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

Yet when the lodgings were reached, the sensation recurred, her breath came short, and she could hardly conceal her trembling.  No one was in the room but a lady who would have had far to seek for a governess less beautiful than herself.  Insignificance was the first idea she inspired, motherliness the second, the third that she was a perfect lady, and a sensible woman.  After shaking Lucilla kindly by the hand, and seating her on the sofa, she turned to her cousin, saying, ‘Sarah and her papa are at the National Gallery, I wish you would look for them, or they will never be in time for luncheon.’

‘Luncheon is not for an hour and a half.’

‘But it is twenty minutes’ walk, and they will forget food and everything else unless you keep them in order.’

‘I’ll go presently;’ but he did not move, only looking piteous while Mrs. Prendergast began talking to Lucilla about the pictures, until she, recovering, detected the state of affairs, and exclaimed with her ready grace and abruptness, ‘Now, Mr. Prendergast, don’t you see how much you are in the way?’

‘A plain truth, Peter,’ said his cousin, laughing.

Lucy stepped forward to him, saying affectionately, ‘Please go; you can’t help me, and I am sure you may trust me with Mrs. Prendergast;’ and she stretched out a hand to the lady with an irresistible child-like gesture of confidence.

‘Don’t you think you may, Peter?’ asked Mrs. Prendergast, holding the hand; ‘you shall find her here at luncheon.  I won’t do anything to her.’

The good curate groaned himself off, and Lucy felt so much restored that she had almost forgotten that it was not an ordinary call.  Indeed she had never yet heard a woman’s voice that thus attracted and softened her.  Mrs. Prendergast needed not to be jealous of Venus, while she had such tenderness in her manner, such winning force in her tone.

‘That was well done,’ she said.  ‘Talking would have been impossible while he sat looking on!’

‘I am afraid he has given far too good an account of me,’ said Lucy, in a low and trembling voice.

‘His account comes from one who has known you from babyhood.’

‘And spoilt me from babyhood!’

‘Yes, Sarah knows what Cousin Peter can do in that line.  He had little that was new to tell us, and what he had was of a kind—’  She broke off, choked by tears.  What she had heard of the girl’s self-devotion touched her trebly at the sight of one so small, young, and soft-looking.  And if she had ever been dubious of ‘Peter’s pet,’ she was completely fascinated.

‘I must not be taken on his word,’ said Cilla, smiling.

‘No, that would not be right by any of us.’

‘Then pray be very hard with me—as a thorough stranger.’

‘But I am so inexperienced, I have only had one interview with a governess.’

‘And what did she do?’ asked Lucilla, as both recovered from a laugh.

‘She gave so voluble an account of her acquirements and requirements, that I was quite alarmed.’

‘I’m sure I can’t do that.  I don’t know what I can do.’

A pause, broken by Lucy, who began to feel that she had more of the cool readiness of the great world.  ‘How old is your daughter?’

‘Nearly fifteen.  While we had our small parish in Sussex we taught her ourselves, and her father brought her on in Latin and Euclid.  Do you know anything of those, Miss Sandbrook? not that it signifies.’

‘Miss Charlecote used to teach me with my brother.  I have forgotten, but I could soon get them up again.’

‘They will hardly be wanted, but Sarah will respect you for them.  Now, at Southminster, our time is so taken up that poor Sarah gets neglected, and it is very trying to an eager, diligent girl to prepare lessons, and have them continually put off, so we thought of indulging her with a governess, to bring her on in some of the modern languages and accomplishments that have grown rusty with us.’

‘I think I could do that,’ said Lucilla.  ‘I believe I know what other people do, and my languages are fresh from the Continent.  Ought I to give you a specimen of my pronunciation?’

‘Pray don’t,’ laughed Mrs. Prendergast.  ‘You know better than I what is right, and must prepare to be horrified by the sounds you will hear.’

‘I ought to have brought my sketches.  I had two years of lessons from S–.’

‘Sarah is burning for teaching in that line.  Music?  Dr. Prendergast likes the grand old pieces, and hardly cares for modern ones.’

‘I hardly played anything newer than Mozart at Hiltonbury.  Miss Charlecote taught me very well, I believe, and I had lessons from the organist from Elverslope, besides a good deal in the fashionable line since.  I have kept that up.  One wants it.’

