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

‘Well, I don’t understand about such things,’ said Augusta, crossly.  ‘Poor papa never made such a rout about the hands.  It would not have been thought good taste to bring them forward.’

‘If you wish to understand,’ said Mervyn, maliciously, ‘you had better come and see.  Robert would be very glad of your advice for the kitchen he is setting going—sick cookery and cheap dinners.’

‘And pray who pays for them?  Robert has made himself a beggar.  Is it you?’

‘No; those who eat.  It is to be self-supporting.  I do nothing but lend the house.  You don’t remember it.  It is the palace at the corner of Richard Alley.’

‘It is no concern of mine, I know; but what is to become of the business if you go giving away the houses?’

‘Oh! I am getting into the foreign and exportation line.  It is infinitely less bother.’

‘Ah, well!  I am glad my poor father does not see it.  He would have said the business was going to the dogs!’

‘No; he was fast coming into Robert’s views, and I heartily wish I had not hindered him.’

Augusta told her admiral that evening that there was no hope for the family, since Robert had got hold of Mervyn as well as of the rest of them.  People in society actually asked her about the schools and playground at Mr. Fulmort’s distillery; there had been an educational report about them.  Quite disgusting!

There passed a day of conflicting hope and fear, soothed by the pleasure of preparation, and at seven in the evening there came the ring at the house door, and Lucilla was once more in Honora’s arms.  It was for a moment a convulsive embrace, but it was not the same lingering clinging as when she met Phœbe, nor did she look so much changed as then, for there was a vivid tint of rose on either cheek; she had restored her hair to the familiar fashion, and her eyes were bright with excitement.  The presence of Maria and Bertha, which Miss Charlecote had regretted, was probably a relief; for Lucilla, as she threw off her bonnet, and sat down to the ‘severe tea’ awaiting her, talked much to them, observed upon their growth, noticed the little Maltese dog, and compared her continental experiences with Bertha’s.  To Honor she scarcely spoke voluntarily, and cast down her eyes as she did so, making brief work of answers to inquiries, and showing herself altogether disappointingly the old Cilly.  Robert’s absence was also a disappointment to Honor, though she satisfied herself that it was out of consideration.

Lucy would not go up to her room till bed-time; and when Honor, accompanying her thither, asked tender and anxious questions about her health, she answered them, not indeed petulantly, as of old, but with a strange, absent manner, as if it were duty alone that made her speak.  Only when Honor spoke of her again seeing the physician whom she had consulted, she at first sharply refused, then, as if recollecting herself, meekly said: ‘As you think fit, but I had rather it was not the same.’

‘I thought he was your own preference,’ said Honor, ‘otherwise I should have preferred Dr. F.’

‘Very well, let it be,’ said Lucy, hastily.

The good-nights, the kisses past, and Honor went away, with a heavy load of thwarted hopes and baffled yearning at her heart—yearnings which could be stilled only in one way.

A knock.  She started up, and called ‘Come in,’ and a small, white, ghostly figure glided in, the hands tightly clasped together.

‘Lucy, dear child, you are ill!’

‘I don’t know what is the matter with me,’ said a husky, stifled voice; ‘I meant it—I wanted it.  I longed after it when it was out of reach, but now—’

‘What, my dear?’ asked Honor, appalled at the effort with which she spoke.

‘Your pardon!’ and with a pressure of hands and contraction of the brow as of physical agony, she exclaimed, ‘Honor, Honor, forgive me!’

Honor held out her arms, she flung herself prone into them, and wept.  Tears were with her an affection as violent as rare, and her sobs were fearful, heaving her little fragile frame as though they would rend it, and issuing in short cries and gasps of anguish.  Honor held her in her arms all the time, much alarmed, but soothing and caressing, and in the midst, Lucilla had not lost all self-control, and though unable to prevent the paroxysm, restrained it as much as possible, and never attempted to speak; but when her friend laid her down, her whole person still quivering with the long swell of the last uncontrollable sobbing, she looked up with the sweetest smile ever seen by Honor, who could not help thinking that such a sight might have met the eyes of the mother who found the devil gone out and her daughter laid on the bed.

The peace was such that neither could bear to speak for many seconds.  At last Lucy said, ‘Dear Honor.’

‘My dearest’

‘Lie down by me; please put your arms round me.  There!  Oh! it is so comfortable.  Why did I never find it out before?  I wish I could be a little child, and begin again from the time my father made me over to you.’

‘Lucy, we all would begin again if we could.  I have come to the perception how often I exasperated you.’

