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

Probably the dressmaker had been alarmed by the long absence of the family, and might have learnt from the servants how Lucilla had quitted them, therefore thinking it expedient to remind her of her liabilities.  And not only did the present spectacle make her giddy, but she knew there was worse beyond.  The Frenchwoman who supplied all extra adornments, among them the ball-dress whose far bitterer price she was paying, could make more appalling demands; and there must be other debts elsewhere, such that she doubted whether her entire fortune would clear both her brother and herself.  What was the use of thinking?  It must be done, and the sooner she knew the worst the better.  She felt very ill-used, certain that her difficulties were caused by Horatia’s inattention, and yet glad to be quit of an obligation that would have galled her as soon as she had become sensible of it.  It was more than ever clear that she must work for herself, instead of returning to the Holt, as a dependent instead of a guest.  Was she humbled enough?

The funeral day began by her writing notes to claim her bills, and to take steps to get her capital into her own hands.  Owen drowned reflection in geometry, till it was time to go by the train to Wrapworth.

There Mr. Prendergast fancied he had secured secrecy by eluding questions and giving orders at the latest possible moment.  The concourse in the church and churchyard was no welcome sight to him, since he could not hope that the tall figure of the chief mourner could remain unrecognized.  Worthy man, did he think that Wrapworth needed that sight to assure them of what each tongue had wagged about for many a day?

Owen behaved very properly and with much feeling.  When not driving it out by other things, the fact was palpable to him that he had brought this fair young creature to her grave; and in the very scenes where her beauty and enthusiastic affection had captivated him, association revived his earlier admiration, and swept away his futile apology that she had brought the whole upon herself.  A gust of pity, love, and remorse convulsed his frame, and though too proud to give way, his restrained anguish touched every heart, and almost earned him Mr. Prendergast’s forgiveness.

Before going away, Lucilla privately begged Mr. Prendergast to come to town on Monday, to help her in some business.  It happened to suit him particularly well, as he was to be in London for the greater part of the week, to meet some country cousins, and the appointment was made without her committing herself by saying for what she wanted him, lest reflection should convert him into an obstacle instead of an assistant.

The intervening Sunday, with Owen on her hands, was formidable to her imagination, but it turned out better than she expected.  He asked her to walk to Westminster Abbey with him, the time and distance being an object to both, and he treated her with such gentle kindness, that she began to feel that something more sweet and precious than she had yet known from him might spring up, if they were not forced to separate.  Once, on rising from kneeling, she saw him stealthily brushing off his tears, and his eyes were heavy and swollen, but, softened as she felt, his tone of feelings was a riddle beyond her power, between their keenness and their petulance, their manly depth and boyish levity, their remorse and their recklessness; and when he tried to throw them off, she could not but follow his lead.

‘I suppose,’ he said, late in the day, ‘we shall mortify Fulmort if we don’t go once to his shop.  Otherwise, I like the article in style.’

‘I am glad you should like it at all,’ said Lucy, anxiously.

‘I envy those who, like poor dear Honor, or that little Phœbe, can find life in the driest form,’ said Owen.

‘They would say it is our fault that we cannot find it.’

‘Honor would think it her duty to say so.  Phœbe has a wider range, and would be more logical.  Is it our fault or misfortune that our ailments can’t be cured by a paring of St. Bridget’s thumb-nail, or by any nostrum, sacred or profane, that really cures their votaries?  I regard it as a misfortune.  Those are happiest who believe the most, and are eternally in a state in which their faith is working out its effects upon them mentally and physically.  Happy people!’

‘Really I think, unless you were one of those happy people, it is no more consistent in you to go to church than it would be in me to set up Rashe’s globules.’

‘No, don’t tell me so, Lucy.  There lie all my best associations.  I venerate what the great, the good, the beloved receive as their blessing and inspiration.  Sometimes I can assimilate myself, and catch an echo of what was happiness when I was a child at Honor’s knee.’

The tears had welled into his eyes again, and he hurried away.  Lucilla had faith (or rather acquiescence) without feeling.  Feeling without faith was a mystery to her.  How much Owen believed or disbelieved she knew not, probably he could not himself have told.  It was more uncertainty than denial, rather dislike to technical dogma than positive unbelief; and yet, with his predilections all on the side of faith, she could not, womanlike, understand why they did not bring his reason with them. After all, she decided, in her off-hand fashion, that there was quite enough that was distressing and perplexing without concerning herself about them!

