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

‘Can I be of use?’ asked Robert.

‘No; the nurse can hold her;’ and he leant his arms on the mantelpiece, his frame shaken with long-drawn sobs.  He had never even seen his sister, and she was too much appalled to speak or move.

When the sounds ceased, Owen looked up to listen, and Robert said, ‘Still no consciousness?’

‘No, better not.  What would she gain by it?’

‘It must be better not, if so ordained,’ said Robert.

‘Pshaw! what are last feelings and words?  As if a blighted life and such suffering were not sure of compensation.  There’s more justice in Heaven than in your system!’

He was gone; and Robert with a deep sigh said, ‘I am not judging.  I trust there were tokens of repentance and forgiveness; but it is painful, as her mother feels it, to hear how her mind runs on light songs and poetry.’

‘Mechanically!’

‘True; and delirium is no criterion of the state of mind.  But it is very mournful.  In her occupation, one would have thought habit alone would have made her ear catch other chimes.’

Lucilla remembered with a pang that she had sympathized with Edna’s weariness of the monotony of hymn and catechism.  Thinking poetry rather dull and tiresome, she had little guessed at the effect of sentimental songs and volumes of L. E. L. and the like, on an inflammable mind, when once taught to slake her thirsty imagination beyond the S.P.C.K.  She did not marvel at the set look of pain with which Robert heard passionate verses of Shelley and Byron fall from those dying lips.  They must have been conned by heart, and have been the favourite study, or they could hardly thus recur.

‘I must go,’ said Robert, after a time; ‘I am doing no good here.  You will take care of your brother, if it is over before I return.  Where are you?’

‘My things are in Woolstone-lane.’

‘I meant to get him there.  I will come back by seven o’clock; but I must go to the school.’

‘May I go in there?’

‘You had better not.  It is a fearful sight, and you cannot be of use.  I wish you could be out of hearing; but the house is full.’

‘One moment, Robert—the child?’

‘Sent to a nurse, when every sound was agony.’

He stepped into the sick room, and brought out Mrs. Murrell, who began with a curtsey, but eagerly pressed Lucilla’s offered hand.  Subdued by sorrow and watching, she was touchingly meek and resigned, enduring with the patience of real faith, and only speaking to entreat that Mr. Fulmort would pray with her for her poor child.  Never had Lucilla so prayed; and ere she had suppressed her tears, ere rising from her knees, Robert was gone.

She spent the ensuing hours of that summer evening, seated in the arm-chair, barely moving, listening to the ticking of the clock, and the thunder of the streets, and at times hearkening to the sounds in the inner chamber, the wanderings feebler and more rare, but the fearful convulsions more frequent, seeming, as it were, to be tearing away the last remnant of life.  These moments of horror-struck suspense were the only breaks, save when Owen rushed out unable to bear the sight, and stood, with hidden face, in such absorption of distress as to be unconscious of her awe-struck attempts to obtain his attention, or when Mrs. Murrell came to fetch something, order her maid, or relieve herself by a few sad words to her guest.  Gratified by the eager sisterly acknowledgment of poor Edna, she touched Lucilla deeply by speaking of her daughter’s fondness for Miss Sandbrook, grief at having given cause for being thought ungrateful, and assurances that the secret never could have been kept had they met the day after the soirée.  Many had been the poor thing’s speculations how Miss Sandbrook would receive her marriage, but always with confidence in her final mercy and justice: and when Lucilla heard of the prolonged wretchedness, the hope deferred, the evil reports and suspicions of neighbours and lodgers, the failing health, and cruel disappointment, and looked round at the dismal little stifling dungeon where this fair and gifted being had pined and sunk beneath slander and desertion, hot tears of indignation filled her eyes, and with fingers clenching together, she said, ‘Oh that I had known it sooner!  Edna was right.  I will be the person to see justice done to her!’

And when left alone she cast about for the most open mode of proclaiming Edna Murrell her brother’s honoured wife, and her own beloved sister.  The more it mortified the Charterises the better!