‘An angel who did his duty by me would have exasperated me in your place.’

‘Yes, that was one error of mine.  I thrust myself in against the wishes of your nearest relative.’

‘My thanklessness has made you feel that.’

‘Don’t talk on, dear one—you are exhausting yourself.’

‘A little more I must say before I can sleep under your roof in peace, then I will obey you in all things.  Honor, these few years have shown me what your education did for me against my will.  What would have become of me if I had been left to the poor Castle Blanch people?  Nothing could have saved me but my spirit of contradiction!  No; all that saved my father’s teaching from dying out in me—all that kept me at my worst from the Charteris standard, all that has served me in my recent life, was what you did for me!  There! I have told you only the truth.’

Honor could only kiss her and whisper something of unlooked-for happiness, and Lucilla’s tears flowed again at the tenderness for which she had learnt to hunger; but it was a gentle shower this time, and she let herself be hushed into calmness, till she slept peacefully on Honor’s bed, in Honor’s arms, as she had never done, even as a young child.  Honor watched her long, in quiet gladness and thankfulness, then likewise slept; and when awakened at last by a suppressed cough, looked up to see the two stars of blue eyes, soft and gentle under their swollen lids, gazing on her full of affection.

‘I have wakened you,’ Lucy said.

‘Have you been awake long?’

‘Not very; but to lie and look at the old windows, and smell the cedar fragrance, and see you, is better than sleep.’

Still the low morning cough and the pallor of the face filled Honor with anxiety; and though Lucilla attributed much to the night’s agitation, she was thoroughly languid and unhinged, and fain to lie on the sofa in the cedar parlour, owning that no one but a governess could know the full charm of doing nothing.

The physician was the same who had been consulted by her father, and well remembered the flaxen-haired child whom he had so cruelly detached from his side.  He declared her to be in much the same reduced and enfeebled condition as that in which her father brought on his malady by reckless neglect and exposure, and though he found no positive disease in progress, he considered that all would depend upon anxious care, and complete rest for the autumn and winter, and he thought her constitution far too delicate for governess life, positively forbidding her going back to her situation for another day.

Honor had left the room with him.  She found Lucilla with her face hidden in the sofa cushions, but the next moment met a tremulous half-spasmodic smile.

‘Am I humbled enough?’ she said.  ‘Failed, failed, failed!  One by my flirting, two by my temper, three by my health!  I can’t get my own living, and necessity sends me home, without the grace of voluntary submission.’

‘Nay, my child, the very calling it home shows that it need not humble you to return.’

‘It is very odd that I should like it so much!’ said Lucy; ‘and now,’ turning away as usual from sentiment, ‘what shall I say to Mrs. Bostock?  What a wretch she will think me!  I must go over and see all those children once more.  I hope I shall have a worthy successor, poor little rogues.  I must rouse myself to write!’

‘Not yet, my dear.’

‘Not while you can sit and talk.  I have so much to hear of at home!  I have never inquired after Mr. Henderson!  Not dead?’

‘You have not heard?  It was a very long, gradual decay.  He died on the 12th.’

‘Indeed! he was a kind old man, and home will not be itself without his white head in the reading-desk.  Have you filled up the living.’

‘I have offered it’—and there was a pause—‘to Robert Fulmort.’

‘I thought so!  He won’t have it.’

Honor durst not ask the grounds of this prediction, and the rest of that family were discussed.  It was embarrassing to be asked about the reports of last winter, and Lucy’s keen penetration soon led to full confidence.

‘Ah! I was sure that a great flood had passed over that poor child!  I was desperate when I wrote to Phœbe, for it seemed incredible that it should be either of the others, but I might have trusted her.  I wonder what will become of her.  I have not yet seen the man good enough for her.’

‘I have seen one—and so have you—but I could not have spared him to her, even if she had been in his time.’

Truly Lucilla was taken home when Honor was moved to speak thus.

For her sake Honor had regretted that the return dinner to the Albury-street household and the brothers was for this day, but she revived towards evening, and joined the party, looking far less pretty and piquante, and her dress so quiet as to be only just appropriate, but still a fair bright object, and fitting so naturally into her old place, that Lady Bannerman was scandalized at her presumption and Miss Charlecote’s weakness.  Honor and Phœbe both watched the greeting between her and Robert, but could infer nothing, either from it or from their deportment at dinner, both were so entirely unembarrassed and easy.  Afterwards Robert sought out Phœbe, and beguiled her into the window where his affairs had so often been canvassed.