There was another shy pause, and Lucilla growing more scrupulous and more confidential, volunteered,—‘Mine has been an idle life since I came out.  I am three-and-twenty now, and have been diligently forgetting for the last six years.  Did you know that I had been a fast young lady?’

But things had come to such a pass, that say what she would, all passed for ingenuous candour and humility, and the answer was,—

‘I know that you have led a very trying life, but to have passed through such unscathed is no disadvantage.’

‘If I have,’ said Lucy, sadly.

Mrs. Prendergast, who had learned all the facts of Lucilla’s history through the Wrapworth medium, knew only the heroic side of her character, and admired her the more for her diffidence.  So when terms were spoken of, the only fear on the one side was, that such a treasure must be beyond her means; on the other, lest what she needed for her nephew’s sake might deprive her of such a home.  However, seventy pounds a year proved to be in the thoughts of both, and the preliminaries ended with, ‘I hope you will find my little Sarah a pleasant companion.  She is a good girl, and intelligent, but you must be prepared for a few angles.’

‘I like angles.  I don’t care for commonplace people.’

‘I am afraid that you will find many such at Southminster.  We cannot promise you the society you have been used to.’

‘I am tired of society.  I have had six years of it!’ and she sighed.

‘You must fix your own time,’ said Mrs. Prendergast; ‘and indeed we will try to make you at home.’

‘My brother will be gone in a fortnight,’ said Lucilla.  ‘After that I should like to come straight to you.’

Her tone and look made those two last words not merely chez vous, but to you, individually—to you, kind one, who will comfort me after the cruel parting.  Mrs. Prendergast put her arm round her and kissed her.

‘Don’t,’ said Lucilla, with the sweetest April face.  ‘I can’t bear being made foolish.’

Nevertheless Mrs. Prendergast showed such warm interest in all her concerns, that she felt only that she had acquired a dear friend by the time the others came in, father and daughter complaining, the one gaily, the other dolefully, that Cousin Peter had so hunted them that they could look at nothing in peace.  Indeed he was in such a state of restless misery, that Mrs. Prendergast, in compassion to him, sent her daughter to dress, called her husband away, and left the place clear for him to say, in a tone of the deepest commiseration, ‘Well, my poor child?’

‘O, Mr. Pendy, you have found me a true home.  Be the others what they may, there must be rest in hearing her voice!’

‘It is settled, then?’

‘Yes.  I only hope you have not taken them in.  I did my best to let her know the worst of me, but it would make no impression.  Seventy pounds a year.  I hope that is not wicked.’

‘O, Cilla, what would your father feel?’

‘Come, we won’t fight that over again.  I thought I had convinced you of the dignity of labour, and I do feel as if at last I had lit on some one whom I could allow to do me good.’

She could not console him; he grieved over her changed circumstances with far more regret than she felt, and though glad for her sake that she should be with those whom he could trust, yet his connection with her employers seemed to him undutiful towards his late rector.  All that she saw of them reassured her.  The family manners were full of well-bred good-humour, full of fun, with high intelligence, much real refinement, and no pretension.  The father was the most polished, with the scholarly courtesy of the dignified clergyman; the mother was the most simple and caressing; the daughter somewhat uncouth, readily betraying both her feelings and her cleverness and drollery in the style of the old friend whom Lucilla was amused to see treated as a youth and almost a contemporary of her pupil.  What chiefly diverted her was the grotesque aspect of Dr. Prendergast and his daughter.  Both were on a large scale, with immense mouths, noses turned up to display wide nostrils, great gray eyes, angularly set, yellow hair and eyebrows, red complexions, and big bones.  The Doctor had the advantage of having outgrown the bloom of his ugliness; his forehead was bald and dignified, his locks softened by grizzling, and his fine expression and clerical figure would have carried off all the quaintness of his features if they had not been so comically caricatured in his daughter; yet she looked so full of life and character that Lucilla was attracted, and sure of getting on well with her.  Moreover, the little elf felt the impression she was creating in this land of Brobdignag.  Sarah was looking at her as a terra-cotta pitcher might regard a cup of egg-shell china, and Lucy had never been lovelier.  Her mourning enhanced the purity of her white skin, and marked her slender faultless shape; her flaxen hair hung in careless wreaths of ringlet and braid; her countenance, if pale, had greater sweetness in its dejection, now and then brightened by gleams of her courageous spirit.  Sarah gazed with untiring wonder, pardoning Cousin Peter for disturbing the contemplation of Domenichino’s art, since here was a witness that heroines of romance were no mere myths, but that beings of ivory and rose, sapphire eyes and golden hair, might actually walk the earth.