By the time Robert came back, the sole change was in the failing strength, and he insisted on conducting Lucilla to Woolstone-lane, Mrs. Murrell enforcing his advice so decidedly that there was no choice.  She would not be denied one look at the sufferer, but what she saw was so miserably unlike the beautiful creature whom she remembered, that she recoiled, feeling the kindness that had forbidden her the spectacle, and passively left the house, still under the chill influence of the shock.  She had tasted nothing since breakfasting on board the steamer, and on coming into the street the comparative coolness seemed to strike her through; she shivered, felt her knees give way, and grasped Robert’s arm for support.  He treated her with watchful, considerate solicitude, though with few words, and did not leave her till he had seen her safe under the charge of the housekeeper; when, in return for his assurance that he would watch over her brother, she promised to take food, and go at once to rest.

Too weary at first to undress, and still thinking that Owen might be brought to her, she lay back on the couch in her own familiar little cedar room, feeling as if she recalled the day through the hazy medium of a dream, and as if she had not been in contact with Edna, nor Owen, nor Robert, but only with pale phantoms called by those names.

Robert especially!  Engrossed and awe-stricken as she had been, still it came on her that something was gone that to her had constituted Robert Fulmort.  Neither the change of dress, nor even the older and more settled expression of countenance, made the difference; but the want of that nameless, hesitating deference which in each word or action formerly seemed to implore her favour, or even when he dared to censure, did so under appeal to her mercy.  Had he avoided her, she could have understood it; but his calm, authoritative self-possession was beyond her, though as yet she was not alarmed, for her mind was too much confused to perceive that her influence was lost; but it was uncomfortable, and part of this strange, unnatural world, as though the wax which she had been used to mould had suddenly lost its yielding nature and become marble.

Tired out, she at last went to bed, and slept soundly, but awoke early, and on coming down, found from the housekeeper that her brother had been brought home at two o’clock by Mr. Fulmort, and had gone to his room at once.  All was over.  Lucilla, longing to hear more, set out to see Mrs. Murrell, before he should come down-stairs.

While the good woman was forced to bestir herself for her lodgers’ breakfasts, Lucilla could steal a solitary moment to gaze on the pallid face to which death had restored much of its beauty.  She pressed her lips on the regal brow, and spoke half aloud, ‘Edna, Edna Sandbrook, sister Edna, you should have trusted me.  You knew I would see justice done to you, and I will.  You shall lie by my mother’s side in our own churchyard, and Wrapworth shall know that she, whom they envied and maligned, was Owen Sandbrook’s wife and my cherished sister.’

Poor Mrs. Murrell, with her swimming eyes and stock phrases, brought far more Christian sentiments to the bed of death.  ‘Poor, dear love, her father and I little thought it would end in this, when we used to be so proud of her.  We should have minded that pride is not made for sinners.  “Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain;” and the Lord saw it well that we should be cast down and slanderous lips opened against us, that so we might feel our trust is in Him alone!  Oh, it is good that even thus she was brought to turn to Him!  But I thank—oh, I thank Him that her father never lived to see this day!’

She wept such tears of true thankfulness and resignation, that Lucilla, almost abashed by the sight of piety beyond her comprehension, stood silent, till, with a change to the practical, Mrs. Murrell recovered herself, saying, ‘If you please, ma’am, when had I best come and speak to the young gentleman?  I ought to know what would be pleasing to him about the funeral.’

‘We will arrange,’ said Lucilla; ‘she shall be buried with my mother and sister in Wrapworth churchyard.’

Though gratified, Mrs. Murrell demurred, lest it might be taken ill by the ‘family’ and by that godly minister whose kindness and sympathy at the time of Edna’s evasion had made a deep impression; but Lucilla boldly undertook that the family must like it, and she would take care of the minister.  Nor was the good woman insensible to the posthumous triumph over calumny, although still with a certain hankering after Kensal Green as a sweet place, with pious monuments, where she should herself be laid, and the Company that did things so reasonable and so handsome.

Lucilla hurried back to fulfil the mission of Nemesis to the Charterises, which she called justice to Edna, and by the nine o’clock post despatched three notes.  One containing the notice for the Times—‘On the 17th instant, at 8, Little Whittington-street, St. Wulstan’s, Edna, the beloved wife of Owen Charteris Sandbrook, Esq.;’ another was to order a complete array of mourning from her dressmaker; and the third was to the Reverend Peter Prendergast, in the most simple manner requesting him to arrange for the burial of her sister-in-law, at 5 P.M. on the ensuing Saturday, indicating the labourers who should act as bearers, and ending with, ‘You will be relieved by hearing that she was no other than our dear Edna, married on the 14th of July, last year.’

