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

‘Well, so am I with myself, for putting her in his way.  Don’t let us torment ourselves with playing the game backwards again—I hate it.  Let’s see to the next.’

‘That is what I came for.  Now, Cilla, though I would gladly do what I could for poor Owen, just think what work it will make with the girls at Wrapworth, who are nonsensical enough already, to have this poor runaway brought back to be buried as the wife of a fine young gentleman.’

‘Poor Edna’s history is no encouragement to look out for fine young gentlemen.’

‘They will know the fact, and sink the circumstances.’

‘So you are so innocent as to think they don’t know!  Depend upon it, every house in Wrapworth rings with it; and won’t it be more improving to have the poor thing’s grave to point the moral?’

‘Cilla, you are a little witch.  You always have your way, but I don’t like it.  It is not the right one.’

‘Not right for Owen to make full compensation?  Mind, it is not Edna Murrell, the eloped schoolmistress, but Mrs. Sandbrook, whom her husband wishes to bury among his family.’

‘Poor lad, is he much cut up?’

‘So much that I should hardly dare tell him if you had refused.  He could not bear another indignity heaped on her, and a wound from you would cut deeper than from any one else.  You should remember in judging him that he had no parent to disobey, and there was generosity in taking on him the risk rather than leave her to a broken heart and your tender mercy.’

‘I fear his tender mercy has turned out worse than mine; but I am sorry for all he has brought on himself, poor lad!’

‘Shall I try whether he can see you?’

‘No, no; I had rather not.  You say young Fulmort attends to him, and I could not speak to him with patience.  Five o’clock, Saturday?’

‘Yes; but that is not all.  That poor child—Robert Fulmort, you, and I must be sponsors.’

‘Cilla, Cilla, how can I answer how it will be brought up?’

‘Some one must.  Its father talks of leaving England, and it will be my charge.  Will you not help me? you who always have helped me.  My father’s grandson; you cannot refuse him, Mr. Pendy,’ said she, using their old childish name for him.

He yielded to the united influence of his rector’s daughter and the memory of his rector.  Though no weak man, those two appeals always swayed him; and Lucilla’s air, spirited when she defended, soft when she grieved, was quite irresistible; so she gained her point, and felt restored to herself by the exercise of power, and by making her wonted impression.  Since one little dog had wagged his little tail, she no longer doubted ‘If I be I;’ yet this only rendered her more nervously desirous of obtaining the like recognition from the other, and she positively wearied after one of Robert’s old wistful looks.

A téte-à-téte with him was necessary on many accounts, and she lay in wait to obtain a few moments alone with him in the study.  He complied neither eagerly nor reluctantly, bowed his head without remark when she told him about the funeral, and took the sponsorship as a matter of course.  ‘Very well; I suppose there is no one else to be found.  Is it your brother’s thought?’

‘I told him.’

‘So I feared.’

‘Oh! Robert, we must take double care for the poor little thing.’

‘I will do my best,’ he answered.

‘Do you know what Owen intends?’ said Lucilla, in low, alarmed accents.

‘He has told you?  It is a wild purpose; but I doubt whether to dissuade him, except for your sake,’ he added, with his first softening towards her, like balm to the sore spot in her heart.

‘Never mind me, I can take care of myself,’ she said, while the muscles of her throat ached and quivered with emotion.  ‘I would not detain him to be pitied and forgiven.’

‘Do not send him away in pride,’ said Robert, sadly.

‘Am I not humbled enough?’ she said; and her drooping head and eye seemed to thrill him with their wonted power.

One step he made towards her, but checked himself, and said in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘Currie, the architect, has a brother, a civil engineer, just going out to Canada to lay out a railway.  It might be an opening for Owen to go as his assistant—unless you thought it beneath him.’

These last words were caused by an uncontrollable look of disappointment.  But it was not the proposal: no; but the change of manner that struck her.  The quiet indifferent voice was like water quenching a struggling spark, but in a moment she recovered her powers.  ‘Beneath him!  Oh, no.  I told you we were humbled.  I always longed for his independence, and I am glad that he should not go alone.’

‘The work would suit his mathematical and scientific turn.  Then, since you do not object, I will see whether he would like it, or if it be practicable in case Miss Charlecote should approve.’

