Hopes and Fears or, scenes from the life of a spinster

But Rashe cried out that the car would be the death of her; she could not stir without a night’s rest.

‘And be all the stiffer to-morrow?  Once on the car, you will be very comfortable—’

‘Oh, no!  I can’t!  This is a horrid place.  Of all the unlucky things that could have happened—’

‘Then,’ said Cilla, fancying a little coercion would be wholesome, ‘don’t be faint-hearted.  You will be glad to-morrow that I had the sense to make you move to-day.  I shall order the car.’

‘Indeed!’ cried Horatia, her temper yielding to pain and annoyance; ‘you seem to forget that this expedition is mine!  I am paymaster, and have the only right to decide.’

Lucilla felt the taunt base, as recalling to her the dependent position into which she had carelessly rushed, relying on the family feeling that had hitherto made all things as one.  ‘Henceforth,’ said she, ‘I take my share of all that we spend.  I will not sell my free will.’

‘So you mean to leave me here alone?’ said Horatia, with positive tears of pain, weariness, and vexation at the cruel unfriendliness of the girl she had petted.

‘Nonsense!  I must abide by your fate.  I only hate to see people chicken-hearted, and thought you wanted shaking up.  I stay so long as you own me an independent agent.’

The discussion was given up, when it was announced that a room was ready; and Rashe underwent so much in climbing the stairs, that Cilly thought she could not have been worse on the car.

The apartment was not much behind that at the village inn at Hiltonbury.  In fact, it had gay curtains and a grand figured blind, but the door at the Charlecote Arms had no such independent habits of opening, the carpet would have been whole, and the chairs would not have creaked beneath Lucy’s grasshopper weight; when down she sat in doleful resignation, having undressed her cousin, sent her chaussure to dry, and dismissed the car, with a sense of bidding farewell to the civilized world, and entering a desert island, devoid of the zest of Robinson Crusoe.

What an endless evening it was, and how the ladies detested each other!  There lay Horatia, not hurt enough for alarm, but quite cross enough to silence pity, suffering at every move, and sore at Cilly’s want of compassion; and here sat Lucilla, thoroughly disgusted with her cousin, her situation, and her expedition.  Believing the strain a trifle, she not unjustly despised the want of resolution that had shrunk from so expedient an exertion as the journey, and felt injured by the selfish want of consideration that had condemned her to this awkward position in this forlorn little inn, without even the few toilette necessaries that they had with them at Dublin, and with no place to sit in, for the sitting-room below stairs served as a coffee-room, where sundry male tourists were imbibing whiskey, the fumes of which ascended to the young ladies above, long before they could obtain their own meal.

The chops were curiosities; and as to the tea, the grounds, apparently the peat of the valley, filled up nearly an eighth of the cup, causing Lucilla in lugubrious mirth to talk of ‘That lake whose gloomy tea, ne’er saw Hyson nor Bohea,’ when Rashe fretfully retorted, ‘It is very unkind in you to grumble at everything, when you know I can’t help it!’

‘I was not grumbling, I only wanted to enliven you.’

‘Queer enlivenment!’

Nor did Lucilla’s attempts at body curing succeed better.  Her rubbing only evoked screeches, and her advice was scornfully rejected.  Horatia was a determined homœopath, and sighed for the globules in her wandering box, and as whiskey and tobacco both became increasingly fragrant, averred again and again that nothing should induce her to stay here another night.

Nothing?  Lucilla found her in the morning in all the aches and flushes of a feverish cold, her sprain severely painful, her eyes swollen, her throat so sore, that in alarm Cilly besought her to send for advice; but Rashe regarded a murderous allopathist as near akin to an executioner, and only bewailed the want of her minikin doses.

Giving up the hope of an immediate departure, Lucilla despatched a messenger to Bray, thence to telegraph for the luggage; and the day was spent in fears lest their landlord at Dublin might detain their goods as those of suspicious characters.

Other excitement there was none, not even in quarrelling, for Rashe was in a sleepy state, only roused by interludes of gloomy tea and greasy broth; and outside, the clouds had closed down, such clouds as she had never seen, blotting out lake and mountain with an impervious gray curtain, seeming to bathe rather than to rain on the place.  She longed to dash out into it, but Ratia’s example warned her against drenching her only garments, though indoors the dryness was only comparative.  Everything she touched, herself included, seemed pervaded by a damp, limp rawness, that she vainly tried to dispel by ordering a fire.  The turf smouldered, the smoke came into the room, and made their eyes water, and Rashe insisted that the fire should be put out.