Style, as Owen called it, was more attended to than formerly at St. Wulstan’s, but was not in perfection.  Robert, whose ear was not his strong point, did not shine in intoning, and the other curate preached.  The impression seemed only to have weakened that of the morning, for Owen’s remarks on coming out were on the English habit of having overmuch of everything, and on the superior sense of foreigners in holiday-making, instead of making a conscience of stultifying themselves with double and triple church-going.

Cilla agreed in part, but owned that she was glad to have done with Continental Sundays that had left her feeling good for nothing all the week, just as she had felt when once, as a child, to spite Honor, she had come down without saying her prayers.

‘The burthen bound on her conscience by English prejudice,’ said her brother, adding ‘that this was the one oppressive edict of popular theology.  It was mere self-defence to say that the dulness was Puritanical, since the best Anglican had a cut-and-dried pattern for all others.’

‘But surely as a fact, Sunday observance is the great safeguard.  All goes to the winds when that is given up.’

‘The greater error to have rendered it grievous.’

Lucilla had no reply.  She had not learnt the joy of the week’s Easter-day.  It had an habitual awe for her, not sacred delight; and she could not see that because it was one point where religion taught the world that it had laws of its own, besides those of mere experience and morality, therefore the world complained, and would fain shake off the thraldom.

Owen relieved her by a voluntary proposal to turn down Whittington-street, and see the child.  Perhaps he had an inkling that the chapel in Cat-alley would be in full play, and that the small maid would be in charge; besides, it was gas-light, and the lodgers would be out.  At any rate softening was growing on him.  He looked long and sorrowfully at the babe in its cradle, and at last,—

‘He will never be like her.’

‘No; and I do not think him like you.’

‘In fact, it is an ugly little mortal,’ said Owen, after another investigation.  ‘Yet, it’s very odd, Lucy, I should like him to live.’

‘Very odd, indeed!’ she said, nearly laughing.

‘Well, I own, before ever I saw him, when they said he would die, I did think it was best for himself, and every one else.  So, maybe, it would; but you see I shouldn’t like it.  He will be a horrible expense, and it will be a great bore to know what to do with him: so absurd to have a son only twenty years younger than oneself: but I think I like him, after all.  It is something to work for, to make up to him for what she suffered.  And I say, Lucy,’ his eye brightened, ‘perhaps Honor will take to him!  What a thing it would be if he turned out all she hoped of me, poor thing!  I would be banished for life, if he could be in my place, and make it up to her.  He might yet have the Holt!’

‘You have not proposed sending him to her?’

‘No, I am not so cool,’ he sadly answered; ‘but she is capable of anything in an impulse of forgiveness.’

He spent the evening over his letter; and, in spite of his sitting with his back towards his sister, she saw more than one sheet spoilt by large tears unperceived till they dropped, and felt a jealous pang in recognizing the force of his affection for Honor.  That love and compassion seemed contemptible to her, they were so inconsistent with his deception and disobedience; and she was impatient of seeing that, so far as he felt his errors at all, it was in their aspect towards his benefactress.  His ingratitude towards her touched him in a more tender part than his far greater errors towards his wife.  The last was so shocking and appalling, that he only half realized it, and, boy-like, threw it from him; the other came home to the fondness that had been with him all his life, and which he missed every hour in his grief.  Lucy positively dreaded his making such submission or betraying such sorrow as might bring Honora down on them full of pardon and beneficence.  At least, she had the satisfaction of hearing ‘I’ve said nothing about you, Cilla.’

‘That’s right!’

‘Nor the child,’ he continued, brushing up his hair from his brow.  ‘When I came to go over it, I did hate myself to such a degree that I could not say a word like asking a favour.’

Lucy was greatly relieved.

He looked like himself when he came down to breakfast exhilarated by the restoration to activity, and the opening of a new path, though there was a subdued, grave look on his young brow not unsuited to his deep mourning.

He took up his last evening’s production, looked at it with some satisfaction, and observed, ‘Sweet old honey!  I do hope that letter may be a little comfort to her good old heart!’

