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

The changes since Mr. Parsons’s time had not been cheering.  The late incumbent had been a man whose trust lay chiefly in preaching, and who, as his health failed, and he became more unable to cope with the crying evils around, had grown despairing, and given way to a sort of dismal, callous indifference; not doing a little, because he could not do much, and quashing the plans of others with a nervous dread of innovation.  The class of superior persons in trade, and families of professional men, who in Mr. Charlecote’s time had filled many a massively-built pew, had migrated to the suburbs, and preserved only an office or shop in the parish, an empty pew in the church, where the congregation was to be counted by tens instead of hundreds.  Not that the population had fallen off.  Certain streets which had been a grief and pain to Mr. Charlecote, but over which he had never entirely lost his hold, had become intolerably worse.  Improvements in other parts of London, dislodging the inhabitants, had heaped them in festering masses of corruption in these untouched byways and lanes, places where honest men dared not penetrate without a policeman; and report spoke of rooms shared by six families at once.

Mr. Parsons had not taken the cue unknowing of what he should find in it; he said nothing, and looked as simple and cheerful as if his life were not to be a daily course of heroism.  His wife gave one long, stifled sigh, and looked furtively upon him with her loving eyes, in something of anxious fear, but with far more of exultation.

Yet it was in no dispirited tone that she asked after the respectable poor—there surely must be some employed in small trades, or about the warehouses.  She was answered that these were not many in proportion, and that not only had pew-rents kept them out of church, but that they had little disposition to go there.  They did send their children to the old endowed charity schools, but as these children grew up, wave after wave lapsed into a smooth, respectable heathen life of Sunday pleasuring.  The more religious became dissenters, because the earnest inner life did not approve itself to them in Church teaching as presented to them; the worse sort, by far the most numerous, fell lower and lower, and hovered scarcely above the depths of sin and misery.  Drinking was the universal vice, and dragged many a seemingly steady character into every stage of degradation.  Men and women alike fell under the temptation, and soon hastened down the descent of corruption and crime.

‘Ah!’ said Mrs. Parsons, ‘I observed gin palaces at the corner of every street.’

There was a pause.  Neither her husband nor Honor made any reply.  If they had done so, neither of the young Fulmorts would have perceived any connection between the gin palaces and their father’s profession; but the silence caused both to raise their eyes.  Phœbe, judging by her sisters’ code of the becoming, fancied that their friends supposed their feelings might be hurt by alluding to the distillery, as a trade, and cast about for some cheerful observations, which she could not find.

Robert had received a new idea, one that must be put aside till he had time to look at it.

There was a ring at the door.  Honor’s face lighted up at the tread on the marble pavement of the hall, and without other announcement, a young man entered the room, and as she sprang up to meet him, bent down his lofty head, and kissed her with half-filial, half-coaxing tenderness.

‘Yes, here I am.  They told me I should find you here.  Ah! Phœbe, I’m glad to see you.  Fulmort, how are you?’ and a well-bred shake of the hand to Mr. and Mrs. Parsons, with the ease and air of the young master, returning to his mother’s house.

‘When did you come?’

‘Only to-day.  I got away sooner than I expected.  I went to Lowndes Square, and they told me I should find you here, so I came away as soon as dinner was over.  They were dressing for some grand affair, and wanted me to come with them, but of course I must come to see if you had really achieved bringing bright Phœbe from her orbit.’

His simile conveyed the astronomical compliment at once to Honora and Phœbe, who were content to share it.  Honora was in a condition of subdued excitement and anxiety, compared to which all other sensations were tame, chequered as was her felicity, a state well known to mothers and sisters.  Intensely gratified at her darling’s arrival, gladdened by his presence, rejoicing in his endowments, she yet dreaded every phrase lest some dim misgiving should be deepened, and watched for the impression he made on her friends, as though her own depended upon it.

Admiration could not but come foremost.  It was pleasant to look upon such a fine specimen of manly beauty and vigour.  Of unusual height, his form was so well moulded, that his superior stature was only perceived by comparison with others, and the proportions were those of great strength.  The small, well-set head, proudly carried, the short, straight features, and the form of the free massive curls, might have been a model for the bust of a Greek athlete; the colouring was the fresh, healthy bronzed ruddiness of English youth, and the expression had a certain boldness of good-humoured freedom, agreeing with the quiet power of the whole figure.  Those bright gray eyes could never have been daunted, those curling, merry lips never at a loss, that smooth brow never been unwelcome, those easy movements never cramped, nor the manners restrained by bashfulness.

