Phoebe was happy enough without it, and though not morbidly bashful, felt that at present it was more comfortable to be under Miss Charlecote's wing than that of Lucilla, and that the quiet evening was more composing than fresh scenes of novelty.
The Woolstone-lane world was truly very different from that of which she had had a glimpse, and quite as new to her. Mr. Parsons, after his partial survey, was considering of possibilities, or more truly of endeavours at impossibilities, a mission to that dreadful population, means of discovering their sick, of reclaiming their children, of causing the true Light to shine in that frightful gross darkness that covered the people. She had never heard anything yet discussed save on the principle of self-pleasing or self-aggrandizement; here, self-spending was the axiom on which all the problems were worked.
After dinner, Mr. Parsons retired into the study, and while his wife and Miss Charlecote sat down for a friendly gossip over the marriages of the two daughters, Phoebe welcomed an unrestrained tete-a-tete with her brother. They were one on either seat of the old oriel window, she, with her work on her lap, full of pleasant things to tell him, but pausing as she looked up, and saw his eyes far far away, as he knelt on the cushion, his elbows on the sill of the open lattice, one hand supporting his chin, the other slowly erecting his hair into the likeness of the fretful porcupine. He had heard of, but barely assented to, the morrow's dinner, or the fete at Castle Blanch; he had not even asked her how Lucilla looked; and after waiting for some time, she said, as a feeler-'You go with us to-morrow?'
'I suppose I must.'
'Lucy said so much in her pretty way about catching the robin, that I am sure she was vexed at your not having called.'
No answer: his eyes had not come home.
Presently he mumbled something so much distorted by the compression of his chin, and by his face being out of window, that his sister could not make it out. In answer to her sound of inquiry, he took down one hand, removed the other from his temple, and emitting a modicum more voice from between his teeth, said, 'It is plain-it can't be-'
'What can't be? Not-Lucy?' gasped Phoebe.
'I can't take shares in the business.'
Her look of relief moved him to explain, and drawing himself in, he sat down on his own window-seat, stretching a leg across, and resting one foot upon that where she was placed, so as to form a sort of barrier, shutting themselves into a sense of privacy.
'I can't do it,' he repeated, 'not if my bread depended on it.'
'What is the matter?'
'I have looked into the books, I have gone over it with Rawlins.'
'You don't mean that we are going to be ruined?'
'Better that we were than to go on as we do! Phoebe, it is wickedness.' There was a long pause. Robert rested his brow on his hand, Phoebe gazed intently at him, trying to unravel the idea so suddenly presented. She had reasoned it out before he looked up, and she roused him by softly saying, 'You mean that you do not like the manufacture of spirits because they produce so much evil.'
Though he did not raise his head, she understood his affirmation, and went on with her quiet logic, for, poor girl, hers was not the happy maiden's defence-'What my father does cannot be wrong.' Without condemning her father, she instinctively knew that weapon was not in her armoury, and could only betake herself to the merits of the case. 'You know how much rather I would see you a clergyman, dear Robin,' she said; 'but I do not understand why you change your mind. We always knew that spirits were improperly used, but that is no reason why none should be made, and they are often necessary.'
'Yes,' he answered; 'but, Phoebe, I have learnt to-day that our trade is not supported by the lawful use of spirits. It is the ministry of hell.'
Phoebe raised her startled eyes in astonished inquiry.
'I would have credited nothing short of the books, but there I find that not above a fifth part of our manufacture goes to respectable houses, where it is applied properly. The profitable traffic, which it is the object to extend, is the supply of the gin palaces of the city. The leases of most of those you see about here belong to the firm, it supplies them, and gains enormously on their receipts. It is to extend the dealings in this way that my legacy is demanded.'
The enormity only gradually beginning to dawn upon Phoebe, all she said was a meditative-'You would not like that.'
'You did not realize it,' he said, nettled at her quiet tone. 'Do not you understand? You and I, and all of us, have eaten and drunk, been taught more than we could learn, lived in a fine house, and been made into ladies and gentlemen, all by battening on the vice and misery of this wretched population. Those unhappy men and women are lured into the gaudy palaces at the corners of the streets to purchase a moment's oblivion of conscience, by stinting their children of bread, that we may wear fine clothes, and call ourselves county people.'
'Do not talk so, Robert,' she exclaimed, trembling; 'it cannot be right to say such things-'
'It is only the bare fact! it is no pleasure to me to accuse my own father, I assure you, Phoebe, but I cannot blind myself to the simple truth.'
'He cannot see it in that light.'
'He will not.'
'Surely,' faltered Phoebe, 'it cannot be so bad when one does not know it is-'
'So far true. The conscience does not waken quickly to evils with which our lives have been long familiar.'
'And Mervyn was brought up to it-'
'That is not my concern,' said Robert, too much in the tone of 'Am I my brother's keeper?'
'You will at least tell your reasons for refusing.'
'Yes, and much I shall be heeded! However, my own hands shall be pure from the wages of iniquity. I am thankful that all I have comes from the Mervyns.'
'It is a comfort, at least, that you see your way.'
'I suppose it is;' but he sighed heavily, with a sense that it was almost profanation to have set such a profession in the balance against the sacred ministry.
'I know she will like it best.'
Dear Phoebe! in spite of Miss Fennimore, faith must still have been much stronger than reason if she could detect the model parsoness in yonder firefly.
Poor child, she went to bed, pondering over her brother's terrible discoveries, and feeling as though she had suddenly awakened to find herself implicated in a web of iniquity; her delightful parcel of purchases lost their charms, and oppressed her as she thought of them in connection with the rags of the squalid children the rector had described, and she felt as if there were no escape, and she could never be happy again under the knowledge of the price of her luxuries, and the dread of judgment. 'Much good had their wealth done them,' as Robert truly said. The house of Beauchamp had never been nearly so happy as if their means had been moderate. Always paying court to their own station, or they were disunited among themselves, and not yet amalgamated with the society to which they had attained, the younger ones passing their elders in cultivation, and every discomfort of change of position felt, though not acknowledged. Even the mother, lady as she was by birth, had only belonged to the second-rate class of gentry, and while elevated by wealth, was lowered by connection, and not having either mind or strength enough to stand on her own ground, trod with an ill-assured foot on that to which she aspired.
Not that all this crossed Phoebe's mind. There was merely a dreary sense of depression, and of living in the midst of a grievous mistake, from which Robert alone had the power of disentangling himself, and she fell asleep sadly enough; but, fortunately, sins, committed neither by ourselves, nor by those for whom we are responsible, have not a lasting power of paining; and she rose up in due time to her own calm sunshiny spirit of anticipation of the evening's meeting between Robin and Lucy-to say nothing of her own first dinner-party.