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

‘Ah! I knew you would be sadly grieved!’

‘So you did frighten her away!’

‘I never meant it.  I tried to act for the best.  She was spoken to, by myself and others, but nobody could make any impression, and we could only give her notice to go at the harvest holidays.  She took it with her usual grand air—’

‘Which is really misery and despair.  Oh, why did I go?  Go on!’

‘I wrote to the mother, advising her, if possible, to come and be with the girl till the holidays.  That was on Thursday week, and the old woman promised to come on the Monday—wrote a very proper letter, allowing for the Methodistical phrases—but on the Saturday it was observed that the house was not opened, and on Sunday morning I got a note—if you’ll come in I’ll show it to you.’

He presently discovered it among multitudinous other papers on his chimney-piece.  Within a lady-like envelope was a thick satin-paper, queen’s-sized note, containing these words:

‘Reverend Sir,—It is with the deepest feelings of regret for the unsatisfactory appearance of my late conduct that I venture to address you, but time will enable me to account for all, and I can at the present moment only entreat you to pardon any inconvenience I may have occasioned by the precipitancy of my departure.  Credit me, reverend and dear sir, it was only the law of necessity that could have compelled me to act in a manner that may appear questionable.  Your feeling heart will excuse my reserve when you are informed of the whole.  In the meantime, I am only permitted to mention that this morning I became a happy wife.  With heartfelt thanks for all the kindness I have received, I remain,

‘Reverend sir,‘Your obedient servant,‘Edna.’

‘Not one message to me?’ exclaimed Lucilla.

‘Her not having had the impudence is the only redeeming thing!’

‘I did not think she would have left no word for me,’ said Lucy, who knew she had been kinder than her wont, and was really wounded.  ‘Happy wife!  Who can it be?’

‘Happy wife?’ repeated the curate.  ‘It is miserable fool, most likely, by this time.’

‘No surname signed!  What’s the post-mark?  Only Charing-cross.  Could you find out nothing, or did you not think it worth while to look?’

‘What do you take me for, Cilla?  I inquired at the station, but she had not been there, and on the Monday I went to London and saw the mother, who was in great distress, for she had had a letter much like mine, only more unsatisfactory, throwing out absurd hints about grandeur and prosperity—poor deluded simpleton!’

‘She distinctly says she is married.’

‘Yes, but she gives no name nor place.  What’s that worth?  After such duplicity as she has been practising so long, I don’t know how to take her statement.  Those people are pleased to talk of a marriage in the sight of heaven, when they mean the devil’s own work!’

‘No, no!  I will not think it!’

‘Then don’t, my dear.  You were very young and innocent, and thought no harm.’

‘I’m not young—I’m not innocent!’ furiously said Cilly.  ‘Tell me downright all you suspect.’

‘I’m not given to suspecting,’ said the poor clergyman, half in deprecation, half in reproof; ‘but I am afraid it is a bad business.  If she had married a servant or any one in her own rank, there would have been no need of concealing the name, at least from her mother.  I feared at first that it was one of your cousin Charles’s friends, but there seems more reason to suppose that one of the musical people at your concert at the castle may have thought her voice a good speculation for the stage.’

‘He would marry her to secure her gains.’

‘If so, why the secrecy?’

‘Mrs. Jenkins has taught you to make it as bad as possible,’ burst out Lucy.  ‘O, why was not I at home?  Is it too late to trace her and proclaim her innocence!’

‘I was wishing for your help.  I went to Mr. Charteris to ask who the performers were, but he knew nothing about them, and said you and his sister had managed it all.’

‘The director was Derval.  He is fairly respectable, at least I know nothing to the contrary.  I’ll make Charlie write.  There was an Italian, with a black beard and a bass voice, whom we have had several times.  I saw him looking at her.  Just tell me what sort of woman is the mother.  She lets lodgings, does not she?’

‘Yes, in Little Whittington-street.’

‘Dear me!  I trust she is no friend of Honor Charlecote’s.’

‘Out of her beat, I should think.  She dissents.’

‘What a blessing!  I beg your pardon, but if anything could be an aggravation, it would be Honor Charlecote’s moralities.’

‘So you were not aware of the dissent?’