The contrast was not favourable to Robert.  The fair proportions of the one brought out the irregular build of the other; the classical face made the plain one more homely, the erect bearing made the eye turn to the slouching carriage, and the readiness of address provoked comparison with the awkward diffidence of one disregarded at home.  Bashfulness and depression had regained their hold of the elder lad almost as the younger one entered, and in the changes of position consequent upon the new arrival, he fell into the background, and stood leaning, caryatid fashion, against the mantelshelf, without uttering a word, while Owen, in a half-recumbent position on an ottoman, a little in the rear of Miss Charlecote and her tea equipage, and close to Phœbe, indulged in the blithe loquacity of a return home, in a tone of caressing banter towards the first lady, of something between good-nature and attention to the latter, yet without any such exclusiveness as would have been disregard to the other guests.

‘Ponto well!  Poor old Pon! how does he get on?  Was it a very affecting parting, Phœbe?’

‘I didn’t see.  I met Miss Charlecote at the station.’

‘Not even your eyes might intrude on the sacredness of grief!  Well, at least you dried them?  But who dried Ponto’s?’ solemnly turning on Honora.

‘Jones, I hope,’ said she, smiling.

‘I knew it!  Says I to myself, when Henry opened the door, Jones remains at home for the consolation of Ponto.’

‘Not entirely—’ began Honora, laughing; but the boy shook his head, cutting her short with a playful frown.

‘Cousin Honor, it grieves me to see a woman of your age and responsibility making false excuses.  Mr. Parsons, I appeal to you, as a clergyman of the Church of England, is it not painful to hear her putting forward Jones’s asthma, when we all know the true fact is that Ponto’s tastes are so aristocratic that he can’t take exercise with an under servant, and the housekeeper is too fat to waddle.  By the bye, how is the old thing?’

‘Much more effective than might be supposed by your account, sir, and probably wishing to know whether to get your room ready.’

‘My room.  Thank you; no, not to-night.  I’ve got nothing with me.  What are you going to do to-morrow?  I know you are to be at Charteris’s to luncheon; his Jewess told me so.’

‘For shame, Owen.’

‘I don’t see any shame, if Charles doesn’t,’ said Owen; ‘only if you don’t think yourselves at a stall of cheap jewellery at a fair—that’s all!  Phœbe, take care.  You’re a learned young lady.’

‘No; I’m very backward.’

‘Ah! it’s the fashion to deny it, but mind you don’t mention Shakespeare.’

‘Why not?’

‘Did you never hear of the Merchant of Venice?’

Phœbe, a little startled, wanted to hear whether Mrs. Charteris were really Jewish, and after a little more in this style, which Honor reasonably feared the Parsonses might not consider in good taste, it was explained that her riches were Jewish, though her grandfather had been nothing, and his family Christian.  Owen adding, that but for her origin, she would be very good-looking; not that he cared for that style, and his manner indicated that such rosy, childish charms as were before him had his preference.  But though this was evident enough to all the rest of the world, Phœbe did not appear to have the least perception of his personal meaning, and freely, simply answered, that she admired dark-eyed people, and should be glad to see Mrs. Charteris.

‘You will see her in her glory,’ said Owen; ‘Tuesday week, the great concern is to come off, at Castle Blanch, and a rare sight she’ll be!  Cilly tells me she is rehearsing her dresses with different sets of jewels all the morning, and for ever coming in to consult her and Rashe!’

‘That must be rather tiresome,’ said Honor; ‘she cannot be much of a companion.’

‘I don’t fancy she gets much satisfaction,’ said Owen, laughing; ‘Rashe never uses much “soft sawder.”  It’s an easy-going place, where you may do just as you choose, and the young ladies appreciate liberty.  By the bye, what do you think of this Irish scheme?’

Honora was so much ashamed of it, that she had never mentioned it even to Phœbe, and she was the more sorry that it had been thus adverted to, as she saw Robert intent on what Owen let fall.  She answered shortly, that she could not suppose it serious.

‘Serious as a churchyard,’ was Owen’s answer.  ‘I dare say they will ask Phœbe to join the party.  For my own part, I never believed in it till I came up to-day, and found the place full of salmon-flies, and the start fixed for Wednesday the 24th.’

‘Who?’ came a voice from the dark mantelshelf.

‘Who?  Why, that’s the best of it.  Who but my wise sister and Rashe?  Not a soul besides,’ cried Owen, giving way to laughter, which no one was disposed to echo.  ‘They vow that they will fish all the best streams, and do more than any crack fisherman going, and they would like to see who will venture to warn them off.  They’ve tried that already.  Last summer what did Lucy do, but go and fish Sir Harry Buller’s water.  You know he’s a very tiger about preserving.  Well, she fished coolly on in the face of all his keepers; they stood aghast, didn’t know what manner of Nixie it was, I suppose; and when Sir Harry came down, foaming at the mouth, she just shook her curls, and made him wade in up to his knees to get her fly out of a bramble!’