She then beguiled the time with designs for gravestones, until she became uneasy at Owen’s non-appearance, and longed to go and see after him; but she fancied he might have spent nights of watching, and thought sleep would be the best means of getting through the interval which appalled her mind, unused to contact with grief.  Still his delay began to wear her spirits and expectation, so long wrought up to the meeting; and she was at least equally restless for the appearance of Robert, wanting to hear more from him, and above all certain that all her dreary cravings and vacancy would be appeased by one dialogue with him, on whatever topic it might be.  She wished that she had obeyed that morning bell at St. Wulstan’s.  It would have disposed of half-an-hour, and she would have met him.  ‘For shame,’ quoth the haughty spirit, ‘now that has come into my head, I can’t go at all.’

Her solitude continued till half-past ten, when she heard the welcome sound of Robert’s voice, and flew to meet him, but was again checked by his irresponsive manner as he asked for Owen.

‘I have not seen him.  I do not know whether to knock, lest he should be asleep.’

‘I hope he is.  He has not been in bed for three nights.  I will go and see.’

He was moving to the door without lingering for a word more.  She stopped him by saying, ‘Pray hear first what I have settled with Mrs. Murrell.’

‘She told me,’ said Robert.  ‘Is it Owen’s wish?’

‘It ought to be.  It must.  Every public justice must be paid now.’

‘Is it quite well judged, unless it were his strong desire?  Have you considered the feelings of Mr. Prendergast or your relations?’

‘There is nothing I consider more.  If Charles thinks it more disgraceful to marry a Christian for love than a Jewess for money, he shall see that we are not of the same opinion.’

‘I never pretend to judge of your motives.’

‘Mercy, what have I gone and said?’ ejaculated Lucilla, as the door closed after him.  ‘Why did I let it out, and make him think me a vixen?  Better than a hypocrite though!  I always professed to show my worst.  What’s come to me, that I can’t go on so contentedly?  He must hear the Charteris’ sentiments, though, that he may not think mine a gratuitous affront.’

Her explanation was at her tongue’s end, but Robert only reappeared with her brother, whom he had found dressing.  Owen just greeted his sister, but asked no questions, only dropping heavily into a chair, and let her bring him his breakfast.  So young was he, still wanting six weeks to years of discretion; so youthful his appearance in spite of his size and strength, that it was almost absurd to regard him as a widower, and expect him to act as a man of mature age and feeling.  There was much of the boy in his excessive and freely-indulged lassitude, and his half-sullen, half-shy reserve towards his sister.  Knowing he had been in conversation with Robert, she felt it hard that before her he only leant his elbows on the table, yawned, and talked of his stiffness, until his friend rising to leave them, he exerted himself to say, ‘Don’t go, Fulmort.’

‘I am afraid I must.  I leave you to your sister.’  (She noted that it was not ‘Lucy.’)

‘But, I say, Fulmort, there are things to settle—funeral, and all that,’ he said in a helpless voice, like a sulky schoolboy.

‘Your sister has been arranging with Mrs. Murrell.’

‘Yes, Owen,’ said Lucilla, tears glistening in her eyes, and her voice thrilling with emotion; ‘it is right and just that she should be with our mother and little Mary at home; so I have written to Mr. Prendergast.’

‘Very well,’ he languidly answered.  ‘Settle it as you will; only deliver me from the old woman!’

He was in no state for reproaches; but Lucilla was obliged to bite her lip to restrain a torrent of angry weeping.

At his urgent instance, Robert engaged to return to dinner, and went, leaving Lucilla with nothing to do but to watch those heavy slumberings on the sofa and proffer attentions that were received with the surliness of one too miserable to know what to do with himself.  She yearned over him with a new awakening of tenderness, longing, yet unable, to console or soothe.  The light surface-intercourse of the brother and sister, each selfishly refraining from stirring the depths of the other’s mind, rendered them mere strangers in the time of trouble; and vainly did Lucy gaze wistfully at the swollen eyelids and flushed cheeks, watch every peevish gesture, and tend each sullen wish, with pitying sweetness; she could not reach the inner man, nor touch the aching wound.