Cilla almost envied her sleep, as she sat disconsolate in the window, watching the comparative density of the rain, and listening to the extraordinary howls and shrieks in the town, which kept her constantly expecting that a murder or a rebellion would come to relieve the monotony of the day, till she found that nothing ensued, and no one took any notice.

She tried to sketch from memory, but nothing would hinder that least pleasant of occupations—thought.  Either she imagined every unpleasant chance of detention, she worried herself about Robert Fulmort, or marvelled what Mr. Prendergast and the censorious ladies would do with Edna Murrell.  Many a time did she hold her watch to her ear, suspecting it of having stopped, so slowly did it loiter through the weary hours.  Eleven o’clock when she hoped it was one—half-past two when it felt like five.

By real five, the mist was thinner, showing first nearer, then remoter objects; the coarse slates of the roofs opposite emerged polished and dripping, and the cloud finally took its leave, some heavy flakes, like cotton wool, hanging on the hill-side, and every rock shining, every leaf glistening.  Verdure and rosy cheeks both resulted from a perpetual vapour-bath.

Lucilla rejoiced in her liberty, and hurried out of doors, but leaning out of the coffee-room window, loungers were seen who made her sensible of the awkwardness of her position, and she looked about for yesterday’s guide as a friend, but he was not at hand, and her uneasy gaze brought round her numbers, begging or offering guidance.  She wished to retreat, but would not, and walked briskly along the side of the valley opposite to that she had yesterday visited, in search of the other four churches.  Two fragments were at the junction of the lakes, another was entirely destroyed, but the last, called the Abbey, stood in ruins within the same wall as the Round Tower, which rose straight, round, mysterious, defying inquiry, as it caught the evening light on its summit, even as it had done for so many centuries past.

Not that Cilla thought of the riddles of that tower, far less of the early Christianity of the isle of saints, of which these ruins and their wild legend were the only vestiges, nor of the mysticism that planted clusters of churches in sevens as analogous to the seven stars of the Apocalypse.  Even the rugged glories of the landscape chiefly addressed themselves to her as good to sketch, her highest flight in admiration of the picturesque.  In the state of mind ascribed to the ancients, she only felt the weird unhomelikeness of the place, as though she were at the ends of the earth, unable to return, and always depressed by solitude; she could have wept.  Was it for this that she had risked the love that had been her own from childhood, and broken with the friend to whom her father had commended her?  Was it worth while to defy their censures for this dreary spot, this weak-spirited, exacting, unrefined companion, and the insult of Mr. Calthorp’s pursuit?

Naturally shrewd, well knowing the world, and guarded by a real attachment, Lucilla had never regarded the millionaire’s attentions as more than idle amusement in watching the frolics of a beauty, and had suffered them as adding to her own diversion; but his secretly following her, no doubt to derive mirth from her proceedings, revealed to her that woman could not permit such terms without loss of dignity, and her cheek burnt at the thought of the ludicrous light in which he might place her present predicament before a conclave of gentlemen.

The thought was intolerable.  To escape it by rapid motion, she turned hastily to leave the enclosure.  A figure was climbing over the steps in the wall with outstretched hand, as if he expected her to cling to him, and Mr. Calthorp, springing forward, eagerly exclaimed in familiar, patronizing tones, ‘Miss Sandbrook!  They told me you were gone this way.’  Then, in a very different voice at the unexpected look and bow that he encountered: ‘I hope Miss Charteris’s accident is not serious.’

‘Thank you, not serious,’ was the freezing reply.

‘I am glad.  How did it occur?’

‘It was a fall.’  He should have no good story wherewith to regale his friends.

‘Going on well, I trust?  Chancing to be at Dublin, I heard by accident you were here, and fearing that there might be a difficulty, I ran down in the hope of being of service to you.’

‘Thank you,’ in the least thankful of tones.

‘Is there nothing I can do for you?’

‘Thank you, nothing.’

‘Could I not obtain some advice for Miss Charteris?’

‘Thank you, she wishes for none.’

‘I am sure’—he spoke eagerly—‘that in some way I could be of use to you.  I shall remain at hand.  I cannot bear that you should be alone in this remote place.’

‘Thank you, we will not put you to inconvenience.  We intended to be alone.’

‘I see you esteem it a great liberty,’ said poor Mr. Calthorp; ‘but you must forgive my impulse to see whether I could be of any assistance to you.  I will do as you desire, but at least you will let me leave Stefano with you; he is a fellow full of resources, who would make you comfortable here, and me easy about you.’