‘That must be exaggerated,’ said Robert.

‘Exaggerated!  Not a word!  It’s not possible to exaggerate Cilly’s coolness.  I did say something about going with them.’

‘You must, if they go at all!’ exclaimed Honora.

‘Out of the question, Sweet Honey.  They reject me with disdain, declare that I should only render them commonplace, and that “rich and rare were the gems she wore” would never have got across Ireland safe if she had a great strapping brother to hamper her.  And really, as Charles says, I don’t suppose any damage can well happen to them.’

Honora would not talk of it, and turned the conversation to what was to be done on the following day.  Owen eagerly proffered himself as escort, and suggested all manner of plans, evidently assuming the entire direction and protection of the two ladies, who were to meet him at luncheon in Lowndes Square, and go with him to the Royal Academy, which, as he and Honora agreed, must necessarily be the earliest object for the sake of providing innocent conversation.

As soon as the clock struck ten, Robert took leave, and Owen rose, but instead of going, lingered, talking Oxford with Mr. Parsons, and telling good stories, much to the ladies’ amusement, though increasing Honora’s trepidation by the fear that something in his tone about the authorities, or the slang of his manner, might not give her friends a very good idea of his set.  The constant fear of what might come next, absolutely made her impatient for his departure, and at last she drove him away, by begging to know how he was going all that distance, and offering to send Henry to call a cab, a thing he was too good-natured to permit.  He bade good night and departed, while Mr. Parsons, in answer to her eager eyes, gratified her by pronouncing him a very fine young man.

‘He is very full of spirit,’ she said.  ‘You must let me tell you a story of him.  They have a young new schoolmistress at Wrapworth, his father’s former living, you know, close to Castle Blanch.  This poor thing was obliged to punish a school-child, the daughter of one of the bargemen on the Thames, a huge ruffianly man.  Well, a day or two after, Owen came upon him in a narrow lane, bullying the poor girl almost out of her life, threatening her, and daring her to lay a finger on his children.  What do you think Owen did?’

‘Fought him, I suppose,’ said Mr. Parsons, judging by the peculiar delight ladies take in such exploits.  ‘Besides, he has sufficiently the air of a hero to make it incumbent on him to “kill some giant.”’

‘We may be content with something short of his killing the giant,’ said Honor, ‘but he really did gain the victory.  That lad, under nineteen, positively beat this great monster of a man, and made him ask the girl’s pardon, knocked him down, and thoroughly mastered him!  I should have known nothing of it, though, if Owen had not got a black eye, which made him unpresentable for the Castle Blanch gaieties, so he came down to the Holt to me, knowing I should not mind wounds gained in a good cause.’

They wished her good night in her triumph.

The receipt of a letter was rare and supreme felicity to Maria; therefore to indite one was Phœbe’s first task on the morrow; after which she took up her book, and was deeply engaged, when the door flew back, and the voice of Owen Sandbrook exclaimed, ‘Goddess of the silver bow! what, alone?’

‘Miss Charlecote is with her lawyer, and Robert at the office.’

‘The parson and parsoness parsonically gone to study parsonages, schools, and dilapidations, I suppose.  What a bore it is having them here; I’d have taken up my quarters here, otherwise, but I can’t stand parish politics.’

‘I like them very much,’ said Phœbe, ‘and Miss Charlecote seems to be happy with them.’

‘Just her cut, dear old thing; the same honest, illogical, practical sincerity,’ said Owen, in a tone of somewhat superior melancholy; but seeing Phœbe about to resent his words as a disrespectful imputation on their friend, he turned the subject, addressing Phœbe in the manner between teasing and flattering, habitual to a big schoolboy towards a younger child, phases of existence which each had not so long outgrown as to have left off the mutual habits thereto belonging.  ‘And what is bright Cynthia doing?  Writing verses, I declare!—worthy sister of Phoebus Apollo.’

‘Only notes,’ said Phœbe, relinquishing her paper, in testimony.

‘When found make a note of—Summoned by writ—temp. Ed. III.—burgesses—knights of shire.  It reads like an act of parliament.  Hallam’s English Constitution.  My eyes!  By way of lighter study.  It is quite appalling.  Pray what may be the occupation of your more serious moments?’

‘You see the worst I have with me.’

‘Holiday recreation, to which you can just condescend.  I say, Phœbe, I have a great curiosity to understand the Zend.  I wish you would explain it to me.’