Robert seized this opportunity of concluding the interview.  Lucy ran up-stairs for the fierce quarter-deck walking that served her instead of tears, as an ebullition that tired down her feelings by exhaustion.

Some of her misery was for Owen, but would the sting have been so acute had Robert Fulmort been more than the true friend?

Phœbe’s warning, given in that very room, seemed engraven on each panel.  ‘If you go on as you are doing now, he does not think it would be right for a clergyman.’

Could Lucilla have looked through the floor, she would have seen Robert with elbows on the window-sill, and hands locked over his knitted brows; and could she have interpreted his short-drawn sighs, she would have heard, ‘Poor child! poor child!  It is not coquetry.  That was injustice.  She loves me.  She loves me still!  Why do I believe it only too late?  Why is this trial sent me, since I am bound to the scheme that precludes my marriage?  What use is it to see her as undisciplined—as unfit as ever?  I know it!  I always knew it.  But I feel still a traitor to her!  She had warning!  She trusted the power of my attachment in spite of my judgment!  Fickle to her, or a falterer to my higher pledge?  Never!  I must let her see the position—crush any hope—otherwise I cannot trust myself, nor deal fairly by her.  Heaven help us both!’

When they next met, Robert had propounded his Canadian project, and Owen had caught at it.  Idleness had never been his fault, and he wanted severe engrossing labour to stun pain and expel thought.  He was urgent to know what standard of attainments would be needful, and finding Robert ignorant on this head, seized his hat, and dashed out in the gaslight to the nearest bookseller’s for a treatise on surveying.

Robert was taken by surprise, or he might have gone too.  He looked as if he meditated a move, but paused as Lucy said, ‘Poor fellow, how glad he is of an object!’

‘May it not be to his better feelings like sunshine to morning dew?’ said Robert, sighing.  ‘I hear a very high character of Mr. Currie, and a right-minded, practical, scientific man may tell more on a disposition like his—’

‘Than parsons and women,’ said Lucilla, with a gleam of her old archness.

‘Exactly so.  He must see religion in the world, not out of it.’

‘After all, I have not heard who is this Mr. Currie, and how you know him.’

‘I know him through his brother, who is building the church in Cecily Row.’

‘A church in Cecily Row!  St. Cecilia’s?  Who is doing it?  Honor Charlecote?’

‘No; I am.’

‘You!  Tell me all about it,’ said Lucilla, leaning forward to listen with the eager air of interest which, when not half so earnest, had been always bewitching.

Poor Robert looked away, and tried to think himself explaining his scheme to the Archdeacon.  ‘The place is in frightful disorder, filled with indescribable vice and misery, but there is a shadow of hope that a few may be worked on if something like a mission can be organized.  Circumstances seemed to mark me out as the person to be at the cost of setting it on foot, my father’s connection with the parish giving it a claim on me.  So I purchased the first site that was in the market, and the buildings are in progress, chapel, schools, orphanage, and rooms for myself and two other clergy.  When all the rest is provided for, there will remain about two hundred and fifty pounds a year—just enough for three of us, living together.’

He durst not glance towards her, or he would have seen her cheek white as wax, and her eye seeking his in dismayed inquiry.  There was a pause; then she forced herself to falter—‘Yes.  I suppose it is very right—very grand.  It is settled?’

‘The Archdeacon has seen the plans, the Bishop has consented.’

Long and deep was the silence that fell on both.

Lucilla knew her fate as well as if his long coat had been a cowl.  She would not, could not feel it yet.  She must keep up appearances, so she fixed her eyes steadily on the drawing her idle hands were perpetrating on the back of a letter, and appeared absorbed in shading a Turk’s head.

If Robert’s motives had not been unmixed, if his zeal had been alloyed by temper, or his self-devotion by undutifulness; if his haste had been self-willed, or his judgment one-sided, this was an hour of retribution.  Let her have all her faults, she was still the Lucy who had flown home to him for comfort.  He felt as if he had dashed away the little bird that had sought refuge in his bosom.

Fain would he have implored her pardon, but for the stern resolution to abstain from any needless word or look, such as might serve to rivet the affection that ought to be withdrawn; and he was too manly and unselfish to indulge in discussion or regret, too late as it was to change the course to which he had offered himself and his means.  To retract would have been a breach of promise—a hasty one, perhaps, but still an absolute vow publicly made; and in all his wretchedness he had at least the comfort of knowing the present duty.

