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

‘Well, Phœbe, Miss Fennimore has told you of Miss Charlecote’s invitation.’

‘Yes, mamma.  I am very, very much obliged!’

‘You know you are not to fancy yourself come out,’ said Juliana, the second sister, who had a good tall figure, and features and complexion not far from beauty, but marred by a certain shrewish tone and air.

‘Oh, no,’ answered Phœbe; ‘but with Miss Charlecote that will make no difference.’

‘Probably not,’ said Juliana; ‘for of course you will see nobody but a set of old maids and clergymen and their wives.’

‘She need not go far for old maids,’ whispered Bertha to Maria.

‘Pray, in which class do you reckon the Sandbrooks?’ said Phœbe, smiling; ‘for she chiefly goes to meet them.’

‘She may go!’ said Juliana, scornfully; ‘but Lucilla Sandbrook is far past attending to her!’

‘I wonder whether the Charterises will take any notice of Phœbe?’ exclaimed Augusta.

‘My dear,’ said Mrs. Fulmort, waking slowly to another idea, ‘I will tell Boodle to talk to—what’s your maid’s name?—about your dresses.’

‘Oh, mamma,’ interposed Juliana, ‘it will be only poking about the exhibitions with Miss Charlecote.  You may have that plaid silk of mine that I was going to have worn out abroad, half-price for her.’

Bertha fairly made a little stamp at Juliana, and clenched her fist.

If Phœbe dreaded anything in the way of dress, it was Juliana’s half-price.

‘My dear, your papa would not like her not to be well fitted out,’ said her mother; ‘and Honora Charlecote always has such handsome things.  I wish Boodle could put mine on like hers.’

‘Oh, very well!’ said Juliana, rather offended; ‘only it should be understood what is to be done if the Charterises ask her to any of their parties.  There will be such mistakes and confusion if she meets any one we know; and you particularly objected to having her brought forward.’

Phœbe’s eye was a little startled, and Bertha set her front teeth together on edge, and looked viciously at Juliana.

‘My dear, Honora Charlecote never goes out,’ said Mrs. Fulmort.

‘If she should, you understand, Phœbe,’ said Juliana.

Coffee came in at the moment, and Augusta criticized the strength of it, which made a diversion, during which Bertha slipped out of the room, with a face replete with mischievous exultation.

‘Are not you going to play to-night, my dears?’ asked Mrs. Fulmort.  ‘What was that duet I heard you practising?’

‘Come, Juliana,’ said the elder sister, ‘I meant to go over it again; I am not satisfied with my part.’

‘I have to write a note,’ said Juliana, moving off to another table; whereupon Phœbe ventured to propose herself as a substitute, and was accepted.

Maria sat entranced, with her mouth open; and presently Mrs. Fulmort looked up from a kind of doze to ask who was playing.  For some moments she had no answer.  Maria was too much awed for speech in the drawing-room; and though Bertha had come back, she had her back to her mother, and did not hear.  Mrs. Fulmort exerted herself to sit up and turn her head.

‘Was that Phœbe?’ she said.  ‘You have a clear, good touch, my dear, as they used to say I had when I was at school at Bath.  Play another of your pieces, my dear.’

‘I am ready now, Augusta,’ said Juliana, advancing.

Little girls were not allowed at the piano when officers might be coming in from the dining-room, so Maria’s face became vacant again, for Juliana’s music awoke no echoes within her.

Phœbe beckoned her to a remote ottoman, a receptacle for the newspapers of the week, and kept her turning over the Illustrated News, an unfailing resource with her, but powerless to occupy Bertha after the first Saturday; and Bertha, turning a deaf ear to the assurance that there was something very entertaining about a tiger-hunt, stood, solely occupied by eyeing Juliana.

Was she studying ‘come-out’ life as she watched her sisters surrounded by the gentlemen who presently herded round the piano?

It was nearly the moment when the young ones were bound to withdraw, when Mervyn, coming hastily up to their ottoman, had almost stumbled over Maria’s foot.

‘Beg pardon.  Oh, it was only you!  What a cow it is!’ said he, tossing over the papers.

‘What are you looking for, Mervyn?’ asked Phœbe.

‘An advertisement—Bell’s Life for the 3rd.  That rascal, Mears, must have taken it.’

She found it for him, and likewise the advertisement, which he, missing once, was giving up in despair.

‘I say,’ he observed, while she was searching, ‘so you are to chip the shell.’

‘I’m only going to London—I’m not coming out.’