‘Phœbe,’ he said, ‘I must do what I fear will distress you, and I want to prepare you.’

Was it coming?  But how could he have guessed that she had rather not?

‘I feel deeply your present homeless condition.  I wish earnestly that I could make a home for you.  But, Phœbe, once you told me you were content to be sacrificed to my foremost duty—’

‘I am,’ she said.

‘Well, then, I love this smoky old black wife of mine, and don’t want to leave her even for my sisters.’

‘I never thought of your leaving her for your sisters, but—’ and as Lucilla’s music effectually veiled all words—‘I had thought that there might be other considerations.’  Her eyes spoke the rest.

‘I thought you knew that folly had passed away,’ he said, somewhat sternly.  ‘I trust that no one else has thought of it!’ and he indicated Miss Charlecote.

‘Not when the offer was made to you, but since she heard of my mission.’

‘Then I am glad that on other grounds my mind was made up.  No,’ after a pause, ‘there is a great change.  She is far superior to what she was in the days of my madness, but it is over, and never could be renewed.  She herself does not desire it.’

Phœbe was called to the piano, not sorry that such should be Robert’s conviction, and glad that he should not be disturbed in work that suited him so well as did St. Matthew’s, but thinking him far too valuable for Lucy not to suffer in losing her power over him.

And did she?

She was alone in the cedar parlour with Honor the next day, when the note was brought in announcing his refusal on the ground that while he found his strength and health equal to the calls of his present cure, and his connection with the Fulmort firm gave him unusual facilities in dealing with the workmen, he did not think he ought to resign his charge for another for which many better men might be found.

‘Quite right; I knew it,’ said Lucilla, when Honor had with some attempt at preparation shown her the note.

‘How could you know it?’

‘Because I saw a man in his vocation.’

A long silence, during which Cilly caught a pitying glance.

‘Please to put that out of your head!’ she exclaimed.  ‘There’s no pity, no ill-usage in the case.  I wilfully did what I was warned that he would not bear, and there was an end of it.’

‘I had hoped not past recall.’

‘Well, if you will have the truth, when it was done and not to be helped, we were both very sorry; I can answer at least for one, but he had bound himself heart and soul to his work, and does not care any longer for me.  What, you, the preacher of sacrifice, wishing to see your best pupil throw up your pet work for the sake of a little trumpery crushed fire-fly?’

‘Convict me out of my own mouth,’ said Honor, sadly, ‘it will not make me like to see my fire-fly crushed.’

‘When the poor fire-fly has lit the lamp of learning for six idle children, no other cause for dimness need be sought.  No, I was well and wicked in the height of the pain, and long after it wore out—for wear out it did—and I am glad he is too wise to set it going again.  I don’t like emotions.  I only want to be let alone.  Besides, he has got into such a region of goodness, that his wife ought to be super-excellent.  I know no one good enough for him unless you would have him!’

As usual, Honor was balked by bestowing sympathy, and could only wonder whether this were reserve, levity, or resignation, and if she must accept it as a fact that in the one the attachment had been lost in the duties of his calling, in the other had died out for want of requital.  For the present, in spite of herself, her feeling towards Robert verged more on distant rather piqued admiration than on affection, although he nearly approached the ideal of her own first love, and Owen Sandbrook’s teaching was, through her, bearing good fruit in him, even while recoiling on her woman’s heart through Owen’s daughter.

Mervyn was easily reconciled to the decision, not only because his brother was even more valuable to him in London than in the country, but because Miss Charlecote’s next alternative was Charlecote Raymond, Sir John’s second son, a fine, open-tempered young man of thirty, who had made proof of vigour and judgment in the curacy that he had just left, and who had the farther recommendation of bearing the name of the former squire, his godfather.  Anything called Raymond was at present so welcome to Mervyn that he felt himself under absolute obligations to Robert for having left the field clear.  When no longer prejudiced, the sight of Robert’s practical labours struck him more and more, and his attachment grew with his admiration.

‘I’ll tell you what, Phœbe,’ he said, when riding with her.  ‘I have a notion of pleasing the parson.  Yesterday we got obstructed by an interminable procession of school children going out for a lark in the country by an excursion train, and he began envying their keepers for being able to give them such a bath of country air.  Could we not let him do the same by his lot at Beauchamp?’

‘Oh, Mervyn, what a mass of happiness you would produce!’

‘Mass of humbug!  I only want to please Robin and have no trouble.  I shan’t come near it.  You only tell me what it will cost, carriage, provender, and all, and let me hear no more of it.’