Towards evening, Mrs. Murrell’s name was brought in, provoking a fretful injunction from Owen not to let him be molested with her cant.  Lucilla sighed compliance, though vexed at his egotism, and went to the study, where she found that Mrs. Murrell had brought her grandson, her own most precious comforter, whom she feared she must resign ‘to be bred up as a gentleman as he was, and despise his poor old granny; and she would say not a word, only if his papa would let her keep him till he had cut his first teeth, for he had always been tender, and she could not be easy to think that any one else had the charge of him.’  She devoured him with kisses as she spoke, taking every precaution to keep her profuse tears from falling on him; and Lucilla, much moved, answered, ‘Oh! for the present, no one could wish to part him from you.  Poor little fellow!  May I take him for a little while to my brother?  It may do him good.’

Cilly had rather have ridden a kicking horse than handled an infant.  She did not think this a prepossessing specimen, but it was passive.  She had always understood from books that this was the sure means of ‘opening the sealed fountains of grief.’  She remembered what little Mary had been to her father, and in hopes that parental instinct would make Owen know better what to do with her burden than she did, she entered the drawing-room, where a little murmuring sound caused Owen to start up on his elbow, exclaiming, ‘What are you at?  Don’t bring that here!’

‘I thought you might wish to see him.’

‘What should I do with him?’ asked Owen, in the same glum, childish tone, turning his face inwards as he lay down.  ‘Take it away.  Ain’t I wretched enough already to please you?’

She gave up the point, much grieved and strongly drawn to the little helpless one, rejected by his father, misused and cast off like his mother.  Would no one stand up for him?  Yes, it must be her part.  She was his champion!  She would set him forth in the world, by her own toil if need were!

Sealing the promise with a kiss, she returned him to his grandmother, and talked of him as so entirely her personal concern, that the good woman went home to report to her inquiring friends that the young lady was ready to ‘hact very feeling, and very ‘andsome.’  Probably desirous to avoid further reference to his unwelcome son and heir, Owen had betaken himself to the solace of his pipe, and was pacing the garden with steps now sauntering with depression, now impetuous with impatience, always moving too much like a caged wild beast to invite approach.  She was disconsolately watching him from the window, when Mr. Fulmort was admitted.  A year ago, what would he not have given for that unfeigned, simple welcome, as she looked up with eyes full of tears, saying, ‘Oh, Robert, it is so grievous to see him!’

‘Very sad,’ was the mournful answer.

‘You may be able to help him.  He asks for you, but turns from me.’

‘He has been obliged to rely on me, since we came to town,’ said Robert.

‘You must have been very kind!’ she warmly exclaimed.

But he drew back from the effusion, saying, ‘I did no more than was absolutely necessary.  He does not lay himself open to true comfort.’

‘Death never seemed half so miserable before!’ cried Lucilla.  ‘Yet this poor thing had little to live for!  Was it all poor Honor’s tender softening that took off the edge to our imaginations?’

‘It is not always so mournful!’ shortly said Robert.

‘No; even the mother bears it better, and not for want of heart.’

‘She is a Christian,’ said Robert.

‘Poor Owen!  It makes me remorseful.  I wonder if I made too light of the line he took; yet what difference could I have made?  Sisters go for so little; and as to influence, Honor overdid it.’  Then, as he made no reply, ‘Tell me, do you think my acquiescence did harm?’

‘I cannot say.  Your conscience must decide.  It is not a case for me.  I must go to him.’

It was deep mortification.  Used to have the least hint of dawning seriousness thankfully cherished and fostered, it was a rude shock, when most in need of épanchement du cœur after her dreary day, to be thrown back on that incomprehensible process of self-examination; and by Robert, too!

She absolutely did not feel as if she were the same Lucilla.  It was the sensation of doubt on her personal identity awakened in the good woman of the ballad when her little dog began to bark and wail at her.

She strove to enliven the dinner by talking of Hiltonbury, and of Juliana’s marriage, thus awakening Owen into life and talkativeness so much in his light ordinary humour, as to startle them both.  Lucilla would have encouraged it as preferable to his gloom, but it was decidedly repressed by Robert.

She had to repair to solitary restlessness in the drawing-room, and was left alone there till so late that Robert departed after a single cup of tea, cutting short a captious argument of Owen’s about impossibility of proof, and truth being only true in a sense.

Owen’s temper was, however, less morose; and when his sister was lighting his candle for him at night, kindly said, ‘What a bore I’ve been all day, Lucy.’

‘I am glad to be with you, dear Owen; I have no one else.’