‘Gammon!’ he said, with an odd wink.  ‘You need never go in again, like the what’s-his-name in the fairy tale, or you are a sillier child than I take you for.  They’—nodding at the piano—‘are getting a terrible pair of old cats, and we want something young and pretty about.’

With this unusual compliment, Phœbe, seeing the way clear to the door, rose to depart, most reluctantly followed by Bertha, and more willingly by Maria, who began, the moment they were in the hall—

‘Phœbe, why do they get a couple of terrible old cats?  I don’t like them.  I shall be afraid.’

‘Mervyn didn’t mean—’ began perplexed Phœbe, cut short by Bertha’s boisterous laughter.  ‘Oh, Maria, what a goose you are!  You’ll be the death of me some day!  Why, Juliana and Augusta are the cats themselves.  Oh, dear! I wanted to kiss Mervyn for saying so.  Oh, wasn’t it fun!  And now, Maria,—oh! if I could have stayed a moment longer!’

‘Bertha, Bertha, not such a noise in the hall.  Come, Maria; mind, you must not tell anybody.  Bertha, come,’ expostulated Phœbe, trying to drag her sister to the red baize door; but Bertha stood, bending nearly double, exaggerating the helplessness of her paroxysms of laughter.

‘Well, at least the cat will have something to scratch her,’ she gasped out.  ‘Oh, I did so want to stay and see!’

‘Have you been playing any tricks?’ exclaimed Phœbe, with consternation, as Bertha’s deportment recurred to her.

‘Tricks?—I couldn’t help it.  Oh, listen, Phœbe!’ cried Bertha, with her wicked look of triumph.  ‘I brought home such a lovely sting-nettle for Miss Fennimore’s peacock caterpillar; and when I heard how kind dear Juliana was to you about your visit to London, I thought she really must have it for a reward; so I ran away, and slily tucked it into her bouquet; and I did so hope she would take it up to fiddle with when the gentlemen talk to her,’ said the elf, with an irresistibly comic imitation of Juliana’s manner towards gentlemen.

‘Bertha, this is beyond—’ began Phœbe.

‘Didn’t you sting your fingers?’ asked Maria.

Bertha stuck out her fat pink paws, embellished with sundry white lumps.  ‘All pleasure,’ said she, ‘thinking of the jump Juliana will give, and how nicely it serves her.’

Phœbe was already on her way back to the drawing-rooms; Bertha sprang after, but in vain.  Never would she have risked the success of her trick, could she have guessed that Phœbe would have the temerity to return to the company!

Phœbe glided in without waiting for the sense of awkwardness, though she knew she should have to cross the whole room, and she durst not ask any one to bring the dangerous bouquet to her—not even Robert—he must not be stung in her service.

She met her mother’s astonished eye as she threaded her way; she wound round a group of gentlemen, and spied the article of which she was in quest, where Juliana had laid it down with her gloves on going to the piano.  Actually she had it!  She had seized it unperceived!  Good little thief; it was a most innocent robbery.  She crept away with a sense of guilt and desire to elude observation, positively starting when she encountered her father’s portly figure in the ante-room.  He stopped her with ‘Going to bed, eh?  So Miss Charlecote has taken a fancy to you, has she?  It does you credit.  What shall you want for the journey?’

‘Boodle is going to see,’ began Phœbe, but he interrupted.

‘Will fifty do?  I will have my daughters well turned out.  All to be spent upon yourself, mind.  Why, you’ve not a bit of jewellery on!  Have you a watch?’

‘No, papa.’

‘Robert shall choose one for you, then.  Come to my room any time for the cash; and if Miss Charlecote takes you anywhere among her set—good connections she has—and you want to be rigged out extra, send me in the bill—anything rather than be shabby.’

‘Thank you, papa!  Then, if I am asked out anywhere, may I go?’

‘Why, what does the child mean?  Anywhere that Miss Charlecote likes to take you of course.’

‘Only because I am not come out.’

‘Stuff about coming out!  I don’t like my girls to be shy and backward.  They’ve a right to show themselves anywhere; and you should be going out with us now, but somehow your poor mother doesn’t like the trouble of such a lot of girls.  So don’t be shy, but make the most of yourself, for you won’t meet many better endowed, nor more highly accomplished.  Good night, and enjoy yourself.’

Palpitating with wonder and pleasure, Phœbe escaped.  Such permission, over-riding all Juliana’s injunctions, was worth a few nettle stings and a great fright; for Phœbe was not philosopher enough, in spite of Miss Fennimore—ay, and of Robert—not to have a keen desire to see a great party.