The Doctor was pleasant and friendly, and after luncheon the whole party started together to ‘do’ St. Paul’s, whence Mr. Prendergast undertook to take Cilla home, but in no haste to return to the lonely house.  She joined in the lionizing, and made a great impression by her familiarity with London, old and new.  Little store as she had set by Honor’s ecclesiology and antiquarianism, she had not failed to imbibe a tincture sufficient to go a long way by the help of ready wit, and she enchanted the Doctor by her odd bits of information on the localities, and by guiding him to out-of-the-way curiosities.  She even carried the party to Woolstone-lane, displayed the Queen of Sheba, the cedar carving, the merchant’s mark, and had lifted out Stow’s Survey, where Sarah was delighted with Ranelagh, when the door opened, and Owen stood, surprised and blank.  Poor fellow, the voices had filled him with hope that he should find Honor there.  The visitors, startled at thus intruding on his trouble, and knowing him to be in profound disgrace, would have gone, but he, understanding them to be Mr. Prendergast’s friends, and glad of variety, was eagerly courteous and hospitable, detaining them by displaying fresh curiosities, and talking with so much knowledge and brilliance, that they were too well entertained to be in haste.  Lucilla, accepting Mrs. Prendergast as a friend, was rejoiced that she should have such demonstration that her brother was a thorough gentleman; and in truth Owen did and said everything so well that no one could fail to be pleased, and only as an after-thought could come the perception that his ease hardly befitted the circumstances, and that he comported himself more like the master of the house than as a protégé under a cloud.

No sooner had he handed them into their vehicle than he sank into a chair, and burst into one of the prolonged, vehement fits of laughter that are the reaction of early youth unwontedly depressed.  Never had he seen such visages!  They ought at once to be sketched—would be worth any money to Currie the architect, for gurgoyles.

‘For shame,’ said Lucilla, glad, however, once more to hear the merry peal; ‘for shame, to laugh at my master!’

‘I’m not laughing at old Pendy, his orifice is a mere crevice comparatively.  The charm is in seeing it classified—the recent sloth accounted for by the ancient megatherium.’

‘The megatherium is my master.  Yes, I’m governess to Glumdalclitch!’

‘You’ve done it?’

‘Yes, I have.  Seventy pounds a year.’

He made a gesture of angry despair, crying, ‘Worse luck than I thought.’

‘Better luck than I did.’

‘Old Pendy thrusting in his oar!  I’d have put a stop to your absurdity at once, if I had not been sure no one would be deluded enough to engage you, and that you would be tired of looking out, and glad to go back to your proper place at the Holt before I sailed.’

‘My proper place is where I can be independent.’

‘Faugh!  If I had known it, they should never have seen the Roman coins!  There! it is a lesson that nothing is too chimerical to be worth opposing!’

‘Your opposition would have made no difference.’

He looked at her silently, but with a half smile in lip and eye that showed her that the moment was coming when the man’s will might be stronger than the woman’s.

Indeed, he was so thoroughly displeased and annoyed that she durst not discuss the subject with him, lest she should rouse him to take some strong authoritative measures against it.  He had always trusted to the improbability of her meeting with a situation before his departure, when, between entreaty and command, he had reckoned on inducing her to go home; and this engagement came as a fresh blow, making him realize what he had brought on those nearest and dearest to him.  Even praise of Mrs. Prendergast provoked him, as if implying Lucilla’s preference for her above the tried friend of their childhood; he was in his lowest spirits, hardly speaking to his sister all dinner-time, and hurried off afterwards to pour out his vexation to Robert Fulmort.  Poor Robert! what an infliction!  To hear of such a step, and be unable to interfere; to admire, yet not approve; to dread the consequences, and perceive so much alloy as to dull the glitter of the gold, as well as to believe his own stern precipitation as much the cause as Owen’s errors; yet all the time to be the friend and comforter to the wounded spirit of the brother!  It was a severe task; and when Owen left him, he felt spent and wearied as by bodily exertion, as he hid his face in prayer for one for whom he could do no more than pray.