‘Thank you, we require no one.’

Those ‘thank you’s’ were intolerable, but her defensive reserve and dignity attracted the gentleman more than all her dashing brilliancy, and he became more urgent.  ‘You cannot ask me to leave you entirely to yourselves under such circumstances.’

‘I more than ask it, I insist upon it.  Good morning.’

‘Miss Sandbrook, do not go till you have heard and forgiven me.’

‘I will not hear you, Mr. Calthorp.  This is neither the time nor place,’ said Lucilla, inly more and more perturbed, but moving along with slow, quiet steps, and betraying no emotion.  ‘The object of our journey was totally defeated by meeting any of our ordinary acquaintance, and but for this mischance I should have been on my way home to-day.’

‘Oh! Miss Sandbrook, do you class me among your ordinary acquaintance?’

It was all she could do to hinder her walk from losing its calm slowness, and before she could divest her intended reply of undignified sharpness, he continued: ‘Who could have betrayed my presence?  But for this, I meant that you should never have been aware that I was hovering near to watch over you.’

‘Yes, to collect good stories for your club.’

‘This is injustice!  Flagrant injustice, Miss Sandbrook!  Will you not credit the anxiety that irresistibly impelled me to be ever at hand in case you should need a protector?’

‘No,’ was the point-blank reply.

‘How shall I convince you?’ he cried, vehemently.  ‘What have I done that you should refuse to believe in the feelings that prompted me?’

‘What have you done?’ said Lucilla, whose blood was up.  ‘You have taken a liberty, which is the best proof of what your feelings are, and every moment that you force your presence on me adds to the offence!’

She saw that she had succeeded.  He stood still, bowed, and answered not, possibly deeming this the most effective means of recalling her; but from first to last he had not known Lucilla Sandbrook.

The eager, protecting familiarity of his first address had given her such a shock that she felt certain that she had no guard but herself from positively insulting advances; and though abstaining from all quickening of pace, her heart throbbed violently in the fear of hearing him following her, and the inn was a haven of refuge.

She flew up to her bedroom to tear about like a panther, as if by violence to work down the tumult in her breast.  She had proved the truth of Honora’s warning, that beyond the pale of ordinary convenances, a woman is exposed to insult, and however sufficient she may be for her own protection, the very fact of having to defend herself is well-nigh degradation.  It was not owning the error.  It was the agony of humiliation, not the meekness of humility, and she was as angry with Miss Charlecote for the prediction as with Mr. Calthorp for having fulfilled it, enraged with Horatia, and desperate at her present imprisoned condition, unable to escape, and liable to be still haunted by her enemy.

At last she saw the discomfited swain re-enter the inn, his car come round, and finally drive off with him; and then she felt what a blank was her victory.  If she breathed freely, it was at the cost of an increased sense of solitude and severance from the habitable world.

Hitherto she had kept away from her cousin, trusting that the visit might remain a secret, too mortifying to both parties to be divulged, but she found Horatia in a state of eager anticipation, awakened from the torpor to watch for tidings of a happy conclusion to their difficulties, and preparing jests on the pettish ingratitude with which she expected Lucilla to requite the services that would be nevertheless accepted.

Gone!  Sent away!  Not even commissioned to find the boxes.  Horatia’s consternation and irritation knew no bounds.  Lucilla was no less indignant that she could imagine it possible to become dependent on his good offices, or to permit him to remain in the neighbourhood.  Rashe angrily scoffed at her newborn scruples, and complained of her want of consideration for herself.  Cilla reproached her cousin with utter absence of any sense of propriety and decorum.  Rashe talked of ingratitude, and her sore throat being by this time past conversation, she came to tears.  Cilla, who could not bear to see any one unhappy, tried many a ‘never mind,’ many a ‘didn’t mean,’ many a fair augury for the morrow, but all in vain, and night came down upon the Angel Anglers more forlorn and less friendly than ever; and with all the invalid’s discomforts so much aggravated by the tears and the altercation, that escape from this gloomy shore appeared infinitely remote.

There was an essential difference of tone of mind between those brought up at Hiltonbury or at Castle Blanch, and though high spirits had long concealed the unlikeness, it had now been made bare, and Lucy could not conquer her disgust and disappointment.