‘If I ever read it,’ began Phœbe, laughing.

‘What, you pretend to deny?  You won’t put me off that way.  A lady who can only unbend so far as to the English Constitution by way of recreation, must—’

‘But it is not by way of recreation.’

‘Come, I know my respected cousin too well to imagine she would have imposed such a task.  That won’t do, Phœbe.’

‘I never said she had, but Miss Fennimore desired me.’

‘I shall appeal.  There’s no act of tyranny a woman in authority will not commit.  But this is a free country, Phœbe, as maybe you have gathered from your author, and unless her trammels have reached to your soul—’ and he laid his hand on the book to take it away.

‘Perhaps they have,’ said Phœbe, smiling, but holding it fast, ‘for I shall be much more comfortable in doing as I was told.’

‘Indeed!’ said Owen, pretending to scrutinize her as if she were something extraordinary (really as an excuse for a good gaze upon her pure complexion and limpid eyes, so steady, childlike, and unabashed, free from all such consciousness as would make them shrink from the playful look).  ‘Indeed!  Now, in my experience the comfort would be in the not doing as you were told.’

‘Ah! but you know I have no spirit.’

‘I wish to heaven other people had none!’ cried Owen, suddenly changing his tone, and sitting down opposite to Phœbe, his elbow on the table, and speaking earnestly.  ‘I would give the world that my sister were like you.  Did you ever hear of anything so preposterous as this Irish business?’

‘She cannot think of it, when Miss Charlecote has told her of all the objections,’ said Phœbe.

‘She will go the more,’ returned Owen.  ‘I say to you, Phœbe, what I would say to no one else.  Lucilla’s treatment of Honora Charlecote is abominable—vexes me more than I can say.  They say some nations have no words for gratitude.  One would think she had come of them.’

Phœbe looked much shocked, but said, ‘Perhaps Miss Charlecote’s kindness has seemed to her like a matter of course, not as it does to us, who have no claim at all.’

‘We had no claim,’ said Owen; ‘the connection is nothing, absolutely nothing.  I believe, poor dear, the attraction was that she had once been attached to my father, and he was too popular a preacher to keep well as a lover.  Well, there were we, a couple of orphans, a nuisance to all our kith and kin—nobody with a bit of mercy for us but that queer old coon, Kit Charteris, when she takes us home, treats us like her own children, feels for us as much as the best mother living could; undertakes to provide for us.  Now, I put it to you, Phœbe, has she any right to be cast off in this fashion?’

‘I don’t know in what fashion you mean.’

‘Don’t you.  Haven’t you seen how Cilly has run restive from babyhood?  A pretty termagant she was, as even I can remember.  And how my poor father spoilt her!  Any one but Honor would have given her up, rather than have gone through what she did, so firmly and patiently, till she had broken her in fairly well.  But then come in these Charterises, and Cilly runs frantic after them, her own dear relations.  Much they had cared for us when we were troublesome little pests.  But it’s all the force of blood.  Stuff!  The whole truth is that they are gay, and Honora quiet; they encourage her to run riot.  Honora keeps her in order.’

‘Have you spoken to her?’

‘As well speak to the wind.  She thinks it a great favour to run down to Hiltonbury for the Horticultural Show, turn everything topsy-turvy, keep poor dear Sweet Honey in a perpetual ferment, then come away to Castle Blanch, as if she were rid of a troublesome duty.’

‘I thought Miss Charlecote sent Lucy to enjoy herself!  We always said how kind and self-denying she was.’

‘Denied, rather,’ said Owen; ‘only that’s her way of carrying it off.  A month or two in the season might be very well; see the world, and get the tone of it; but to racket about with Ratia, and leave Honor alone for months together, is too strong for me.’

Honora came in, delighted at her boy’s visit, and well pleased at the manner in which he was engrossed.  Two such children needed no chaperon, and if that sweet crescent moon were to be his guiding light, so much the better.

‘Capital girl, that,’ he said, as she left the room.  ‘This is a noble achievement of yours.’

‘In getting my youngest princess out of the castle.  Ay! I do feel in a beneficent enchanter’s position.’

‘She has grown up much prettier than she promised to be.’

‘And far too good for a Fulmort.  But that is Robert’s doing.’

‘Poor Robert! how he shows the old distiller in grain.  So he is taking to the old shop?—best thing for him.’

‘Only by way of experiment.’

‘Pleasant experiment to make as much as old Fulmort!  I wish he’d take me into partnership.’

‘You, Owen?’