Feelings softened during the fortnight that the brother and sister spent together.  Childishly as Owen had undergone the relations and troubles of more advanced life, pettishly as he had striven against feeling and responsibility, the storm had taken effect.  Hard as he had struggled to remain a boy, manhood had suddenly grown on him; and probably his exclusion from Hiltonbury did more to stamp the impression of his guilt than did its actual effects.  He was eager for his new life, and pleased with his employer, promising himself all success, and full of enterprise.  But his banishment from home and from Honor clouded everything; and, as the time drew nearer, his efforts to forget and be reckless gradually ceased.  Far from shunning Lucilla, as at first, he was unwilling to lose sight of her, and they went about together wherever his preparations called him, so that she could hardly make time for stitching, marking, and arranging his purchases.

One good sign was, that, though hitherto fastidiously expensive in dress and appointments, he now grudged himself all that was not absolutely necessary, in the endeavour to leave as large a sum as possible with Mrs. Murrell.  Even in the tempting article of mathematical instruments he was provident, though the polished brass, shining steel, and pure ivory, in their perfection of exactitude, were as alluring to him as ever gem or plume had been to his sister.  That busy fortnight of chasing after the ‘reasonable and good,’ speeding about till they were foot-sore, discussing, purchasing, packing, and contriving, united the brother and sister more than all their previous lives.

It was over but too soon.  The last evening was come; the hall was full of tin cases and leathern portmanteaus, marked O. C. S., and of piles of black boxes large enough to contain the little lady whose name they bore.  Southminster lay in the Trent Valley, so the travellers would start together, and Lucilla would be dropped on the way.  In the cedar parlour, Owen’s black knapsack lay open on the floor, and Lucilla was doing the last office in her power for him, and that a sad one, furnishing the Russia-leather housewife with the needles, silk, thread, and worsted for his own mendings when he should be beyond the reach of the womankind who cared for him.

He sat resting his head on his hand, watching her in silence, till she was concluding her work.  Then he said, ‘Give me a bit of silk,’ turned his back on her, and stood up, doing something by the light of the lamp.  She was kneeling over the knapsack, and did not see what he was about, till she found his hand on her head, and heard the scissors close, when she perceived that he had cut off one of her pale, bright ringlets, and saw his pocket-book open, and within it a thick, jet-black tress, and one scanty, downy tuft of baby hair.  She made no remark; but the tears came dropping, as she packed; and, with a sudden impulse to give him the thing above all others precious to her, she pulled from her bosom a locket, hung from a slender gold chain, and held it to him—

‘Owen, will you have this?’

‘Whose?  My father’s?’

‘And my mother’s.  He gave it to me when he went to Nice.’

Owen took it and looked at it thoughtfully.

‘No, Lucy,’ he said; ‘I would not take it from you on any account.  You have always been his faithful child.’

‘Mind you tell me if any one remembers him in Canada,’ said Lucilla, between relief and disappointment, restoring her treasure to the place it had never left before.  ‘You will find out whether he is recollected at his mission.’

‘Certainly.  But I do not expect it.  The place is a great town now.  I say, Lucy, if you had one bit of poor Honor’s hair!’

‘No: you will never forgive me.  I had some once, made up in a little cross, with gold ends; but one day, when she would not let me go to Castle Blanch, I shied it into the river, in a rage.’

She was touched at his being so spiritless as not even to say that she ought to have been thrown in after it.

‘I wonder,’ she said, by way of enlivening him, ‘whether you will fall in with the auburn-haired Charlecote.’

‘Whereas Canada is a bigger place than England, the disaster may be averted, I hope.  A colonial heir-at-law might be a monstrous bore.  Moreover, it would cancel all that I can’t but hope for that child.’

‘You might hope better things for him than expectations.’

‘He shall never have any!  But it might come without.  Why, Lucy, a few years in that country, and I shall be able to give him the best of educations and release you from drudgery; and when independent, we could go back to the Holt on terms to suit even your proud stomach, and might make the dear old thing happy in her old age.’

‘If that Holt were but out of your head.’

‘If I knew it willed to the County Hospital, shouldn’t I wish as much to be with her as before?  I mean to bring up my son as a gentleman, with no one’s help!  But you see, Lucy, it is impossible not to wish for one’s child what one has failed in oneself—to wish him to be a better edition.’

‘I suppose not.’

‘For these first few years the old woman will do well enough for him, poor child.  Robert has promised to look in on him.’