Then he told that he had been dreaming of her looking into the cradle, and he could not tell whether it were himself or the boy that he had seen sitting on a haycock at Hiltonbury.

‘Who knows but it may be a good omen,’ said he in his sanguine state.  ‘You said you would go to her, if she took the child.’

‘I did not say I would not.’

‘Well, don’t make difficulties; pray don’t, Lucilla.  I want nothing for myself; but if I could see you and the child at the Holt, and hear her dear voice say one word of kindness, I could go out happy.  Imagine if she should come to town!’

Lucilla had no mind to imagine any such thing.

CHAPTER XIII

An upper and a lower springTo thee, to all are given:They mingle not, apart they gleam,The joys of earth, of heaven on high;God grant thee grace to choose the spring,Even before the nether spring is dry.—M.

‘One moment, Phœbe, I’ll walk a little way with you;’ and Honor Charlecote, throwing on bonnet and scarf, hurried from the drawing-room where Mrs. Saville was working.

In spite of that youthful run, and girlish escape from ‘company’ to a confidante, the last fortnight had left deep traces.  Every incipient furrow had become visible, the cheeks had fallen, the eyes sunk, the features grown prominent, and the auburn curls were streaked with silver threads never previously perceptible to a casual eye.  While languid, mechanical talk was passing, Phœbe had been mourning over the change; but she found her own Miss Charlecote restored in the freer manner, the long sigh, the tender grasp of the arm, as soon as they were in the open air.

‘Phœbe,’ almost in a whisper, ‘I have a letter from him.’

Phœbe pressed her arm, and looked her sympathy.

‘Such a nice letter,’ added Honor.  ‘Poor fellow! he has suffered so much.  Should you like to see it?’

Owen had not figured to himself what eyes would peruse his letter; but Honor was in too much need of sympathy to withhold the sight from the only person who she could still hope would be touched.

‘You see he asks nothing, nothing,’ she wistfully pleaded.  ‘Only pardon!  Not to come home; nor anything.’

‘Yes; surely, that is real contrition.’

‘Surely, surely it is: yet they are not satisfied—Mr. Saville and Sir John.  They say it is not full confession; but you see he does refer to the rest.  He says he has deeply offended in other ways.’

‘The rest?’

‘You do not know.  I thought your brother had told you.  No?  Ah!  Robert is his friend.  Mr. Saville went and found it out.  It was very right of him, I believe.  Quite right I should know; but—’

‘Dear Miss Charlecote, it has pained you terribly.’

‘It is what young men do; but I did not expect it of him.  Expensive habits, debts, I could have borne, especially with the calls for money his poor wife must have caused; but I don’t know how to believe that he gave himself out as my heir, and obtained credit on that account—a bond to be paid on my death!’

Phœbe was too much shocked to answer.

‘As soon as Mr. Saville heard of these troubles,’ continued Honor, ‘as, indeed, I put all into his hands, he thought it right I should know all.  He went to Oxford, found out all that was against poor Owen, and then proceeded to London, and saw the lawyer in whose hands Captain Charteris had left those children’s affairs.  He was very glad to see Mr. Saville, for he thought Miss Sandbrook’s friends ought to know what she was doing.  So it came out that Lucilla had been to him, insisting on selling out nearly all her fortune, and paying off with part of it this horrible bond.’

‘She is paying his debts, rather than let you hear of them.’

‘And they are very angry with him for permitting it; as if he or anybody else had any power to stop Lucy!  I know as well as possible that it is she who will not let him confess and make it all open with me.  And yet, after this, what right have I to say I know?  How little I ever knew that boy!  Yes, it is right it should be taken out of my hands—my blindness has done harm enough already; but if I had not bound myself to forbear, I could not help it, when I see the Savilles so much set against him.  I do not know that they are more severe in action than—than perhaps they ought to be, but they will not let me pity him.’

‘They ought not to dictate to you,’ said Phœbe, indignantly.

‘Dictate!  Oh, no, my dear.  If you could only hear his compliments to my discretion, you would know he was thinking all the time there is no fool like an old fool.  No, I don’t complain.  I have been wilful, and weak, and blind, and these are the fruits!  It is right that others should judge for him, and I deserve that they should come and guard me; though, when I think of such untruth throughout, I don’t feel as if there were danger of my ever being more than sorry for him.’