Her delay had so much convinced the sisters that her expedition had had some fearful consequences, that Maria was already crying lest dear Phœbe should be in disgrace; and Bertha had seated herself on the balusters, debating with herself whether, if Phœbe were suspected of the trick (a likely story) and condemned to lose her visit to London, she would confess herself the guilty person.

And when Phœbe came back, too much overcome with delight to do anything but communicate papa’s goodness, and rejoice in the unlimited power of making presents, Bertha triumphantly insisted on her confessing that it had been a capital thing that the nettles were in Juliana’s nosegay!

Phœbe shook her head; too happy to scold, too humble to draw the moral that the surest way to gratification is to remove the thorns from the path of others.

CHAPTER III

She gives thee a garland woven fair,Take care!It is a fool’s-cap for thee to wear,Beware!  Beware!Trust her not,She is fooling thee!—Longfellow, from Müller

Behold Phœbe Fulmort seated in a train on the way to London.  She was a very pleasant spectacle to Miss Charlecote opposite to her, so peacefully joyous was her face, as she sat with the wind breathing in on her, in the calm luxury of contemplating the landscape gliding past the windows in all its summer charms, and the repose of having no one to hunt her into unvaried rationality.

Her eye was the first to detect Robert in waiting at the terminus, but he looked more depressed than ever, and scarcely smiled as he handed them to the carriage.

‘Get in, Robert, you are coming home with us,’ said Honor.

‘You have so much to take, I should encumber you.’

‘No, the sundries go in cabs, with the maids.  Jump in.’

‘Do your friends arrive to-night?’

‘Yes; but that is no reason you should look so rueful!  Make the most of Phœbe beforehand.  Besides, Mr. Parsons is a Wykehamist.’

Robert took his place on the back seat, but still as if he would have preferred walking home.  Neither his sister nor his friend dared to ask whether he had seen Lucilla.  Could she have refused him? or was her frivolity preying on his spirits?

Phœbe tried to interest him by the account of the family migration, and of Miss Fennimore’s promise that Maria and Bertha should have two half-hours of real play in the garden on each day when the lessons had been properly done; and how she had been so kind as to let Maria leave off trying to read a French book that had proved too hard for her, not perceiving why this instance of good-nature was not cheering to her brother.

Miss Charlecote’s house was a delightful marvel to Phœbe from the moment when she rattled into the paved court, entered upon the fragrant odour of the cedar hall, and saw the Queen of Sheba’s golden locks beaming with the evening light.  She entered the drawing-room, pleasant-looking already, under the judicious arrangement of the housekeeper, who had set out the Holt flowers and arranged the books, so that it seemed full of welcome.

Phœbe ran from window to mantelpiece, enchanted with the quaint mixture of old and new, admiring carving and stained glass, and declaring that Owen had not prepared her for anything equal to this, until Miss Charlecote, going to arrange matters with her housekeeper, left the brother and sister together.

‘Well, Robin!’ said Phœbe, coming up to him anxiously.

He only crossed his arms on the mantelpiece, rested his head on them, and sighed.

‘Have you seen her?’

‘Not to speak to her.’

‘Have you called?’

‘No.’

‘Then where did you see her?’

‘She was riding in the Park.  I was on foot.’

‘She could not have seen you!’ exclaimed Phœbe.

‘She did,’ replied Robert; ‘I was going to tell you.  She gave me one of her sweetest, brightest smiles, such as only she can give.  You know them, Phœbe.  No assumed welcome, but a sudden flash and sparkle of real gladness.’

‘But why—what do you mean?’ asked Phœbe; ‘why have you not been to her?  I thought from your manner that she had been neglecting you, but it seems to me all the other way.’

‘I cannot, Phœbe; I cannot put my poor pretensions forward in the set she is with.  I know they would influence her, and that her decision would not be calm and mature.’

‘Her decision of what you are to be?’

‘That is fixed,’ said Robert, sighing.

‘Indeed!  With papa.’

‘No, in my own mind.  I have seen enough of the business to find that I could in ten years quadruple my capital, and in the meantime maintain her in the manner she prefers.’

‘You are quite sure she prefers it?’

‘She has done so ever since she could exercise a choice.  I should feel myself doing her an injustice if I were to take advantage of any preference she may entertain for me to condemn her to what would be to her a dreary banishment.’

‘Not with you,’ cried Phœbe.

‘You know nothing about it, Phœbe.  You have never led such a life, and you it would not hurt—attract, I mean; but lovely, fascinating, formed for admiration, and craving for excitement as she is, she is a being that can only exist in society.  She would be miserable in homely retirement—I mean she would prey on herself.  I could not ask it of her.  If she consented, it would be without knowing her own tastes.  No; all that remains is to find out whether she can submit to owe her wealth to our business.’