‘And you are going to set that down as more deceit, as if it were the poor thing’s business to denounce her mother.  Now, to show you that I can be sure that Edna was brought up to the Church, I will tell you her antecedents.  Her father was Sir Thomas Deane’s butler; they lived in the village, and she was very much in the nursery with the Miss Deanes—had some lessons from the governess.  There was some notion of making her a nursery governess, but Sir Thomas died, the ladies went abroad, taking her father with them; Edna was sent to a training school, and the mother went to live in the City with a relation who let lodgings, and who has since died, leaving the concern to Mrs. Murrell, whose husband was killed by an upset of the carriage on the Alps.’

‘I heard all that, and plenty besides!  Poor woman, she was in such distress that one could not but let her pour it all out, but I declare the din rang in my ears the whole night after.  A very nice, respectable-looking body she was, with jet-black eyes like diamonds, and a rosy, countrified complexion, quite a treat to see in that grimy place, her widow’s cap as white as snow, but oh, such a tongue!  She would give me all her spiritual experiences—how she was converted by an awakening minister in Cat-alley, and yet had a great respect for such ministers of the Church as fed their flocks with sincere milk, mixed up with the biography of all the shopmen and clerks who ever lodged there, and to whom she acted as a mother!’

‘It was not their fault that she did not act as a mother-in-law.  Edna has told me of the unpleasantness of being at home on account of the young men.’

‘Exactly!  I was spared none of the chances she might have had, but the only thing worthy of note was about a cashier who surreptitiously brought a friend from the “hopera,” to overhear her singing hymns on the Sunday evening, and thus led to an offer on his part to have her brought out on the stage.’

‘Ha! could that have come to anything?’

‘No.  Mrs. Murrell’s suspicions took that direction, and we hunted down the cashier and the friend, but they were quite exonerated.  It only proves that her voice has an unfortunate value.’

‘If she be gone off with the Italian bass, I can’t say I think it a fatal sign that she was slow to present him to her domestic Mause Headrigg, who no doubt would deliberately prefer the boards of her coffin to the boards of the theatre.  Well, come along—we will get a letter from Charles, and rescue her—I mean, clear her.’

‘Won’t you look into school, and see how we go on?  The women complained so much of having their children on their hands, though I am sure they had sent them to school seldom enough of late, that I got this young woman from Mrs. Stuart’s asylum till the holidays.  I think we shall let her stay on, she has a good deal of method, and all seem pleased with the change.’

‘You have your wish of a fright.  No, I thank you!  I’m not so glad as the rest of you to get rid of refinement and superiority.’

There was no answer, and more touched by silence than reply, she hastily said, ‘Never mind!  I dare say she may do better for the children, but you know, I, who am hard of caring for any one, did care for poor Edna, and I can’t stand pæans over your new broom.’

Mr. Prendergast gave a smile such as was only evoked by his late rector’s little daughter, and answered, ‘No one can be more concerned than I.  She was not in her place here, that was certain, and I ought to have minded that she was not thrust into temptation.  I shall remember it with shame to my dying day.’

‘Which means to say that so should I.’

‘No, you did not know so much of the evils of the world.’

‘I told you before, Mr. Pendy, that I am twenty times more sophisticated than you are.  You talk of knowing the world!  I wish I didn’t.  I’m tired of everybody.’

And on the way home she described her expedition, and had the pleasure of the curate’s sympathy, if not his entire approval.  Perhaps there was no other being whom she so thoroughly treated as a friend, actually like a woman friend, chiefly because he thoroughly believed in her, and was very blind to her faults.  Robert would have given worlds to have found her once what Mr. Prendergast found her always.

She left him to wait in the drawing-room, while she went on her mission, but presently rushed back in a fury.  Nobody cared a straw for the catastrophe.  Lolly begged her not to be so excited about a trifle, it made her quite nervous; and the others laughed at her; Rashe pretended to think it a fine chance to have changed ‘the life of an early Christian’ for the triumphs of the stage; and Charles scouted the idea of writing to the man’s employer.  ‘He call Derval to account for all the tricks of his fiddlers and singers?  Much obliged!’

Mr. Prendergast decided on going to town by the next train, to make inquiries of Derval himself, without further loss of time, and Cilly declared that she would go with him and force the conceited professor to attend; but the curate, who had never found any difficulty in enforcing his own dignity, and thought it no business for a young lady, declined her company, unless, he said, she were to spend the day with Miss Charlecote.

‘I’ve a great mind to go to her for good and all.  Let her fall upon me for all and sundry.  It will do me good to hear a decent woman speak again! besides, poor old soul, she will be so highly gratified, that she will be quite meek’ (and so will some one else, quoth the perverse little heart); ‘I’ll put up a few things, and not delay you.’

