very well-instructed young woman, and even on the point of dress had theories ot her own. Phœbe had, as her parents were happy to think, had every advantage in her education. She had possessed a German governess all to herself, by which means, even Mr. Beecham himself supposed, a certain amount of that philosophy which Germans communicate by their very touch must have got into her, besides her music and the language which was her primary study.

And she had attended lectures at the ladies' college close by, and heard a great many eminent men on a great many different subjects. She had read, too, a great deal. She was very well got up in the subject of education for women, and lamented often and pathetically the difficulty they lay under of acquiring the highest instruction ; but at the same time she patronized Mr. Ruskin's theory that dancing, drawing, and cooking were three of the higher arts which ought to be studied by girls. It is not necessary for me to account for the dis crepancies between those two systems, in the first place because I cannot, and in the second place, because there is in the mind of the age some ineffable way of harmonizing them ■2 which makes their conjunction common. Phœbe was restrained from carrying out either to its full extent.

She was not allowed to go in for the Cambridge examinations because Mr. Beecham felt the connection might think it strange to see his daughter's name in the papers, and, probably, would imagine he meant to make a schoolmistress of her, which he thanked Providence he had no need to do. And she was not allowed to educate herself in the department of cooking, to which Mrs. Beecham objected, saying, likewise, thank Heaven, they had no need of such messings ; that she did not wish her daughter to make a slave of herself, and that Cook would not put up with it. Between these two limits Phœbe's noble ambition was confined, which was a " trial " to her. But she did what she could, bating neither heart nor hope. She read Virgil at least, if not Sophocles, and she danced and dressed though she was not allowed to cook.

As she took the matter in this serious way, it will be understood that the question of dress was not a mere frivolity with her. A week before the ball she stood in front of the large glass in her mother's room, contemplating herself, not with that satisfaction which it is generally supposed a pretty young woman has in contemplating her own image. She was decidedly a pretty young woman. She had a great deal of the hair of the period, nature in her case, as (curiously, yet very truly) in so many others, having lent herself to the prevailing fashion. How it comes about I cannot tell, but it is certain that there does exist at this present moment, a proportion of golden-haired girls which very much exceeds the number we used to see when golden hair had not become fashionable — a freak of nature which is altogether independent of dyes and auriferous fluid, and which probably has influenced fashion unawares.