‘And Mrs. Murrell is to write to me once a month.  I shall make a point of seeing him at least twice a year.’

‘Thank you; and by the time he is of any size I shall have a salary.  I may come back, and we would keep house together, or you might bring him out to me.’

‘That will be the hope of my life.’

‘I’ll not be deluded into reckoning on young ladies.  You will be disposed of long before!’

‘Don’t, Owen!  No, never.’

‘Never?’

‘Never.’

‘I always wanted to know,’ continued Owen, ‘what became of Calthorp.’

‘I left him behind at Spitzwasserfitzung, with a message that ends it for ever.’

‘I am afraid that defection is to be laid to my door, like all the rest.’

‘If so, I am heartily obliged to you for it!  The shock was welcome that brought me home.  A governess?  Oh! I had rather be a scullery-maid, than go on as I was doing there!’

‘Then you did not care for him?’

‘Never!  But he pestered me, Rashe pestered me; nobody cared for me—I—I—’ and she sobbed a long, tearless sob.

‘Ha!’ said Owen, gravely and kindly, ‘then there was something in the Fulmort affair after all.  Lucy, I am going away; let me hear it for once.  If I ever come back, I will not be so heedless of you as I have been.  If he have been using you ill!’

‘I used him ill,’ said Lucy, in an inward voice.

‘Nothing more likely!’ muttered Owen, in soliloquy.  ‘But how is it, Cilla: can’t you make him forgive?’

‘He does, but as Honor forgives you.  You know it was no engagement.  I worked him up to desperation last year.  Through Phœbe, I was warned that he would not stand my going to Ireland.  I answered that it was no concern of his; I defied him to be able to break with me.  They bothered me so that I was forced to go to spite them.  He thought—I can’t wonder at it—that I was irreclaimable; he was staying here, was worked on by the sight of this horrible district, and, between pique and goodness run mad, has devoted self and fortune.  He gave me to understand that he has made away with every farthing.  I don’t know if he would wish it undone.’

She spoke into the knapsack, jerking out brief sentences.

‘He didn’t tell you he had taken a vow of celibacy?’

‘I should not think it worth while.’

‘Then it is all right!’ exclaimed Owen, joyously.  ‘Do you think old Fulmort, wallowing in gold, could see a son of his living with his curates, as in the old Sussex rhyme?—

There were three ghostissesSitting on three postisses,Eating of three crustisses.

No, depend on it, the first alarm of Robert becoming a ghost, there will be a famous good fat living bought for him; and then—’

‘No, I shall have been a governess.  They won’t consent.’

‘Pshaw!  What are the Fulmorts?  He would honour you the more!  No, Lucy,’ and he drew her up from the floor, and put his arm round her, ‘girls who stick to one as you have done to me are worth something, and so is Robert Fulmort.  You don’t know what he has been to me ever since he came to fetch me.  I didn’t believe it was in his cloth or his nature to be so forbearing.  No worrying with preachments; not a bit of “What a good boy am I;” always doing the very thing that was comfortable and considerate, and making the best of it at Hiltonbury.  I didn’t know how he could be capable of it, but now I see, it was for your sake.  Cheer up, Lucy, you will find it right yet.’

Lucilla had no conviction that he was right; but she was willing to believe for the time, and was glad to lay her head on his shoulder and feel, while she could, that she had something entirely her own.  Too soon it would be over.  Lengthen the evening as they would, morning must come at last.

It came; the hurried breakfast, pale looks, and trivial words.  Robert arrived to watch them off; Mrs. Murrell brought the child.  Owen took him in his arms, and called her to the study.  Robert sat still, and said—

‘I will do what I can.  I think, in case I had to write about the child, you had better leave me your address.’

Lucilla wrote it on a card.  The tone quashed all hope.

‘We trust to you,’ she said.

‘Mr. Currie has promised to let me hear of Owen,’ said Robert; but no more passed.  Owen came back hasty and flushed, wanting to be gone and have it over.  The cabs were called, and he was piling them with luggage; Robert was glad to be actively helpful.  All were in the hall; Owen turned back for one more solitary gaze round the familiar room; Robert shook Lucilla’s hand.

‘O bid me good speed,’ broke from her; ‘or I cannot bear it.’

‘God be with you.  God bless you!’ he said.

No more!  He had not approved, he had not blamed.  He would interfere no more in her fate.  She seated herself, and drew down her black veil, a chill creeping over her.