‘Eh?  What’s become of Rashe?’

‘Never mention her again!’

‘What?  They’ve cut you?’

‘I have cut them.’

She related what had passed.

Owen set his face into a frown.  ‘Even so, Charlie; doltishness less pardonable than villainy!  You were right to cut the connection, Lucy; it has been our curse.  So now you will back to poor Honor, and try to make it up to her.’

‘I’m not going near Honor till she forgives you, and receives your child.’

‘Then you will be very ridiculous,’ said Owen, impatiently.  ‘She has no such rancour against me as you have against her, poor dear; but it is not in the nature of things that she should pass over this unlucky performance.’

‘If it had been such a performance as Charles desired, I should have said so.’

‘Pshaw!  I hadn’t the chance; and gloss it as you will, Lucy, there’s no disguising it, she would have it, and I could not help it, but she was neglected, and it killed her!’  He brought his hand down on the table with a heavy thump, which together with the words made his sister recoil.  ‘Could Honor treat me the same after that?  And she not my mother, either!  Why had not my father the sense to have married her?  Then I could go to her and get rid of this intolerable weight!’ and he groaned aloud.

‘A mother could hardly love you more,’ said Lucy, to her own surprise.  ‘If you will but go to here,—when she sees you so unhappy.’

‘Out of the question,’ broke in Owen; ‘I can’t stay here!  I would have gone this very night, but I can’t be off till that poor thing—’

‘Off!’

‘Ay, to the diggings, somewhere, anywhere, to get away from it all!’

‘Oh, Owen, do nothing mad!’

‘I’m not going to do anything just now, I tell you.  Don’t be in a fright.  I shan’t take French leave of you.  You’ll find me to-morrow morning, worse luck.  Good night.’

Lucilla was doubly glad to have come.  Her pride approved his proposal, though her sisterly love would suffer, and she was anxious about the child; but dawning confidence was at the least a relief.

Next morning, he was better, and talked much too like his ordinary self, but relapsed afterwards for want of employment; and when a letter was brought to him, left by his wife to be read after her death, he broke down, and fell into a paroxysm of grief and despair, which still prevailed when a message came in to ask admission for Mr. Prendergast.  Relieved to be out of sight of depression that her consolations only aggravated, and hoping for sympathy and counsel, Lucy hastened to the study with outstretched hands, and was met with the warmth for which she had longed.

Still there was disappointment.  In participation with Owen’s grief, she had lost sight of his offences, and was not prepared for any commencement.  ‘Well, Cilla, I came up to talk to you.  A terrible business this of Master Owen’s.’

‘It breaks one’s heart to see him so wretched.’

‘I hope he is.  He ought to be.’

‘Now, Mr. Prendergast.’

The curate held up both his hands, deprecating her coaxing piteous look, and used his voice rather loudly to overpower hers, and say what he had prepared as a duty.

‘Yes, yes, he is your brother, and all that.  You may feel for him what you like.  But I must say this: it was a shameful thing, and a betrayal of confidence, such as it grieves me to think of in his father’s son.  I am sorry for her, poor thing! whom I should have looked after better; and I am very sorry indeed for you, Cilla; but I must tell you that to bury the poor girl next to Mrs. Sandbrook, as your brother’s wife, would be a scandal.’

‘Don’t speak so loud; he will hear.’

His mild face was unwontedly impatient as he said, ‘I can see how you gave in to the wish; I don’t blame you, but if you consider the example to the parish.’

‘After what I told you in my letter, I don’t see the evil of the example; unless it be your esprit de corps about the registrar, and they could not well have requested you to officiate.’

‘Cilla, you were always saucy, but this is no time for nonsense.  You can’t defend them.’

‘Perhaps you are of your Squire’s opinion—that the bad example was in the marrying her at all.’

Mr. Prendergast looked so much shocked that Lucilla felt a blush rising, conscious that the tone of the society she had of late lived with had rendered her tongue less guarded, her cheek less shamefaced than erst, but she galloped on to hide her confusion.  ‘You were their great cause.  If you had not gone and frightened her, they might have philandered on all this time, till the whole affair died of its own silliness.’

‘Yes, no one was so much to blame as I.  I will trust no living creature again.  My carelessness opened the way to temptation, and Heaven knows, Lucilla, I have been infinitely more displeased with myself than with them.’