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

‘Why did he not come out to find me?  Did you tell him I was close by?’

‘He had to join his friend, and go to the Vale of Avoca.  I’ve found out the man, Cilla.  No, don’t look so much on the qui vive; it’s only Jack Hastings!’

‘Jack Hastings!’ said Lucilla, her looks fallen.  ‘No wonder he would not bring him here.’

‘Why not, poor fellow?  I used to know him very well before he was up the spout.’

‘I wish Owen had not fallen in with him,’ said the sister, gravely.  ‘Are you certain it is so, Rashe?’

‘I taxed him with it, and he did not deny it; only put it from him, laughing.  What’s the harm?  Poor Jack was always a good-natured, honourable fellow, uncommonly clever and amusing—a well-read man, too; and Owen is safe enough—no one could try to borrow of him.’

‘What would Honor’s feelings be?’ said Lucilla, with more fellow-feeling for her than for months past.  Lax as was the sister’s tolerance, she was startled at his becoming the associate of an avowedly loose character under the stigma of the world, and with perilous abilities and agreeableness; and it was another of Horatia’s offences against proper feeling, not only to regard such evil communications with indifference, but absolutely to wish to be brought into contact with a person of this description in their present isolated state.  Displeased and uneasy, Lucilla assumed the rôle of petulance and quarrelsomeness for the rest of the day, and revenged herself to the best of her abilities upon Rashe and Owen, by refusing to go to inspect the scene of Kathleen’s fatal repulse.

True to his appointment, Owen arrived alone on a car chosen with all regard to Horatia’s comfort, and was most actively attentive in settling on it the ladies and their luggage, stretching himself out on the opposite side, his face raised to the clouds, as he whistled an air; but his eye was still restless, and his sister resolved on questioning him.

Opportunities were, however, rare; whether or not with the design of warding off a tête-à-tête, he devoted himself to his cousin’s service in a manner rare to her since she had laid herself out to be treated as though her name were Horace instead of Horatia.  However, Lucilla was not the woman to be balked of a settled purpose; and at their hotel, at Dublin, she nailed him fast by turning back on him when Horatia bade them good night.  ‘Well, what do you want?’ he asked, annoyed.

‘I want to speak to you.’

‘I hope it is to beg me to write to ask Honor to receive you at home, and promise to behave like a decent and respectable person.’

‘I want neither a judge nor an intercessor in you.’

‘Come, Lucy, it really would be for every one’s good if you would go and take care of poor Honor.  You have been using her vilely, and I should think you’d had enough of Rashe for one while.’

‘If I have used her vilely, at least I have dealt openly by her,’ said Lucilla.  ‘She has always seen the worst of me on the surface.  Can you bear to talk of her when you know how you are treating her?’

He coloured violently, and his furious gesture would have intimidated most sisters; but she stood her ground, and answered his stammering demand what she dared to imply.

‘You may go into a passion, but you cannot hinder me from esteeming it shameful to make her mission a cover for associating with one whom she would regard with so much horror as Jack Hastings.’

‘Jack Hastings!’ cried Owen, to her amazement, bursting into a fit of laughter, loud, long, and explosive.  ‘Well done, Rashe!’

‘You told her so!’

‘She told me so, and one does not contradict a lady.’

‘Something must have put it into her head.’

‘Only to be accounted for by an unrequited attachment,’ laughed Owen; ‘depend on it, a comparison of dates would show Hastings’s incarceration to have been the epoch of Rashe’s taking to the high masculine line—

‘“If e’er she loved, ’twas him aloneWho lived within the jug of stone.”’

‘For shame, Owen; Rashe never was in love.’

But he went on laughing at Rashe’s disappointment at his solitary arrival till she said, tartly, ‘You cannot wonder at our thinking you must have some reason for neither mentioning your companion’s name nor bringing him with you.’

‘In fact, no man not under a cloud could abstain from paying homage to the queen of the anglers.’

It was so true as to raise an angry spot on her cheek, and provoke the hasty excuse, ‘It would have been obvious to have brought your friend to see your cousin and sister.’

‘One broken-backed, both unwashed!  O, the sincerity of the resistance I overheard!  No gentleman admitted, forsooth!  O, for a lodge in some vast wilderness!  Yes; St. Anthony would have found it a wilderness indeed without his temptations.  What would St. Dunstan have been minus the black gentleman’s nose, or St. Kevin but for Kathleen?  It was a fortunate interposition that Calthorp turned up the day before I came, or I might have had to drag the lake for you.’