Sunshine was on Luggela, and Horatia’s ailments were abating, so, as her temper was not alleviated, Lucilla thought peace would be best preserved by sallying out to sketch.  A drawing from behind the cross became so engrossing that she was sorry to find it time for the early dinner, and her artistic pride was only allayed by the conviction that she should always hate what recalled Glendalough.

Rashe was better, and was up and dressed.  Hopes of departure produced amity, and they were almost lively over their veal broth, when sounds of arrival made Lucilla groan at the prospect of cockney tourists obstructing the completion of her drawing.

‘There’s a gentleman asking to see you, Miss.’

‘I can see no one.’

‘Cilla, now do.’

‘Tell him I cannot see him,’ repeated Lucy, imperiously.

‘How can you be so silly? he may have heard of our boxes.’

‘I would toss them into the lake rather than take them from him.’

‘Eh! pray let me be present when you perform the ceremony!  Cilla in the heroics!  Whom is she expecting?’ said a voice outside the door, ever ajar, a voice that made Lucilla clasp her hands in ecstasy.

‘You, Owen! come in,’ cried Horatia, writhing herself up.

‘Owen, old Owen! that’s right,’ burst from Cilla, as she sprang to him.

‘Right!  Ah! that is not the greeting I expected; I was thinking how to guard my eyes.  So, you have had enough of the unprotected dodge!  What has Rashe been doing to herself?  A desperate leap down the falls of Niagara.’

Horatia was diffuse in the narration; but, after the first, Lucy did not speak.  She began by arming herself against her brother’s derision, but presently felt perplexed by detecting on his countenance something unwontedly grave and preoccupied.  She was sure that his attention was far away from Rashe’s long story, and she abruptly interrupted it with, ‘How came you here, Owen?’

He did not seem to hear, and she demanded, ‘Is anything the matter?  Are you come to fetch us because any one is ill?’

Starting, he said, ‘No, oh no!’

‘Then what brought you here? a family council, or Honor Charlecote?’

‘Honor Charlecote,’ he repeated mistily: then, making an effort, ‘Yes, good old soul, she gave me a vacation tour on condition that I should keep an eye on you.  Go on, Rashe; what were you saying?’

‘Didn’t you hear me, Owen?  Why, Calthorp, the great Calthorp, is in our wake.  Cilly is frantic.’

‘Calthorp about!’ exclaimed Owen, with a start of dismay.  ‘Where?’

‘I’ve disposed of him,’ quoth Lucilla; ‘he’ll not trouble us again.’

‘Which way is he gone?’

‘I would not tell you if I knew.’

‘Don’t be such an idiot,’ he petulantly answered; ‘I want nothing of the fellow, only to know whether he is clean gone.  Are you sure whether he went by Bray?’

‘I told you I neither knew nor cared.’

‘Could you have believed, Owen,’ said Rashe, plaintively, ‘that she was so absurd as never even to tell him to inquire for our boxes?’

‘Owen knows better;’ but Lucilla stopped, surprised to see that his thoughts were again astray.  Giving a constrained smile, he asked, ‘Well, what next?’

‘To find our boxes,’ they answered in a breath.

‘Your boxes?  Didn’t I tell you I’ve got them here?’

‘Owen, you’re a trump,’ cried Rashe.

‘How on earth did you know about them?’ inquired his sister.

‘Very simply; crossed from Liverpool yesterday, reconnoitred at your hotel, was shown your telegram, went to the luggage-office, routed out that the things were taking a gentle tour to Limerick, got them back this morning, and came on.  And what are you after next?’

‘Home,’ jerked out Lucy, without looking up, thinking how welcome he would have been yesterday, without the goods.

‘Yes, home,’ said Horatia.  ‘This abominable sprain will hinder my throwing a line, or jolting on Irish roads, and if Cilla is to be in agonies when she sees a man on the horizon, we might as well never have come.’

‘Will you help me to carry home this poor invalid warrior, Owen?’ said Lucilla; ‘she will permit you.’

‘I’ll put you into the steamer,’ said Owen; ‘but you see, I have made my arrangements for doing Killarney and the rest of it.’

‘I declare,’ said Rashe, recovering benevolence with comfort, ‘if they would send Scott from the castle to meet me at Holyhead, Cilly might as well go on with you.  You would be sufficient to keep off the Calthorps.’

‘I’m afraid that’s no go,’ hesitated Owen.  ‘You see I had made my plans, trusting to your bold assertions that you would suffer no one to approach.’

‘Oh! never mind.  It was no proposal of mine.  I’ve had enough of Ireland,’ returned Lucy, somewhat aggrieved.