‘I am not proud.  These aren’t the days when it matters how a man gets his tin, so he knows what to do with it.  Ay! the world gets beyond the dear old Hiltonbury views, after all, Sweet Honey, and you see what City atmosphere does to me.’

‘You know I never wished to press any choice on you,’ she faltered.

‘What!’ with a good-humoured air of affront, ‘you thought me serious?  Don’t you know I’m the ninth, instead of the nineteenth-century man, under your wing?  I’d promise you to be a bishop, only, you see, I’m afraid I couldn’t be mediocre enough.’

‘For shame, Owen!’ and yet she smiled.  That boy’s presence and caressing sweetness towards herself were the greatest bliss to her, almost beyond that of a mother with a son, because more uncertain, less her right by nature.

Phœbe came down as the carriage was at the door, and they called in Whittington Street for her brother, but he only came out to say he was very busy, and would not intrude on Mrs. Charteris—bashfulness for which he was well abused on the way to Lowndes Square.

Owen, with his air of being at home, put aside the servants as they entered the magnificent house, replete with a display of state and luxury analogous to that of Beauchamp, but with better taste and greater ease.  The Fulmorts were in bondage to ostentation; the Charterises were lavish for their own enjoyment, and heedless alike of cost and of appearance.

The great drawing-room was crowded with furniture, and the splendid marqueterie tables and crimson ottomans were piled with a wild confusion of books, prints, periodicals, papers, and caricatures, heaped over ornaments and bijouterie, and beyond, at the doorway of a second room, even more miscellaneously filled, a small creature sprang to meet them, kissing Honora, and exclaiming, ‘Here you are!  Have you brought the pig’s wool?  Ah! but you’ve brought something else!  No—what’s become of that Redbreast!’ as she embraced Phœbe.

‘He was so busy that he could not come.’

‘Ill-behaved bird; a whole month without coming near me.’

‘Only a week,’ said Phœbe, speaking less freely, as she perceived two strangers in the room, a gentleman in moustaches, who shook hands with Owen, and a lady, whom from her greeting to Miss Charlecote (for introductions were not the way of the house) she concluded to be the formidable Rashe, and therefore regarded with some curiosity.

Phœbe had expected her to be a large masculine woman, and was surprised at her dapper proportions and not ungraceful manner.  Her face, neither handsome nor the reverse, was one that neither in features nor complexion revealed her age, and her voice was pitched to the tones of good society, so that but for a certain ‘don’t care’ sound in her words, and a defiant freedom of address, Phœbe would have set down all she had heard as a mistake, in spite of the table covered with the brilliant appliances of fly-making, over which both she and Lucilla were engaged.  It was at the period when ladies affected coats and waistcoats, and both cousins followed the fashion to the utmost; wearing tightly-fitting black coats, plain linen collars, and shirt-like under-sleeves, with black ties round the neck.  Horatia was still in mourning for her mother, and wore a black skirt, but Lucilla’s was of rich deep gentianella-coloured silk, and the buttons of her white vest were of beautiful coral.  The want of drapery gave a harshness to Miss Charteris’s appearance, but the little masculine affectations only rendered Lucy’s miniature style of feminine beauty still more piquant.  Less tall than many girls of fourteen, she was exquisitely formed; the close-fitting dress became her taper waist, the ivory fairness of the throat and hands shone out in their boyish setting, and the soft delicacy of feature and complexion were enhanced by the vivid sparkling of those porcelain blue eyes, under the long lashes, still so fair and glossy as to glisten in the light, like her profuse flaxen tresses, arranged in a cunning wilderness of plaits and natural ringlets.  The great charm was the minuteness and refinement of the mould containing the energetic spirit that glanced in her eyes, quivered on her lips, and pervaded every movement of the elastic feet and hands, childlike in size, statue-like in symmetry, elfin in quickness and dexterity.  ‘Lucile la Fée,’ she might well have been called, as she sat manipulating the gorgeous silk and feathers with an essential strength and firmness of hands such as could hardly have been expected from such small members, and producing such lovely specimens that nothing seemed wanting but a touch of her wand to endow them with life.  It was fit fairy work, and be it farther known, that few women are capable of it; they seldom have sufficient accuracy of sustained attention and firmness of finger combined, to produce anything artistic or durable, and the accomplishment was therefore Lucilla’s pride.  Her cousin could prepare materials, but could not finish.  ‘Have you brought the pig’s wool?’ repeated Lucy, as they sat down.  ‘No?  That is a cruel way of testifying.  I can’t find a scrap of that shade, though I’ve nearly broke my heart in the tackle shops.  Here’s my last fragment, and this butcher will be a wreck for want of it.’