This personal attack only made her persist.  ‘It was very different when we were alone or with you; you know very well that there could have been no objection.’

‘No objection on your side, certainly, so I perceive; but suppose there were no desire on the other?’

‘Oh!’ in a piqued voice, ‘I know many men don’t care for ladies’ society, but I don’t see why they should be nameless.’

‘I thought you would deem such a name unworthy to be mentioned.’

‘Well, but who is the shy man?  Is it the little Henniker, who used to look as if he would dive under the table when you brought him from Westminster?’

‘If I told you, you would remember it against the poor creature for life, as a deliberate insult and want of taste.  Good night.’

He took his hat, and went out, leaving Lucy balancing her guesses between Ensign Henniker and him whom she could not mention.  Her rejection of Mr. Calthorp might have occasioned the present secrecy, and she was content to leave herself the pleasant mystery, in the hope of having it dispelled by her last glance of Kingstown quay.

In that hope, she rocked herself to sleep, and next morning was so extra vivacious as to be a sore trial to poor Rashe, in the anticipation of the peine forte et dure of St. George’s Channel.  Owen was also in high spirits, but a pattern of consideration and kind attention, as he saw the ladies on board, and provided for their comfort, not leaving them till the last moment.

Lucilla’s heart had beaten fast from the moment she had reached Kingstown; she was keeping her hand free to wave a most encouraging kiss, and as her eye roamed over the heads upon the quay without a recognition, she felt absolutely baffled and cheated; and gloriously as the Bay of Dublin spread itself before her, she was conscious only of wrath and mortification, and of a bitter sense of dreariness and desertion.  Nobody cared for her, not even her brother!

CHAPTER IX

My pride, that tookFully easily all impressions from below,Would not look up, or half despised the heightTo which I could not, or I would not climb.I thought I could not breathe in that fine air.Idylls of the King

‘Can you come and take a turn in the Temple-gardens, Phœbe?’ asked Robert, on the way from church, the day after Owen’s visit to Woolstone-lane.

Phœbe rejoiced, for she had scarcely seen him since his return from Castle Blanch, and his state of mind was a mystery to her.  It was long, however, before he afforded her any clue.  He paced on, grave and abstracted, and they had many times gone up and down the least frequented path, before he abruptly said, ‘I have asked Mr. Parsons to give me a title for Holy Orders.’

‘I don’t quite know what that means.’

‘How simple you are, Phœbe,’ he said, impatiently; ‘it means that St. Wulstan’s should be my first curacy.  May my labours be accepted as an endeavour to atone for some of the evil we cause here.’

‘Dear Robin! what did Mr. Parsons say?  Was he not very glad?’

‘No; there lies the doubt.’

‘Doubt?’

‘Yes.  He told me that he had engaged as many curates as he has means for.  I answered that my stipend need be no consideration, for I only wished to spend on the parish, but he was not satisfied.  Many incumbents don’t like to have curates of independent means; I believe it has an amateur appearance.’

‘Mr. Parsons cannot think you would not be devoted.’

‘I hope to convince him that I may be trusted.  It is all that is left me now.’

‘It will be very cruel to you, and to the poor people, if he will not,’ said Phœbe, warmly; ‘what will papa and Mervyn say?’

‘I shall not mention it till all is settled; I have my father’s consent to my choice of a profession, and I do not think myself bound to let him dictate my course as a minister.  I owe a higher duty and if his business scatters the seeds of vice, surely “obedience in the Lord” should not prevent me from trying to counteract them.’

It was a case of conscience to be only judged by himself, and where even a sister like Phœbe could do little but hope for the best, so she expressed a cheerful hope that her father must know that it was right, and that he would care less now that he was away, and pleased with Augusta’s prospects.

‘Yes,’ said Robert, ‘he already thinks me such a fool, that it may be indifferent to him in what particular manner I act it out.’

‘And how does it stand with Mr. Parsons?’

‘He will give me an answer to-morrow evening, provided I continue in the same mind.  There is no chance of my not doing so.  My time of suspense is over!’ and the words absolutely sounded like relief, though the set stern face, and the long breaths at each pause told another tale.

‘I did not think she would really have gone!’ said Phœbe.

