Part 19 (1/2)
”That Tozer girl!” Ursula gave a little shriek, and grew first red and then pale with horror and dismay.
”Yes; I told you about her; so well dressed and looking so nice. That was she; with the very same dress, such a charming dress! so much style about it. Who is she, Ursula? Mr. May, tell me who is she? You can't imagine how much I want to know.”
Ursula dropped into a chair, looking like a little ghost, faint and rigid. She said afterwards to Janey that she felt in the depths of her heart that it must be true. She could have cried with pain and disappointment, but she would not give Mrs. Sam Hurst the pleasure of making her cry.
”There must be some mistake,” said Reginald, interposing. ”This is a lady--my sister met her in town with the Dorsets.”
”Oh, does she know the Dorsets too?” said the inquirer. ”That makes it still more interesting. Yes, that is the girl that is with the Tozers; there can be no mistake about it. She is the granddaughter. She was at the Meeting last night. I had it from the best authority--on the platform with old Tozer. And, indeed, Mr. May, how any one that had been there could dare to look you in the face!--”
”I was there myself,” said Mr. May. ”It amused me very much. Tell me now about this young person. Is she an impostor, taking people in, or what is it all about? Ursula looks as if she was in the trick herself, and had been found out.”
”I am _sure_ she is not an impostor,” said Ursula. ”An impostor! If you had seen her as I saw her, at a great, beautiful, splendid ball. I never saw anything like it. I was n.o.body there--n.o.body--and neither were Cousin Anne and Cousin Sophy--but Miss Beecham! It is a mistake, I suppose,” the girl said, raising herself up with great dignity; ”when people are always trying for news, they get the wrong news sometimes, I don't doubt. You may be sure it is a mistake.”
”That's me,” said Mrs. Sam Hurst, with a laugh; ”that is one of Ursula's a.s.saults upon poor me. Yes, I confess it, I am fond of news; and I never said she was an impostor. Poor girl, I am dreadfully sorry for her. I think she is a good girl, trying to do her duty to her relations. She didn't choose her own grandfather. I dare say, if she'd had any say in it, she would have made a very different choice. But whether your papa may think her a proper friend for you--being Tozer's granddaughter, Miss Ursula, that's quite a different business, I am bound to say.”
Again Ursula felt herself kept from crying by sheer pride, and nothing else. She bit her lips tight; she would not give in. Mrs. Hurst to triumph over her, and to give her opinion as to what papa might think proper! Ursula turned her back upon Mrs. Hurst, which was not civil, fearing every moment some denunciation from papa. But nothing of the kind came. He asked quite quietly after a while, ”Where did you meet this young lady?” without any perceptible inflection of anger in his tone.
”Why, papa,” cried Janey, distressed to be kept so long silent, ”everybody knows where Ursula met her; no one has heard of anything else since she came home. She met her of course at the ball. You know; Reginald, _you_ know! The ball where she went with Cousin Anne.”
”Never mind Cousin Anne; I want the name of the people at whose house it was.”
”Copperhead, papa,” said Ursula, rousing herself. ”If Cousin Anne does not know a lady from a common person, who does, I wonder? It was Cousin Anne who introduced me to her (I think). Their name was Copperhead, and they lived in a great, big, beautiful house, in the street where amba.s.sadors and quant.i.ties of great people live. I forget the name of it; but I know there was an amba.s.sador lived there, and Cousin Anne said----”
”Copperhead! I thought so,” said Mr. May. ”When Ursula has been set a-going on the subject of Cousin Anne, there is nothing rational to be got from her after that for an hour or two. You take an interest in this young lady,” he said shortly, turning to Mrs. Sam Hurst, who stood by smiling, rather enjoying the commotion she had caused.
”Who, I? I take an interest in anybody that makes a stir, and gives us something to talk about,” said Mrs. Hurst, frankly. ”You know my weakness. Ursula despises me for it, but you know human nature. If I did not take an interest in my neighbours what would become of me--a poor lone elderly woman, without either chick or child?”
She rounded off this forlorn description of herself with a hearty laugh, in which Janey, who had a secret kindness for their merry neighbour, though she feared her ”for papa,” joined furtively. Mr. May, however, did not enter into the joke with the sympathy which he usually showed to Mrs. Hurst. He smiled, but there was something _distrait_ and pre-occupied in his air.
”How sorry we all are for you,” he said; ”your position is truly melancholy. I am glad, for your sake, that old Tozer has a pretty granddaughter to beguile you now and then out of recollection of your cares.”
There was a sharp tone in this which caught Mrs. Hurst's ear, and she was not disposed to accept any sharpness from Mr. May. She turned the tables upon him promptly.
”What a disgraceful business that Meeting was! Of course, you have seen the paper. There ought to be some way of punis.h.i.+ng those agitators that go about the country, taking away people's characters. Could not you bring him up for libel, or Reginald? I never knew anything so shocking.
To come to your own town, your own neighbourhood, and to strike you through your son! It is the nastiest, most underhanded, unprincipled attack I ever heard of.”
”What is that?” asked Reginald.
He was not easily roused by Carlingford gossip, but there was clearly more in this than met the eye.
”An Anti-State Church Meeting,” said Mr. May, ”with special compliments in it to you and me. It is not worth our while to think of it. Your agitators, my dear Mrs. Hurst, are not worth powder and shot. Now, pardon me, but I must go to work. Will you go and see the sick people in Back Grove Street, Reginald? I don't think I can go to-day.”
”I should like to know what was in the paper,” said the young man, with an obstinacy that filled the girls with alarm. They had been in hopes that everything between father and son was to be happy and friendly, now that Reginald was about to do what his father wished.
”Oh, you shall see it,” said Mrs. Hurst, half alarmed too; ”but it is not anything, as your father says; only we women are sensitive. We are always thinking of things which, perhaps, were never intended to harm us. Ursula, you take my advice, and don't go and mix yourself up with Dissenters and that kind of people. The Tozer girl may be very nice, but she is still Tozer's granddaughter, after all.”
Reginald followed the visitor out of the room, leaving his sisters very ill at ease within, and his father not without anxieties which were so powerful, indeed, that he relieved his mind by talking of them to his daughters--a most unusual proceeding.
”That woman will set Reginald off at the nail again,” he cried; ”after he had begun to see things in a common-sense light. There was an attack made upon him last night on account of that blessed chaplaincy, which has been more trouble to me than it is worth. I suppose he'll throw it up now. But I wash my hands of the matter. I wonder how you girls can encourage that chattering woman to come here.”