He was destined to hear a good deal more.  The proposal caused the utmost gratitude and satisfaction, except that Honor and Robert doubted whether it were a proper moment for merry-making at Hiltonbury.  They were in full consultation when in walked Sir John Raymond, who could not help coming to town at once to express his thanks at having his son settled so near him.  Ere long, he learnt what was under discussion, and made the amendment that the place should be the Forest, the occasion the Horticultural Show.  He knew of a capital spot for the whole troop to dine in, even including the Wulstonians proper, whom Honor, wondering she had never thought of it before, begged to include in the treat at her own expense.  But conveyance from the station for nearly two thousand?

‘Never mind,’ said Sir John; ‘I’ll undertake for that!  We’ll make it a county concern, and get the farmers to lend their wagons, borrow all the breaks we can, and I know of some old stage-coaches in dock.  If there’s not room for all, they must ride and tye.  It is only three miles from the little Forest station, and we’ll make the train stop there.  Only, young ladies, you must work Whittington’s cat upon all the banners for your kittens.’

Lucilla clapped her hands, and undertook that the Whittingtonians should be marshalled under such an array of banners as never were seen before.  Maria was in ecstasies, and Bertha was, in the excitement, forgetting her dread of confronting the county.

‘But where’s Miss Phœbe?’ asked Sir John, who had sat half an hour waiting in vain for her to appear; and when he heard, he declared his intention of calling on her.  And where was Mervyn himself?  He was at the office, whither Robert offered to conduct the Baronet, and where Mervyn heard more of his proposal than he had bargained for; though, perhaps, not more than he liked.  He was going to an evening party at the Bannermans’, and seeing Sir John’s inclination to see Phœbe, proposed to call for him and take him there.

‘What is the use, Phœbe,’ demanded Lady Bannerman, after the party was over, ‘of my getting all these young men on purpose to dance with you, if you get up in a corner all the evening to talk to nobody but Mervyn and old Sir John?  It can be nothing but perverseness, for you are not a bit shy, and you are looking as delighted as possible to have put me out.’

‘Not to have put you out, Augusta, but I am delighted.’

‘Well, at what?’

‘We are asked to stay at Moorcroft, that’s one thing.’

‘Stupid place.  No wines, no dinners,’ said Augusta; ‘and so ridiculous as you are!  If the son is at home you’ll do nothing but talk to Sir John.  And if ever a girl ought to get married off I am sure it is you.’

‘How do you know what good use I may make of my opportunities?’

Phœbe positively danced up-stairs, and indulged in a private polka round her bedroom.  She had been told not only of the Forest plan, but that Sir John was going to ‘run down’ to his brother’s at Sutton the next day, and that he had asked Mervyn to come with him.

Mervyn had not this time promised to send her a blank cover.  He thought he had very little present hope, for the talk had been of a year’s probation—of his showing himself a changed character, etc.  And not only was this only half that space, but less than a month had been spent in England.  This time he was not setting off as one about to confer a favour.

Phœbe heard no more for two days.  At last, as she was finishing her toilette to go out with Augusta, a hasty knock came to her door, and Mervyn entreated to be let in.  His face told more than his tongue could utter.  He had little guessed the intensity of the happiness of which he had so long deprived himself, and Cecily’s acceptance had filled him with a flood of bliss, tinctured, however, by the sense of his own unworthiness of her constant affection, and increasing compunction for what he had made her endure.

‘I don’t know how she could do it, or why she cared for such a miserable scamp, breaking her heart all this time!’ he exclaimed.

‘You will make up for it now.’

‘I wish I may; but, bless me, Phœbe, she is a perfect little nun, and what is she to do with a graceless dog like me?’

‘You will see,’ said Phœbe, smiling.

‘What do you think, then?’ he demanded, in some alarm.  ‘You know I can’t take to the pious tack.  Will nothing else satisfy her?’

‘You are not the same as you were.  You don’t know what will happen to you yet,’ said Phœbe, playfully.

‘The carriage is ready, ma’am; my lady is waiting,’ said a warning voice.

‘I say,’ quoth Mervyn, intercepting her, ‘not a word to my lady.  It is all conditional, you understand—only that I may ask again, in a year, or some such infernal time, if I am I don’t know what—but they do, I suppose.’

‘Perhaps you will by that time.  Dear Mervyn, I am sorry, but I must go, or Augusta will be coming here.’

He made a ludicrous gesture of shrinking horror, but still detained her to whisper, ‘You’ll meet her at Moorcroft; they will have her for the Forest to-do.’