‘This is very sudden!’ said the curate, wishing to keep the peace between her and her friends, and not willing that his sunbeam should fleet ‘so like the Borealis race!’  ‘Will it not annoy your cousins?’

‘They ought to be annoyed!’

‘And are you certain that you would find Miss Charlecote in town?  I thought her stay was to be short.’

‘I’m certain of nothing, but that every place is detestable.’

‘What would you do if you did not find her?’

‘Go on to Euston-square.  Do you think I don’t know my way to Hiltonbury, or that I should not get welcome enough—ay, and too much—there?’

‘Then if you are so uncertain of her movements, do you not think you had better let me learn them before you start?  She might not even be gone home, and you would not like to come back here again; if—’

‘Like a dog that has been out hunting,’ said Lucilla, who could bear opposition from this quarter as from no other.  ‘You won’t take the responsibility, that’s the fact.  Well, you may go and reconnoitre, if you will; but mind, if you say one word of what brings you to town, I shall never go near the Holt at all.  To hear—whenever the Raymonds, or any other of the godly school-keeping sort come to dinner—of the direful effects of certificated schoolmistresses, would drive me to such distraction that I cannot answer for the consequences.’

‘I am sure it is not a fact to proclaim.’

‘Ah! but if you run against Mr. Parsons, you’ll never abstain from telling him of his stray lamb, nor from condoling with him upon the wolf in Cat-alley.  Now there’s a fair hope of his having more on his hands than to get his fingers scratched by meddling with the cats, and so that this may remain unknown.  So consider yourself sworn to secrecy.’

Mr. Prendergast promised.  The good man was a bit of a gossip, so perhaps her precaution was not thrown away, for he could hardly have helped seeking the sympathy of a brother pastor, especially of him to whose fold the wanderer primarily belonged.  Nor did Lucy feel certain of not telling the whole herself in some unguarded moment of confidence.  All she cared for was, that the story should not transpire through some other source, and be brandished over her head as an illustration of all the maxims that she had so often spurned.  She ran after Mr. Prendergast after he had taken leave, to warn him against calling in Woolstone-lane, and desired him instead to go to Masters’s shop, where it was sure to be known whether Miss Charlecote were in town or not.

Mr. Prendergast secretly did grateful honour to the consideration that would not let him plod all the weary way into the City.  Little did he guess that it was one part mistrust of his silence, and three parts reviving pride, which forbade that Honora should know that he had received any such commission.

The day was spent in pleasant anticipations of the gratitude and satisfaction that would be excited by her magnanimous return, and her pardon to Honor and to Robert for having been in the right.  She knew she could own it so graciously that Robert would be overpowered with compunction, and for ever beholden to her; and now that the Charterises were so unmitigatedly hateful, it was time to lay herself out for goodness, and fling him the rein, with only now and then a jerk to remind him that she was a free agent.

A long-talked-of journey on the Continent was to come to pass as soon as Horatia’s strain was well.  In spite of wealth and splendour, Eloïsa had found herself disappointed in the step that she had hoped her marriage would give her into the most élite circles.  Languid and indolent as her mind was, she could not but perceive that where Ratia was intimate and at ease, she continued on terms of form and ceremony, and her husband felt more keenly that the society in his house was not what it had been in his mother’s time.  They both became restless, and Lolly, who had already lived much abroad, dreaded the dulness of an English winter in the country; while Charles knew that he had already spent more than he liked to recollect, and that the only means of keeping her contented at Castle Blanch, would be to continue most ruinous expenses.

With all these secret motives, the tour was projected as a scheme of amusement, and the details were discussed between Charles and Rashe with great animation, making the soberness of Hiltonbury appear both tedious and sombre, though all the time Lucy felt that there she should again meet that which her heart both feared and yearned for, and without which these pleasures would be but shadows of enjoyment.  Yet that they were not including her in their party, gave her a sense of angry neglect and impatience.  She wanted to reject their invitation indignantly, and make a merit of the sacrifice.

The after-dinner discussion was in full progress when she was called out to speak to Mr. Prendergast.  Heated, wearied, and choking with dust, he would not come beyond the hall, but before going home he had walked all this distance to tell her the result of his expedition.  Derval had not been uncivil, but evidently thought the suspicion an affront to his corps, which at present was dispersed by the end of the season.  The Italian bass was a married man, and had returned to his own country.  The clue had failed.  The poor leaf must be left to drift upon unknown winds.