‘This once, and we will mention her no more.  It is not merely this expedition, but all I saw at Wrapworth convinced me that I should risk my faithfulness to my calling by connecting myself with one who, with all her loveliness and generosity, lives upon excitement.  She is the very light of poor Prendergast’s eyes, and he cannot endure to say a word in her dispraise; she is constantly doing acts of kindness in his parish, and is much beloved there, yet he could not conceal how much trouble she gives him by her want of judgment and wilfulness; patronizing and forgetting capriciously, and attending to no remonstrance.  You saw yourself the treatment of that schoolmistress.  I thought the more of this, because Prendergast is so fond of her, and does her full justice.  No; her very aspect proves that a parish priest has no business to think of her.’

Large tears swelled in Phœbe’s eyes.  The first vision of her youth was melting away, and she detected no relenting in his grave resolute voice.

‘Shall you tell her?’ was all she could say.

‘That is the question.  At one time she gave me reason to think that she accepted a claim to be considered in my plans, and understood what I never concealed.  Latterly she has appeared to withdraw all encouragement, to reject every advance, and yet—  Phœbe, tell me whether she has given you any reason to suppose that she ever was in earnest with me?’

‘I know she respects and likes you better than any one, and speaks of you like no one else,’ said Phœbe; then pausing, and speaking more diffidently, though with a smile, ‘I think she looks up to you so much, that she is afraid to put herself in your power, for fear she should be made to give up her odd ways in spite of herself, and yet that she has no notion of losing you.  Did you see her face at the station?’

‘I would not!  I could not meet her eyes!  I snatched my hand from the little clinging fingers;’ and Robert’s voice almost became a gasp.  ‘It was not fit that the spell should be renewed.  She would be miserable, I under constant temptation, if I endeavoured to make her share my work!  Best as it is!  She has so cast me off that my honour is no longer bound to her; but I cannot tell whether it be due to her to let her know how it is with me, or whether it would be mere coxcombry.’

‘The Sunday that she spent here,’ said Phœbe, slowly, ‘she had a talk with me.  I wrote it down.  Miss Fennimore says it is the safest way—’

‘Where is it?’ cried Robert.

‘I kept it in my pocket-book, for fear any one should see it, and it should do harm.  Here it is, if it will help you.  I am afraid I made things worse, but I did not know what to say.’

It was one of the boldest experiments ever made by a sister; for what man could brook the sight of an unvarnished statement of his proxy’s pleading, or help imputing the failure to the go-between?

‘I would not have had this happen for a thousand pounds!’ was his acknowledgment.  ‘Child as you are, Phœbe, had you not sense to know, that no woman could endure to have that said, which should scarcely be implied?  I wonder no longer at her studied avoidance.’

‘If it be all my bad management, cannot it be set right?’ humbly and hopefully said Phœbe.

‘There is no right!’ he said.  ‘There, take it back.  It settles the question.  The security you childishly showed, was treated as offensive presumption on my part.  It would be presuming yet farther to make a formal withdrawal of what was never accepted.’

‘Then is it my doing?  Have I made mischief between you, and put you apart?’ said poor Phœbe, in great distress.  ‘Can’t I make up for it?’

‘You?  No, you were only an over plain-spoken child, and brought about the crisis that must have come somehow.  It is not what you have done, or not done; it is what Lucy Sandbrook has said and done, shows that I must have done with her for ever.’

‘And yet,’ said Phœbe, taking this as forgiveness, ‘you see she never believed that you would give her up.  If she did, I am sure she would not have gone.’

‘She thinks her power over me stronger than my principles.  She challenges me—desires you to tell me so.  We shall see.’

He spoke as a man whose steadfastness had been defied, and who was piqued on proving it to the utmost.  Such feelings may savour of the wrath of man, they may need the purifying of chastening, and they often impel far beyond the bounds of sober judgment; but no doubt they likewise frequently render that easy which would otherwise have appeared impossible, and which, if done in haste, may be regretted, but not repented, at leisure.

Under some circumstances, the harshness of youth is a healthy symptom, proving force of character and conviction, though that is only when the foremost victim is self.  Robert was far from perfect, and it might be doubted whether he were entering the right track in the right way, but at least his heart was sound, and there was a fair hope that his failings, in working their punishment, might work their cure.