Afraid of last words, he would not even take leave until Owen came in upon their silence, full of animation and eagerness to see how far his knowledge would serve him with the book that he had brought home.  Robert then rose, and on Owen’s pressing to know when he might see the engineer, promised to go in search of him the next day, but added that they must not expect to see himself till evening, since it would be a busy day.

Lucilla stood up, but speech was impossible.  She was in no mood to affect indifference, yet she could neither be angry nor magnanimous.  She seemed to have passed into a fresh stage of existence where she was not yet at home; and in the same dreamy way she went on drawing Red Indians, till by a sudden impulse she looked up and said, ‘Owen, why should not I come out with you?’

He was intent on a problem, and did not hear.

‘Owen, take me with you; I will make a home for you.’

‘Eh?’

‘Owen, let me come to Canada, and take care of you and your child.’

He burst out laughing.  ‘Well done, Cilly; that beats all!’

‘Am I likely to be in play?’

‘If not, you are crazy.  As if a man could go surveying in the backwoods with a woman and a brat at his heels!’

Lucy’s heart seemed to die within her.  Nothing was left to her: hopes and fears were alike extinct, and life a waste before her.  Still and indifferent, she laid her down at night, and awoke in the morning, wishing still to prolong the oblivion of sleep.  Anger with Robert would have been a solace, but his dejection forbade this; nor could she resent his high-flown notions of duty, and deem herself their victim, since she had slighted fair warning, and repelled his attempts to address her.  She saw no resource save the Holt, now more hopelessly dreary and distasteful than ever, and she shrank both from writing to Honor, or ending her tantalizing intercourse with Robert.  To watch over her brother was her only comfort, and one that must soon end.

He remained immersed in trigonometry, and she was glad he should be too much engrossed for the outbreaks of remorseful sorrow that were so terrible to witness, and carefully guarded him from all that could excite them.

Mrs. Murrell brought several letters that had been addressed to him at her house, and as Lucilla conveyed them to him, she thought their Oxford post-marks looked suspicious, especially as he thrust them aside with the back of his hand, returning without remark to A B and C D.

Presently a person asked to speak with Mr. Sandbrook; and supposing it was on business connected with the funeral, Lucilla went to him, and was surprised at recognizing the valet of one of the gentlemen who had stayed at Castle Blanch.  He was urgent to see Mr. Sandbrook himself; but she, resolved to avert all annoyances, refused to admit him, offering to take a message.  ‘Was it from his master?’

‘Why, no, ma’am.  In fact, I have left his lordship’s service,’ he said, hesitating.  ‘In point of fact I am the principal.  There was a little business to be settled with the young gentleman when he came into his fortune; and understanding that such was the case, since I heard of him as settled in life, I have brought my account.’

‘You mistake the person.  My brother has come into no fortune, and has no expectation of any.’

‘Indeed, ma’am!’ exclaimed the man.  ‘I always understood that Mr. Owen Charteris Sandbrook was heir to a considerable property.’

‘What of that?’

‘Only this, ma’am,—that I hold a bond from that gentleman for the payment of £600 upon the death of Miss Honora Charlecote, of the Holt, Hiltonbury, whose property I understood was entailed on him.’  His tone was still respectful, but his hand shook with suppressed rage, and his eye was full of passion.

‘Miss Charlecote is not dead,’ steadily answered Lucilla.  ‘She is in perfect health, not fifty years old, and her property is entirely at her own disposal.’

Either the man’s wrath was beyond control, or he thought it his interest to terrify the lady, for he broke into angry complaints of being swindled, with menaces of exposure; but Lucilla, never deficient in courage, preserved ready thought and firm demeanour.

‘You had better take care,’ she said.  ‘My brother is under age, and not liable.  If you should recover what you have lent him, it can only be from our sense of honesty.  Leave me your address and a copy of the bond, and I give you my word that you shall receive your due.’

The valet, grown rich in the service of a careless master, and richer by money-lending transactions with his master’s friends, knew Miss Sandbrook, and was aware that a lady’s word might be safer than a spendthrift’s bond.  He tried swaggering, in the hope of alarming her into a promise to fulfil his demand uninvestigated; but she was on her guard; and he, reflecting that she must probably apply to others for the means of paying, gave her the papers, and freed her from his presence.