Phœbe signed her extreme satisfaction, and ran away.

‘I am surprised at you, Phœbe; you have kept me five minutes.’

‘Some young ladies do worse,’ said the Admiral, who was very fond of her; ‘and her time was not lost.  I never saw her look better.’

‘I don’t like such a pair of milkmaid’s cheeks, looking so ridiculously delighted, too,’ said Lady Bannerman, crossly.  ‘Really, Phœbe, one would think you were but just come up from the country, and had never been to a concert before.  Those stupid little white marabouts in your hair again, too!’

‘Well,’ said Sir Nicholas, ‘I take them as a compliment—Phœbe knows I think they become her.’

‘I don’t say they are amiss in themselves, but it is all obstinacy, because I desire her to buy that magnificent ruby bandeau!  How is any one to believe in her fortune if she dresses in that twopenny-halfpenny fashion?  I declare I have a great mind to leave her behind.’

Phœbe could almost have said ‘pray do,’ so much did she long to join the party in Woolstone-lane, where the only alloy was, that poor Maria’s incapacity for secrecy forbade her hearing the good news.

Miss Charlecote, likewise, was secretly a little scandalized at the facility with which the Raymonds had consented to the match; she thought Mervyn improved, but neither religious nor repentant, and could not think Cecily or her family justified in accepting him.  Something of the kind became perceptible to Robert when they first talked over the matter together.

‘It may be so,’ he said, ‘but I really believe that Mervyn will be more susceptible of real repentance when he has imperceptibly been led to different habits and ways of thinking.  In many cases, I have seen that the mind has to clear itself, and leave old things behind before it has the capacity of perceiving its errors.’

‘Repentance must precede amendment.’

‘Some repentance must, but even the sense of the inexpedience and inconvenience of evil habits may be the first step above them, and in time the power of genuine repentance may be attained.’

‘Still, glad as I am for all your sakes, I cannot understand it on Cecily’s part, or how a girl of her tone of mind can marry where there can as yet be no communion of the highest kind.  You would be sorry to see Phœbe do so.’

‘Very sorry.  It is no example, but there may be claims from the mere length of the attachment, which seems to mark her as the appointed instrument for his good.  Besides, she has not fully accepted him; and after such change as he has made, she might not have been justified in denying all encouragement.’

‘She did not seek such justification,’ said Honor laughing, but surprised to find Robert thus lenient in his brother’s case, after having acted so stern a part in his own.

CHAPTER XXVI

Then Robin Hood took them both by the hands,And danced about the oak tree,For three merry men, and three merry men,And three merry men we be.—Old Ballad

The case of the three sisters remained a difficulty.  The Bannermans professed to have ‘washed their hands of them,’ their advice not being taken, and Mr. Crabbe could not think himself justified in letting them return to the protection that had so egregiously failed.  Bertha was fretted by the uncertainty, and became nervous, and annoyed with Phœbe for not showing more distress—but going on from day to day in the confidence that matters would arrange themselves.

Phœbe, who had come of age during her foreign tour, had a long conference with her guardian when he put her property into her hands.  The result was that she obtained his permission to inhabit with her sisters the Underwood, a sort of dowager-house belonging to Beauchamp, provided some elderly lady could be found to chaperon them—Miss Fennimore, if they preferred her.

Miss Fennimore was greatly touched with the earnestness of the united entreaties of her pupils, and though regretting the field of usefulness in which she had begun to work, could not resist the pleasure of keeping house with Phœbe, and resuming her studies with Bertha on safer ground.  She could not, however, quit her employment without a half-year’s notice, and when Mervyn went down for a day to Beauchamp, he found the Underwood in such a woful state of disrepair, that turn in as many masons, carpenters, and paperers as he would, there was no hope of its being habitable before Martinmas.  Therefore the intermediate time must be spent in visiting, and though the head-quarters were at the Holt, the Raymonds of Moorcroft claimed the first month, and the promise of Cecily’s presence allured Bertha thither, though the Fulmort mind had always imagined the house highly religious and dull.  Little had she expected to find it ringing with the wild noise and nonsense of a joyous home party of all ages, full of freaks and frolics, laughter and merriment.  Her ready wit would have made her shine brilliantly if her speech had been constantly at command, but she often broke down in the midst of a repartee, and was always in danger of suffering from over-excitement.  Maria, too, needed much watching and tenderness.  Every one was very kind to her, but not exactly knowing the boundary of her powers, the young people would sometimes have brought her into situations to which she was unequal, if Phœbe had not been constantly watching over her.