‘And shall you?’

‘I could not but defer it till I should meet her here,’ said Robert.  ‘I shrink from seeing her with those cousins, or hearing her name with theirs.  Phœbe, imagine my feelings when, going into Mervyn’s club with him, I heard “Rashe Charteris and Cilly Sandbrook” contemptuously discussed by those very names, and jests passing on their independent ways.  I know how it is.  Those people work on her spirit of enterprise, and she—too guileless and innocent to heed appearances.  Phœbe, you do not wonder that I am nearly mad!’

‘Poor Robin!’ said Phœbe affectionately.  ‘But, indeed, I am sure, if Lucy once had a hint—no, one could not tell her, it would shock her too much; but if she had the least idea that people could be so impertinent,’ and Phœbe’s cheeks glowed with shame and indignation, ‘she would only wish to go away as far as she could for fear of seeing any of them again.  I am sure they were not gentlemen, Robin.’

‘A man must be supereminently a gentleman to respect a woman who does not make him do so,’ said Robert mournfully.  ‘That Miss Charteris!  Oh! that she were banished to Siberia!’

Phœbe meditated a few moments; then looking up, said, ‘I beg your pardon, Robin, but it does strike me that, if you think that this kind of life is not good for Lucilla, it cannot be right to sacrifice your own higher prospects to enable her to continue it.’

‘I tell you, Phœbe,’ said he, with some impatience, ‘I never was pledged.  I may be of much more use and influence, and able to effect more extended good as a partner in a concern like this than as an obscure clergyman.  Don’t you see?’

Phœbe had only time to utter a somewhat melancholy ‘Very likely,’ before Miss Charlecote returned to take her to her room, the promised brown cupboard, all wainscoted with delicious cedar, so deeply and uniformly panelled, that when shut, the door was not obvious; and it was like being in a box, for there were no wardrobes, only shelves shut by doors into the wall, which the old usage of the household tradition called awmries (armoires).  The furniture was reasonably modern, but not obtrusively so.  There was a delicious recess in the deep window, with a seat and a table in it, and a box of mignonette along the sill.  It looked out into the little high-walled entrance court, and beyond to the wall of the warehouse opposite; and the roar of the great city thoroughfare came like the distant surging of the ocean.  Seldom had young maiden’s bower given more satisfaction.  Phœbe looked about her as if she hardly knew how to believe in anything so unlike her ordinary life, and she thanked her friend again and again with such enthusiasm, that Miss Charlecote laughed as she told her she liked the old house to be appreciated, since it had, like Pompeii, been potted for posterity.

‘And thank you, my dear,’ she added with a sigh, ‘for making my coming home so pleasant.  May you never know how I dreaded the finding it full of emptiness.’

‘Dear Miss Charlecote!’ cried Phœbe, venturing upon a warm kiss, and thrilled with sad pleasure as she was pressed in a warm, clinging embrace, and felt tears on her cheek.  ‘You have been so happy here!’

‘It is not the past, my dear,’ said Honora; ‘I could live peacefully on the thought of that.  The shadows that people this house are very gentle ones.  It is the present!’

She broke off, for the gates of the court were opening to admit a detachment of cabs, containing the persons and properties of the new incumbent and his wife.  He had been a curate of Mr. Charlecote, since whose death he had led a very hard-working life in various towns; and on his recent presentation to the living of St. Wulstan’s, Honora had begged him and his wife to make her house their home while determining on the repairs of the parsonage.  She ran down to meet them with gladsome steps.  She had never entirely dropped her intercourse with Mr. Parsons, though seldom meeting; and he was a relic of the past, one of the very few who still called her by her Christian name, and regarded her more as the clergyman’s daughter of St. Wulstan’s than as lady of the Holt.  Mrs. Parsons was a thorough clergyman’s wife, as active as himself, and much loved and esteemed by Honora, with whom, in their few meetings, she had ‘got on’ to admiration.

There they were, looking after luggage, and paying cabs so heedfully as not to remark their hostess standing on the stairs; and she had time to survey them with the affectionate curiosity of meeting after long absence, and with pleasure in remarking that there was little change.  Perhaps they were rather more gray, and had grown more alike by force of living and thinking together; but they both looked equally alert and cheerful, and as if fifty and fifty-five were the very prime of years for substantial work.