‘But,’ said the curate, by way of compensation, ‘at Masters’s I found Miss Charlecote herself, and gave your message.’

‘I gave no message.’

‘No, no, because you would not send me up into the City; but I told her all you would have had me say, and how nearly you had come up with me, only I would not let you, for fear she should have left town.’

Cilla’s face did not conceal her annoyance, but not understanding her in the least, he continued, ‘I’m sure no one could speak more kindly or considerately than she did.  Her eyes filled with tears, and she must be heartily fond of you at the bottom, though maybe rather injudicious and strict; but after what I told her, you need have no fears.’

‘Did you ever know me have any?’

‘Ah well! you don’t like the word; but at any rate she thinks you behaved with great spirit and discretion under the circumstances, and quite overlooks any little imprudence.  She hopes to see you the day after to-morrow, and will write and tell you so.’

Perhaps no intentional slander ever gave the object greater annoyance than Cilly experienced on learning that the good curate had, in the innocence of his heart, represented her as in a state of proper feeling, and interceded for her; and it was all the worse because it was impossible to her to damp his kind satisfaction, otherwise than by a brief ‘Thank you,’ the tone of which he did not comprehend.

‘Was she alone?’ she asked.

‘Didn’t I tell you the young lady was with her, and the brother?’

‘Robert Fulmort!’ and Cilla’s heart sank at finding that it could not have been he who had been with Owen.

‘Ay, the young fellow that slept at my house.  He has taken a curacy at St. Wulstan’s.’

‘Did he tell you so?’ with an ill-concealed start of consternation.

‘Not he; lads have strange manners.  I should have thought after the terms we were upon here, he need not have been quite so much absorbed in his book as never to speak!’

‘He has plenty in him instead of manners,’ said Lucilla; ‘but I’ll take him in hand for it.’

Though Lucilla’s instinct of defence had spoken up for Robert, she felt hurt at his treatment of her old friend, and could only excuse it by a strong fit of conscious moodiness.  His taking the curacy was only explicable, she thought, as a mode of showing his displeasure with herself, since he could not ask her to marry into Whittingtonia; but ‘That must be all nonsense,’ thought she; ‘I will soon have him down off his high horse, and Mr. Parsons will never keep him to his engagement—silly fellow to have made it—or if he does, I shall only have the longer to plague him.  It will do him good.  Let me see! he will come down to-morrow with Honora’s note.  I’ll put on my lilac muslin with the innocent little frill, and do my hair under his favourite net, and look like such a horrid little meek ringdove that he will be perfectly disgusted with himself for having ever taken me for a fishing eagle.  He will be abject, and I’ll be generous, and not give another peck till it has grown intolerably stupid to go on being good, or till he presumes.’

For the first time for many days, Lucilla awoke with the impression that something pleasant was about to befall her, and her wild heart was in a state of glad flutter as she donned the quiet dress, and found that the subdued colouring and graver style rendered her more softly lovely than she had ever seen herself.

The letters were on the breakfast-table when she came down, the earliest as usual, and one was from Honor Charlecote, the first sight striking her with vexation, as discomfiting her hopes that it would come by a welcome bearer.  Yet that might be no reason why he should not yet run down.

She tore it open.

‘My dearest Lucy,—Until I met Mr. Prendergast yesterday, I was not sure that you had actually returned, or I would not have delayed an hour in assuring you, if you could doubt it, that my pardon is ever ready for you.’

(‘Many thanks,’ was the muttered comment.  ‘Oh that poor, dear, stupid man! would that I had stopped his mouth!’)

‘I never doubted that your refinement and sense of propriety would be revolted at the consequences of what I always saw to be mere thoughtlessness—’

(‘Dearly beloved of an old maid is, I told you so!’)

‘—but I am delighted to hear that my dear child showed so much true delicacy and dignity in her trying predicament—’

(‘Delighted to find her dear child not absolutely lost to decorum!  Thanks again.’)

‘—and I console myself for the pain it has given by the trust that experience has proved a better teacher than precept.’

(‘Where did she find that grand sentence?’)

‘So that good may result from past evil and present suffering, and that you may have learnt to distrust those who would lead you to disregard the dictates of your own better sense.’

(‘Meaning her own self!’)

‘I have said all this by letter that we may cast aside all that is painful when we meet, and only to feel that I am welcoming my child, doubly dear, because she comes owning her error.’

(‘I dare say!  We like to be magnanimous, don’t we?  Oh, Mr. Prendergast, I could beat you!’)