‘It is worse than the marriage,’ said Phœbe, thoughtfully.

‘There might have been generous risk in that.  This was—oh, very nearly treachery!  No wonder Lucy tries to hide it!  I hope never to say a word to her to show that I am aware of it.’

‘She is coming home, then?’

‘She must, since she has broken with the Charterises; but she has never written.  Has Robert mentioned her?’

‘Never; he writes very little.’

‘I long to know how it is with him.  Now that he has signed his contract, and made all his arrangements, he cannot retract; but—but we shall see,’ said Honor, with one gleam of playful hope.  ‘If she should come home to me ready to submit and be gentle, there might be a chance yet.  I am sure he is poor Owen’s only real friend.  If I could only tell you half my gratitude to him for it!  And I will tell you what Mr. Saville has actually consented to my doing—I may give Owen enough to cover his premium and outfit; and I hope that may set him at ease in providing for his child for the present from his own means, as he ought to do.’

‘Poor little thing! what will become of it?’

‘He and his sister must arrange,’ said Honor, hastily, as if silencing a yearning of her own.  ‘I do not need the Savilles to tell me I must not take it off their hands.  The responsibility may be a blessing to him, and it would be wrong to relieve him of a penalty in the natural course of Providence.’

‘There, now you have put it into my head to think what a pleasure it would be to you—’

‘I have done enough for my own pleasure, Phœbe.  Had you only seen that boy when I had him first from his father, and thought him too much of the angel to live!’

There was a long pause, and Honor at length exclaimed, ‘I see the chief reason the Savilles came here!’

‘Why?’

‘To hinder my seeing him before he goes.’

‘I am sure it would be sad pain to you,’ cried Phœbe, deprecatingly.

‘I don’t know.  He must not come here; but since I have had this letter, I have longed to go up for one day, see him, and bring Lucy home.  Mr. Saville might go with me.  You don’t favour it, Phœbe?  Would Robert?’

‘Robert would like to have Owen comforted,’ said Phœbe, slowly; ‘but not if it only made it worse pain for you.  Dear Miss Charlecote, don’t you think, if the worst had been the marriage, you would have tried everything to comfort him? but now that there is this other horrid thing, this presuming on your kindness, it seems to me as if you could not bear to see him.’

‘When I think of their enmity and his sorrow, I feel drawn thither; but when this deception comes before me, I had rather not look in his face again.  If he petted me I should think he was taking me in again.  He has Robert, he has his sister, and I have promised to let Mr. Saville judge.  I think Mr. Saville would let me go if Robert said I ought.’

Phœbe fondled her, and left her relieved by the outpouring.  Poor thing! after mistakes which she supposed egregious in proportion to the consequences, and the more so because she knew her own good intentions, and could not understand the details of her errors, it was an absolute rest to delegate her authority, even though her affections revolted against the severity of the judge to whom she had delivered herself and her boy.

One comfort was that he had been the adviser chosen for her by Humfrey.  In obeying him, she put herself into Humfrey’s hands; and remembering the doubtful approval with which her cousin had regarded her connection with the children, and his warnings against her besetting sin, she felt as if the whole was the continuation of the mistake of her life, her conceited disregard of his broad homely wisdom, and as if the only atonement in her power was to submit patiently to Mr. Saville’s advice.

And in truth his measures were not harsh.  He did not want to make the young man an outcast, only to prevent advantage being taken of indulgence which he overrated.  It was rather his wife who was oppressive in her desire to make Miss Charlecote see things in a true light, and teach her, what she could never learn, to leave off loving and pitying.  Even this was perhaps better for her than a solitude in which she might have preyed upon herself, and debated over every step in conscious darkness.

Before her letter was received, Owen had signed his agreement with the engineer, and was preparing to sail in a fortnight.  He was disappointed and humiliated that Honor should have been made aware of what he had meant to conceal, but he could still see that he was mercifully dealt with, and was touched by, and thankful for, the warm personal forgiveness, which he had sense enough to feel, even though it brought no relaxation of the punishment.

Lucy was positively glad of the non-fulfilment of the condition that would have taken her back to the Holt; and without seeing the letter, had satisfaction in her resentment at Honor for turning on Owen vindictively, after having spoilt him all his life.