It was in a thorough brotherly and Christian spirit that before entering the house he compelled himself to say, ‘Don’t vex yourself, Phœbe, I know you did the best you could.  It made no real difference, and it was best that she should know the truth.’

‘Thank you, dear Robin,’ cried Phœbe, grateful for the consolation; ‘I am glad you do not think I misrepresented.’

‘You are always accurate,’ he answered.  ‘If you did anything undesirable, it was representing at all.  But that is nothing to the purpose.  It is all over now, and thank you for your constant good-will and patience, my dear.  There! now then it is an understood thing that her name is never spoken between us.’

Meanwhile, Robert’s proposal was under discussion by the elders.  Mr. Parsons had no abstract dread of a wealthy curate, but he hesitated to accept gratuitous services, and distrusted plans formed under the impulse of disappointment or of enthusiasm, since in the event of a change, both parties might be embarrassed.  There was danger too of collisions with his family, and Mr. Parsons took counsel with Miss Charlecote, knowing indeed that where her affections were concerned, her opinions must be taken with a qualification, but relying on the good sense formed by rectitude of purpose.

Honor’s affection for Robert Fulmort had always been moderated by Owen’s antagonism; her moderation in superlatives commanded implicit credence, and Mr. Parsons inferred more, instead of less, than she expressed; better able as he was to estimate that manly character, gaining force with growth, and though slow to discern between good and evil, always firm to the duty when it was once perceived, and thus rising with the elevation of the standard.  The undemonstrative temper and tardiness in adopting extra habits of religious observance and profession, which had disappointed Honor, struck the clergyman as evidences both of sincerity and evenness of development, proving the sterling reality of what had been attained.

‘Not taking, but trusty,’ judged the vicar.

But the lad was an angry lover.  How tantalizing to be offered a fourth curate, with a long purse, only to find St. Wulstan’s serving as an outlet for a lover’s quarrel, and the youth restless and restive ere the end of his diaconate!

‘How savage you are,’ said his wife; ‘as if the parish would be hurt by his help or his presence.  If he goes, let him go—some other help will come.’

‘And don’t deprive him of the advantage of a good master,’ said Honor.

‘This wretched cure is not worth flattery,’ he said, smiling.

‘Nay,’ said Mrs. Parsons, ‘how often have I heard you rejoice that you started here.’

‘Under Mr. Charlecote—yes.’

‘You are the depository of his traditions,’ said Honor, ‘hand them on to Robert.  I wish nothing better for Owen.’

Mr. Parsons wished something better for himself, and averted a reply, by speaking of Robert as accepted.

Robert’s next request was to be made useful in the parish, while preparing for his ordination in the autumn Ember week; and though there were demurs as to unnecessarily anticipating the strain on health and strength, he obtained his wish in mercy to a state only to be alleviated by the realities of labour.

So few difficulties were started by his family, that Honora suspected that Mr. Fulmort, always chiefly occupied by what was immediately before him, hardly realized that by taking an assistant curacy at St. Wulstan’s, his son became one of the pastors of Whittington-streets, great and little, Richard-courts, Cicely-row, Alice-lane, Cat-alley, and Turnagain-corner.  Scarcely, however, was this settled, when a despatch arrived from Dublin, headed, ‘The Fast Fly Fishers; or the modern St. Kevin,’ containing in Ingoldsby legend-like rhymes the entire narration of the Glendalough predicament of the ‘Fast and Fair,’ and concluding with a piece of prose, by the same author, assuring his Sweet Honey, that the poem, though strange, was true, that he had just seen the angelic anglers on board the steamer, and it would not be for lack of good advice on his part, if Lucy did not present herself at Woolstone-lane, to partake of the dish called humble pie, on the derivation whereof antiquaries were divided.

Half amused, half vexed by his levity, and wholly relieved and hopeful, Honora could not help showing Owen’s performance to Phœbe for the sake of its cleverness; but she found the child too young and simple to enter into it, for the whole effect was an entreaty that Robert might not see it, only hear the facts.

Rather annoyed by this want of appreciation of Owen’s wit, Honora saw, nevertheless, that Phœbe had come to a right conclusion.  The breach was not likely to be diminished by finding that the wilful girl had exposed herself to ridicule, and the Fulmort nature had so little sense of the ludicrous, that this good-natured brotherly satire would be taken for mere derision.