Freed her from his presence!  Yes, but only to leave her to the consciousness of the burthen of shame he had brought her.  She saw why Owen thought himself past pardon.  Speculation on the death of his benefactress!  Borrowing on an inheritance that he had been forbidden to expect.  Double-dyed deceit and baseness!  Yesterday, she had said they were humbled enough.  This was not humiliation, it was degradation!  It was far too intolerable for standing still and feeling it.  Lucilla’s impetuous impulses always became her obstinate resolutions, and her pride rebounded to its height in the determination that Owen should leave England in debt to no man, were it at the cost of all she possessed.

Re-entering the drawing-room, she had found that Owen had thrust the obnoxious letters into the waste-basket, each unopened envelope, with the contents, rent down the middle.  She sat down on the floor, and took them out, saying, as she met his eye, ‘I shall take these.  I know what they are.  They are my concern.’

‘Folly!’ he muttered.  ‘Don’t you know I have the good luck to be a minor?’

‘That is no excuse for dishonesty.’

‘Look at home before you call names,’ said Owen, growing enraged.  ‘Before you act spy on me, I should like to know who paid for your fine salmon-fly gown, and all the rest of it?’

‘I never contracted debts in the trust that my age would enable me to defraud my creditors.’

‘Who told you that I did?  I tell you, Lucilla, I’ll endure no such conduct from you.  No sister has a right to say such things!’ and starting up, his furious stamp shook the floor she sat upon, so close to her that it was as if the next would demolish her.

She did not move, except to look up all the length of the tall figure over her into the passion-flushed face.  ‘I should neither have said nor thought so, Owen,’ she replied.  ‘I should have imputed these debts to mere heedless extravagance, like other people’s—like my own, if you please—save for your own words, and for finding you capable of such treachery as borrowing on a post-obit.’

He walked about furiously, stammering interrogations on the mode of her discovery, and, as she explained, storming at her for having brought this down on him by the folly of putting ‘that thing into the Times.’  Why could she not have stayed away, instead of meddling where she was not wanted?

‘I thought myself wanted when my brother was in trouble,’ said Lucilla, mournfully, raising her face, which she had bent between her hands at the first swoop of the tempest.  ‘Heaven knows, I had no thought of spying.  I came to stand by your wife, and comfort you.  I only learnt all this in trying to shield you from intrusion.  Oh, would that I knew it not!  Would that I could think of you as I did an hour ago!  Oh, Owen, though I have never shared your fondness for Honor Charlecote, I thought it genuine; I did not scorn it as fortune-hunting.’

‘It was not!  It never was!’ cried the poor boy.  ‘Honor!  Poor Honor!  Lucy, I doubt if I could have felt for my mother as I do for her.  Oh, if you could guess how I long for her dear voice in my ears, her soft hand on my head—’ and he sank into his chair, hiding his face and sobbing aloud.

‘Am I to believe that, when—’ began Lucilla, slowly.

‘The last resource of desperation,’ cried Owen.  ‘What could I do with such a drain upon me; the old woman for ever clamouring for money, and threatening exposure?  My allowance?  Poor Honor meant well, but she gave me just enough to promote expensive habits without supplying them.  There was nothing to fall back on—except the ways of the Castle Blanch folk.’

‘Betting?’

He nodded.  ‘So when it went against me, and people would have it that I had expectations, it was not for me to contradict them.  It was their business, not mine, to look out for themselves, and pretty handsomely they have done so.  It would have been a very different percentage if I had been an eldest son.  As it is, my bond is—what is it for, Lucy?’

‘Six hundred.’

‘How much do you think I have touched of that?  Not two!  Of that, three-fourths went to the harpies I fell in with at Paris, under Charles’s auspices—and five-and-twenty there’—pointing in the direction of Whittington-street.

‘Will the man be satisfied with the two hundred?’

‘Don’t he wish he may get it?  But, Lucy, you are not to make a mess of it.  I give you warning I shall go, and never be heard of more, if Honor is applied to.’

‘I had rather die than do so.’

‘You are not frantic enough to want to do it out of your own money?  I say, give me those papers.’