He silenced her summarily, and set out for his preparations.  She had already carried out her project of clearing him of his liabilities.  Mr. Prendergast had advised her strongly to content herself with the post obit, leaving the rest to be gradually liquidated as the means should be obtained; but her wilful determination was beyond reasoning, and by tyrannical coaxing she bent him to her will, and obliged him to do all in which she could not be prominent.

Her own debts were a sorer subject, and she grudged the vain expenses that had left her destitute, without even the power of writing grandly to Horatia to pay off her share of the foreign expenditure.  She had, to Mr. Prendergast’s great horror, told him of her governess plan, but had proceeded no further in the matter than studying the advertisements, until finding that Honor only invited her, and not her nephew, home to the Holt, she proceeded to exhale her feelings by composing a sentence for the Times.  ‘As Governess, a Lady—’

‘Mr. Prendergast.’

Reddening, and abruptly hasty, the curate entered, and sitting down without a word, applied himself to cutting his throat with an ivory paper-knife.  Lucilla began to speak, but at her first word, as though a spell were broken, he exclaimed, ‘Cilly, are you still thinking of that ridiculous nonsense?’

‘Going out as a governess?  Look there;’ and she held up her writing.

He groaned, gave himself a slice under each ear, and viciously bit the end of the paper-knife.

‘You are going to recommend me?’ she said, with a coaxing look.

‘You know I think it a monstrous thing.’

‘But you know of a place, and will help me to it!’ cried she, clapping her hands.  ‘Dear good Mr. Pendy, always a friend in need!’

‘Well, if you will have it so.  It is not so bad as strangers.  There’s George’s wife come to town to see a governess for little Sarah, and she won’t do.’

‘Shall I do?’ asked Lucilla, with a droll shake of her sunny hair.  ‘Yes.  I know you would vouch for me as tutoress to all the Princesses; able to teach the physical sciences, the guitar, and Arabic in three lessons; but if Mrs. Prendergast be the woman I imagine, much she will believe you.  Aren’t they inordinately clever?’

‘Little Sarah is—let me see—quite a child.  Her father did teach her, but he has less time in his new parish, and they think she ought to have more accomplishment, polish, and such like.’

‘And imagine from the specimen before them that I must be an adept at polishing Prendergasts.’

‘Now, Cilla, do be serious.  Tell me if all this meant nothing, and I shall be very glad.  If you were in earnest, I could not be so well satisfied to see you anywhere else.  You would find Mrs. Prendergast quite a mother to you.’

‘Only one girl!  I wanted a lot of riotous boys, but beggars must not be choosers.  This is just right—people out of the way of those who knew me in my palmy days, yet not absolute strangers.’

‘That was what induced me—they are so much interested about you, Cilla.’

‘And you have made a fine heroic story.  I should not wonder if it all broke down when the parties met.  When am I to be trotted out for inspection?’

‘Why, I told her if I found you really intended it, and had time, I would ask you to drive to her with me this morning, and then no one need know anything about it,’ he said, almost with tears in his eyes.

‘That’s right,’ cried Lucilla.  ‘It will be settled before Owen turns up.  I’ll get ready this instant.  I say,’ she added at the door, ‘housemaids always come to be hired minus crinoline and flowers, is it the same with governesses?’

‘Cilla, how can you?’ said her friend, excessively distressed at the inferior position, but his depression only inspired her with a reactionary spirit of mischief.

‘Crape is inoffensive, but my hair!  What shall I do with it?  Does Mrs. Prendergast hold the prejudice against pretty governesses?’

‘She would take Venus herself if she talked no nonsense; but I don’t believe you are in earnest,’ growled the curate, angry at last.

‘That is encouragement!’ cried Lucilla, flying off laughing that she might hide from herself her own nervousness and dismay at this sudden step into the hard verity of self-dependence.

She could not stop to consider what to say or do, her refuge was always in the impromptu, and she was far more bent on forcing Mr. Prendergast to smile, and distracting herself from her one aching desire that the Irish journey had never been, than of forming any plan of action.  In walking to the cabstand they met Robert, and exchanged greetings; a sick faintness came over her, but she talked it down, and her laugh sounded in his ears when they had passed on.