‘How soon shall you be sufficiently repaired for a start, Ratia?’ asked Owen, turning quickly round to her.  ‘To-morrow?  No!  Well, I’ll come over and see.’

‘Going away?’ cried the ladies, by no means willing to part with their guardian.

‘Yes, I must.  Expecting that we should be parallels never meeting, I had to provide for myself.’

‘I see,’ said Rashe; ‘he has a merry party at Newragh Bridge, and will sit up over whist and punch till midnight!’

‘You don’t pretend to put yourselves in competition,’ said he, snatching at the idea hastily.

‘Oh! no,’ said his sister, with an annoyed gesture.  ‘I never expect you to prefer me and my comfort to any one.’

‘Indeed, Cilla, I’m sorry,’ he answered gently, but in perplexity, ‘but I never reckoned on being wanted, and engagements are engagements.’

‘I’m sure I don’t want you when anything pleasanter is going forward,’ she answered, with vexation in her tone.

‘I’ll be here by eleven or twelve,’ he replied, avoiding the altercation; ‘but I must get back now.  I shall be waited for.’

‘Who is it that can’t wait?’ asked Rashe.

‘Oh! just an English acquaintance of mine.  There, goodbye.  I wish I had come in time to surprise the modern St. Kevin!  Are you sure there was no drowning in the lake?’

‘You know it was blessed to drown no one after Kathleen.’

‘Reassuring!  Only mind you put a chapter about it into the tour.’  Under the cover of these words he was gone.

‘I declare there’s some mystery about his companion!’ exclaimed Horatia.  ‘Suppose it were Calthorp himself?’

‘Owen is not so lost to respect for his sister.’

‘But did you not see how little he was surprised, and how much preoccupied?’

‘Very likely; but no one but you could imagine him capable of such an outrage.’

‘You have been crazy ever since you entered Ireland, and expect every one else to be the same.  Seriously, what damage did you anticipate from a little civility?’

‘If you begin upon that, I shall go out and finish my sketch, and not unpack one of the boxes.’

Nevertheless, Lucilla spent much fretting guesswork on her cousin’s surmise.  She relied too much on Owen’s sense of propriety to entertain the idea that he could be forwarding a pursuit so obviously insolent, but a still wilder conjecture had been set afloat in her mind.  Could the nameless one be Robert Fulmort?  Though aware of the anonymous nature of brother’s friends, the secrecy struck her as unusually guarded; and to one so used to devotion, it seemed no extraordinary homage that another admirer should be drawn along at a respectful distance, a satellite to her erratic course; nay, probably all had been concerted in Woolstone-lane, and therewith the naughty girl crested her head, and prepared to take offence.  After all, it could not be, or why should Owen have been bent on returning, and be so independent of her?  Far more probably he had met a college friend or a Westminster schoolfellow, some of whom were in regiments quartered in Ireland, and on the morrow would bring him to do the lions of Glendalough, among which might be reckoned the Angel Anglers!

That possibility might have added some grains to the satisfaction of making a respectable toilette next day.  Certain it is that Miss Sandbrook’s mountain costume was an exquisite feat of elaborate simplicity, and that the completion of her sketch was interrupted by many a backward look down the pass, and many a contradictory mood, sometimes boding almost as harsh a reception for Robert as for Mr. Calthorp, sometimes relenting in the thrill of hope, sometimes accusing herself of arrant folly, and expecting as a pis aller the diversion of dazzling and tormenting an Oxonian, or a soldier or two!  Be the meeting what it might, she preferred that it should be out of Horatia’s sight, and so drew on and on to the detriment of her distances.

Positively it was past twelve, and the desire to be surprised unconcernedly occupied could no longer obviate her restlessness, so she packed up her hair-pencil, and, walking back to the inn, found Rashe in solitary possession of the coffee-room.

‘You have missed him, Cilly.’

‘Owen?  No one else?’

‘No, not the Calthorp; I am sorry for you.’

‘But who was here? tell me, Rashe.’

‘Owen, I tell you,’ repeated Horatia, playing with her impatience.

‘Tell me; I will know whether he has any one with him.’

‘Alack for your disappointment, for the waste of that blue bow; not a soul came here but himself.’

‘And where is he? how did I miss him?’ said Lucilla, forcibly repressing the mortification for which her cousin was watching.

‘Gone.  As I was not in travelling trim, and you not forthcoming, he could not wait; but we are to be off to-morrow at ten o’clock.’