Their first glances at her were full of the same anxiety for her health and strength, as they heartily shook hands, and accompanied her into the drawing-room, she explaining that Mr. Parsons was to have the study all to himself, and never be disturbed there; then inquiring after the three children, two daughters, who were married, and a son lately ordained.

‘I thought you would have brought William to see about the curacy,’ she said.

‘He is not strong enough,’ said his mother.  ‘He wished it, but he is better where he is; he could not bear the work here.’

‘No; I told him the utmost I should allow would be an exchange now and then when my curates were overdone,’ said Mr. Parsons.

‘And so you are quite deserted,’ said Honor, feeling the more drawn towards her friends.

‘Starting afresh, with a sort of honeymoon, as I tell Anne,’ replied Mr. Parsons; and such a bright look passed between them, as though they were quite sufficient for each other, that Honor felt there was no parallel between their case and her own.

‘Ah! you have not lost your children yet,’ said Mrs. Parsons.

‘They are not with me,’ said Honor, quickly.  ‘Lucy is with her cousins, and Owen—I don’t exactly know how he means to dispose of himself this vacation; but we were all to meet here.’  Guessing, perhaps, that Mr. Parsons saw into her dissatisfaction, she then assumed their defence.  ‘There is to be a grand affair at Castle Blanch, a celebration of young Charles Charteris’s marriage, and Owen and Lucy will be wanted for it.’

‘Whom has he married?’

‘A Miss Mendoza, an immense fortune—something in the stockbroker line.  He had spent a good deal, and wanted to repair it; but they tell me she is a very handsome person, very ladylike and agreeable; and Lucy likes her greatly.  I am to go to luncheon at their house to-morrow, so I shall treat you as if you were at home.’

‘I should hope so,’ quoth Mr. Parsons.

‘Yes, or I know you would not stay here properly.  I’m not alone, either.  Why, where’s the boy gone?  I thought he was here.  I have two young Fulmorts, one staying here, the other looking in from the office.’

‘Fulmort!’ exclaimed Mr. Parsons, with three notes of admiration at least in his voice.  ‘What! the distiller?’

‘The enemy himself, the identical lord of gin-shops—at least his children.  Did you not know that he married my next neighbour, Augusta Mervyn, and that our properties touch?  He is not so bad by way of squire as he is here; and I have known his wife all my life, so we keep up all habits of good neighbourhood; and though they have brought up the elder ones very ill, they have not succeeded in spoiling this son and daughter.  She is one of the very nicest girls I ever knew, and he, poor fellow, has a great deal of good in him.’

‘I think I have heard William speak of a Fulmort,’ said Mrs. Parsons.  ‘Was he at Winchester?’

‘Yes; and an infinite help the influence there has been to him.  I never saw any one more anxious to do right, often under great disadvantages.  I shall be very glad for him to be with you.  He was always intended for a clergyman, but now I am afraid there is a notion of putting him into the business; and he is here attending to it for the present, while his father and brother are abroad.  I am sorry he is gone.  I suppose he was seized with a fit of shyness.’

However, when all the party had been to their rooms and prepared for dinner, Robert reappeared, and was asked where he had been.

‘I went to dress,’ he answered.

‘Ah! where do you lodge?  I asked Phœbe, but she said your letters went to Whittington-street.’

‘There are two very good rooms at the office which my father sometimes uses.’

Phœbe and Miss Charlecote glanced at each other, aware that Mervyn would never have condescended to sleep in Great Whittington-street.  Mr. Parsons likewise perceived a straight-forwardness in the manner, which made him ready to acknowledge his fellow-Wykehamist and his son’s acquaintance; and they quickly became good friends over recollections of Oxford and Winchester, tolerably strong in Mr. Parsons himself, and all the fresher on ‘William’s’ account.  Phœbe, whose experience of social intercourse was confined to the stately evening hour in the drawing-room, had never listened to anything approaching to this style of conversation, nor seen her brother to so much advantage in society.  Hitherto she had only beheld him neglected in his uncongenial home circle, contemning and contemned, or else subjected to the fretting torment of Lucilla’s caprice.  She had never known what he could be, at his ease, among persons of the same way of thinking.  Speaking scarcely ever herself, and her fingers busy with her needle, she was receiving a better lesson than Miss Fennimore had ever yet been able to give.  The acquiring of knowledge is one thing, the putting it out to profit another.

Gradually, from general topics, the conversation contracted to the parish and its affairs, known intimately to Mr. Parsons a quarter of a century ago, but in which Honora was now the best informed; while Robert listened as one who felt as if he might have a considerable stake therein, and indeed looked upon usefulness there as compensation for the schemes he was resigning.