He stooped and stretched out the powerful hand and arm, which when only half-grown had been giant-like in struggles with his tiny sister but she only laid her two hands on the paper, with just sufficient resistance to make it a matter of strength on his side.  They were man and woman, and what availed his muscles against her will?  It came to parley.  ‘Now, Lucy, I have a right to think for you.  As your brother, I cannot permit you to throw your substance to the dogs.’

‘As your sister, I cannot allow you to rest dishonoured.’

‘Not a whit more than any of your chosen friends.  Every man leaves debts at Oxford.  The extortion is framed on a scale to be unpaid.’

‘Let it be!  There shall be no stain on the name that once was my father’s, if there be on the whole world beside.’

‘Then,’ with some sulkiness, ‘you won’t be content without beggaring me of my trumpery twenty-five hundred as soon as I am of age?’

‘Not at all.  Your child must live on that.  Only one person can pay your debts without dishonouring you, and that is your elder sister.’

‘Elder donkey,’ was the ungrateful answer.  ‘Why, what would become of you?  You’d have to be beholden to Honor for the clothes on your back!’

‘I shall not go back to Honor; I shall earn my own livelihood.’

‘Lucilla, are you distracted, or is it your object to make me so?’

‘Only on one condition could I return to the Holt,’ said Lucilla, resolutely.  ‘If Honor would freely offer to receive your son, I would go to take care of him.  Except for his sake, I had rather she would not.  I will not go to be crushed with pardon and obligation, while you are proscribed.  I will be independent, and help to support the boy.’

‘Sure,’ muttered Owen to himself, ‘Lucifer is her patron saint.  If I looked forward to anything, it was to her going home tame enough to make some amends to poor, dear Sweet Honey, but I might as well have hoped it of the panther of the wilderness!  I declare I’ll write to Honor this minute.’

He drew the paper before him.  Lucilla started to her feet, looking more disgusted and discomfited than by any former shock.  However, she managed to restrain any dissuasion, knowing that it was the only right and proper step in his power, and that she could never have looked Robert in the face again had she prevented the confession; but it was a bitter pill; above all, that it should be made for her sake.  She rushed away, as usual, to fly up and down her room.

She might have spared herself that agony.  Owen’s resolution failed him.  He could not bring himself to make the beginning, nor to couple the avowal of his offence with such presumption as an entreaty for his child’s adoption, though he knew his sister’s impulsive obstinacy well enough to be convinced that she would adhere pertinaciously to this condition.  Faltering after the first line, he recurred to his former plan of postponing his letter till his plans should be so far matured that he could show that he would no longer be a pensioner on the bounty of his benefactress, and that he sought pardon for the sake of no material advantage.  He knew that Robert had intimated his intention of writing after the funeral, and by this he would abide.

Late in the evening Robert brought the engineer’s answer, that he had no objection to take out a pupil, and would provide board, lodging, and travelling expenses; but he required a considerable premium, and for three years would offer no salary.  His standard of acquirements was high, but such as rather stimulated than discouraged Owen, who was delighted to find that an appointment had been made for a personal interview on the ensuing Monday.

It was evident that if these terms were accepted, the debts, if paid at all, must come out of Lucilla’s fortune.  Owen’s own portion would barely clothe him and afford the merest pittance for his child until he should be able to earn something after his three years’ apprenticeship.  She trusted that he was convinced, and went up-stairs some degrees less forlorn for having a decided plan; but a farther discovery awaited her, and one that concerned herself.

On her bed lay the mourning for which she had sent, tasteful and expensive, in her usual complete style, and near it an envelope.  It flashed on her that her order had been dangerously unlimited, and she opened the cover in trepidation, but what was her dismay at the double, treble, quadruple foolscap?  The present articles were but a fraction to the dreadful aggregate—the sum total numbered hundreds!  In a dim hope of error she looked back at the items, ‘Black lace dress: Dec. 2nd, 1852.’—She understood all.  It dated from the death of her aunt.  Previously, her wardrobe had been replenished as though she had been a daughter of the house, and nothing had marked the difference; indeed, the amply provided Horatia had probably intended that things were to go on as usual.  Lucilla had been allowed to forget the existence of accounts, in a family which habitually ignored them.  Things had gone smoothly; the beautiful little Miss Sandbrook was an advertisement to her milliners, and living among wealthy people, and reported to be on the verge of marriage with a millionaire, there had been no hesitation in allowing her unlimited credit.