So Honor left it to Phœbe to give her own version, only wishing that the catastrophe had come to his knowledge before his arrangements had been made with Mr. Parsons.

Phœbe had some difficulty in telling her story.  Robert at first silenced her peremptorily, but after ten minutes relented, and said, moodily, ‘Well, let me hear!’  He listened without relaxing a muscle of his rigid countenance; and when Phœbe ended by saying that Miss Charlecote had ordered Lucy’s room to be prepared, thinking that she might present herself at any moment, he said, ‘Take care that you warn me when she comes.  I shall leave town that minute.’

‘Robert, Robert, if she come home grieved and knowing better—’

‘I will not see her!’ he repeated.  ‘I made her taking this journey the test!  The result is nothing to me!  Phœbe, I trust to you that no intended good-nature of Miss Charlecote’s should bring us together.  Promise me.’

Phœbe could do nothing but promise, and not another sentence could she obtain from her brother, indeed his face looked so formidable in its sternness, that she would have been a bold maiden to have tried.

Honora augured truly, that not only was his stern nature deeply offended, but that he was quite as much in dread of coming under the power of Lucy’s fascinations, as Cilla had ever been of his strength.  Such mutual aversion was really a token of the force of influence upon each, and Honor assured Phœbe that all would come right.  ‘Let her only come home and be good, and you will see, Phœbe!  She will not be the worse for an alarm, nor even for waiting till after his two years at St. Wulstan’s.’

The reception of the travellers at Castle Blanch was certainly not mortifying by creating any excitement.  Charles Charteris said his worst in the words, ‘One week!’ and his wife was glad to have some one to write her notes.

This indifference fretted Lucy.  She found herself loathing the perfumy rooms, the sleepy voice, and hardly able to sit still in her restless impatience of Lolly’s platitudes and Charles’s insouciance, while Rashe could never be liked again.  Even a lecture from Honor Charlecote would have been infinitely preferable, and one grim look of Robert’s would be bliss!

No one knew whether Miss Charlecote were still in town, nor whether Augusta Fulmort were to be married in England or abroad; and as to Miss Murrell, Lolly languidly wondered what it was that she had heard.

Hungering for some one whom she could trust, Lucilla took an early breakfast in her own room, and walked to Wrapworth, hoping to catch the curate lingering over his coffee and letters.  From a distance, however, she espied his form disappearing in the school-porch, and approaching, heard his voice reading prayers, and the children’s chanted response.  Coming to the oriel, she looked in.  There were the rows of shiny heads, fair, brown, and black; there were the long sable back and chopped-hay locks of the curate; but where a queen-like figure had of old been wont to preside, she beheld a tallow face, with sandy hair under the most precise of net caps, and a straight thread-paper shape in scanty gray stuff and white apron.

Dizzy with wrathful consternation, Cilla threw herself on one of the seats of the porch, shaking her foot, and biting her lip, frantic to know the truth, yet too much incensed to enter, even when the hum of united voices ceased, the rushing sound of rising was over, and measured footsteps pattered to the classes, where the manly interrogations sounded alternately with the shrill little answers.

Clump, clump, came the heavy feet of a laggard, her head bent over her book, her thick lips vainly conning the unlearned task, unaware of the presence of the young lady, till Lucilla touched her, saying, ‘What, Martha, a ten o’clock scholar?’

She gave a little cry, opened her staring eyes, and dropped a curtsey.

‘Whom have you here for mistress?’ asked Lucilla.

‘Please, ma’am, governess is runned away.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ replied the girl, developing powers of volubility such as scholastic relations with her had left unsuspected.  ‘She ran away last Saturday was a week, and there was nobody to open the school when we came to it a Sunday morning; and we had holidays all last week, ma’am; and mother was terrified 1 out of her life; and father, he said he wouldn’t have me never go for to do no such thing, and that he didn’t want no fine ladies, as was always spiting of me.’

‘Every one will seem to spite you, if you keep no better hours,’ said Lucy, little edified by Martha’s virtuous indignation.

The girl had scarcely entered the school before the clergyman stood on the threshold, and was seized by both hands, with the words, ‘Oh, Mr. Prendergast, what is this?’

‘You here, Cilla?  What’s the matter?  What has brought you back?’

‘Had you not heard?  A sprain of Ratia’s, and other things.  Never mind.  What’s all this?’