‘Our first kiss shall seal your pardon, dearest, and not a word shall pass to remind you of this distressing page in your history.’

(‘Distressing!  Excellent fun it was.  I shall make her hear my diary, if I persuade myself to encounter this intolerable kiss of peace.  It will be a mercy if I don’t serve her as the thief in the fable did his mother when he was going to be hanged.’)

‘I will meet you at the station by any train on Saturday that you like to appoint, and early next week we will go down to what I am sure you have felt is your only true home.’

(‘Have I?  Oh! she has heard of their journey, and thinks this my only alternative.  As if I could not go with them if I chose—I wish they would ask me, though.  They shall!  I’ll not be driven up to the Holt as my last resource, and live there under a system of mild browbeating, because I can’t help it.  No, no! Robin shall find it takes a vast deal of persuasion to bend me to swallow so much pardon in milk and water.  I wonder if there’s time to change the spooney simplicity, and come out in something spicy, with a dash of the Bloomer.  But, maybe, there’s some news of him in the other sheet, now she has delivered her conscience of her rigmarole.  Oh! here it is—’)

‘Phœbe will go home with us, as she is, according to the family system, not summoned to her sister’s wedding.  Robert leaves London on Saturday morning, to fetch his books, &c., from Oxford, Mr. Parsons having consented to give him a title for Holy Orders, and to let him assist in the parish until the next Ember week.  I think, dear girl, that it should not be concealed from you that this step was taken as soon as he heard that you had actually sailed for Ireland, and that he does not intend to return until we are in the country.’

(‘Does he not?  Another act of coercion!  I suppose you put him up to this, madam, as a pleasing course of discipline.  You think you have the whip-hand of me, do you?  Pooh!  See if he’ll stay at Oxford!’)

‘I feel for the grief I’m inflicting—’

(‘Oh, so you complacently think, “now I have made her sorry!”’)

‘—but I believe uncertainty, waiting, and heart sickness would cost you far more.  Trust me, as one who has felt it, that it is far better to feel oneself unworthy than to learn to doubt or distrust the worthiness or constancy of another.’

(‘My father to wit!  A pretty thing to say to his daughter!  What right has she to be pining and complaining after him?  He, the unworthy one?  I’ll never forgive that conceited inference!  Just because he could not stand sentiment!  Master Robert gone!  Won’t I soon have him repenting of his outbreak?’)

‘I have no doubt that his feelings are unchanged, and that he is solely influenced by principle.  He is evidently exceedingly unhappy under all his reserve—’

(‘He shall be more so, till he behaves himself, and comes back humble!  I’ve no notion of his flying out in this way.’)

‘—and though I have not exchanged a word with him on the subject, I am certain that his good opinion will be retrieved, with infinite joy to himself, as soon as you make it possible for his judgment to be satisfied with your conduct and sentiments.  Grieved as I am, it is with a hopeful sorrow, for I am sure that nothing is wanting on your part but that consistency and sobriety of behaviour of which you have newly learnt the necessity on other grounds.  The Parsonses have gone to their own house, so you will not find any one here but two who will feel for you in silence, and we shall soon be in the quiet of the Holt, where you shall have all that can give you peace or comfort from your ever-loving old         H. C.’

‘Feel for me!  Never!  Don’t you wish you may get it?  Teach the catechism and feed caterpillars till such time as it pleases Mrs. Honor to write up and say “the specimen is tame”?  How nice!  No, no.  I’ll not be frightened into their lording it over me!  I know a better way!  Let Mr. Robert find out how little I care, and get himself heartily sick of St. Wulstan’s, till it is “turn again Whittington indeed!”  Poor fellow, I hate it, but he must be cured of his airs, and have a good fright.  Why don’t they ask me to go to Paris with them?  Where can I go, if they don’t.  To Mary Cranford’s?  Stupid place, but I will show that I’m not so hard up as to have no place but the Holt to go to!  If it were only possible to stay with Mr. Prendergast, it would be best of all!  Can’t I tell him to catch a chaperon for me?  Then he would think Honor a regular dragon, which would be a shame, for it was nobody’s fault but his!  I shall tell him I’m like the Christian religion, for which people are always making apologies that it doesn’t want!  Two years!  Patience!  It will be very good for Robin, and four-and-twenty is quite soon enough to bite off one’s wings, and found an ant-hill.  As to being bullied into being kissed, pitied, pardoned, and trained by Honor, I’ll never sink so low!  No, at no price.’