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

‘Let me see,’ quoth the gentleman, bending over with an air of intimacy.

‘You may see,’ returned Lucilla, ‘but that will do no good.  Owen got this at a little shop at Elverslope, and we can only conclude that the father of orange pigs is dead, for we’ve tried every maker, and can’t hit off the tint.’

‘I’ve seen it in a shop in the Strand,’ he said, with an air of depreciation, such as set both ladies off with an ardour inexplicable to mere spectators, both vehemently defending the peculiarity of their favourite hue, and little personalities passing, exceedingly diverting apparently to both parties, but which vexed Honora and dismayed Phœbe by the coolness of the gentleman, and the ease with which he was treated by the ladies.

Luncheon was announced in the midst, and in the dining-room they found Miss Charteris, a dark, aquiline beauty, of highly-coloured complexion, such as permitted the glowing hues of dress and ornament in which she delighted, and large languid dark eyes of Oriental appearance.

In the scarlet and gold net confining her sable locks, her ponderous earrings, her massive chains and bracelets, and gorgeous silk, she was a splendid ornament at the head of the table; but she looked sleepily out from under her black-fringed eyelids, turned over the carving as a matter of course to Owen, and evidently regarded the two young ladies as bound to take all trouble off her hands in talking, arranging, or settling what she should do with herself or her carriage.

‘Lolly shall take you there,’ or ‘Lolly shall call for that,’ passed between the cousins without the smallest reference to Lolly herself (otherwise Eloïsa), who looked serenely indifferent through all the plans proposed for her, only once exerting her will sufficiently to say, ‘Very well, Rashe, dear, you’ll tell the coachman—only don’t forget that I must go to Storr and Mortimer’s.’

Honora expressed a hope that Lucilla would come with her party to the Exhibition, and was not pleased that Mr. Calthorp exclaimed that there was another plan.

‘No, no, Mr. Calthorp, I never said any such thing!’

‘Miss Charteris, is not that a little too strong?’

‘You told me of the Dorking,’ cried Lucilla, ‘and you said you would not miss the sight for anything; but I never said you should have it.’

Rashe meanwhile clapped her hands with exultation, and there was a regular chatter of eager voices—‘I should like to know how you would get the hackles out of a suburban poultry fancier.’

‘Out of him?—no, out of his best Dorking.  Priced at £120 last exhibition—two years old—wouldn’t take £200 for him now.’

‘You don’t mean that you’ve seen him?’

‘Hurrah!’  Lucilla opened a paper, and waved triumphantly five of the long tippet-plumes of chanticleer.

‘You don’t mean—’

‘Mean!  I more than mean!  Didn’t you tell us that you had been to see the old party on business, and had spied the hackles walking about in his yard?’

‘And I had hoped to introduce you.’

‘As if we needed that!  No, no.  Rashe, and I started off at six o’clock this morning, to shake off the remains of the ball, rode down to Brompton, and did our work.  No, it was not like the macaw business, I declare.  The old gentleman held the bird for us himself, and I promised him a dried salmon.’

‘Well, I had flattered myself—it was an unfair advantage, Miss Sandbrook.’

‘Not in the least.  Had you gone, it would have cast a general clumsiness over the whole transaction, and not left the worthy old owner half so well satisfied.  I believe you had so little originality as to expect to engage him in conversation while I captured the bird; but once was enough of that.’

Phœbe could not help asking what was meant; and it was explained that, while a call was being made on a certain old lady with a blue and yellow macaw, Lucilla had contrived to abstract the prime glory of the creature’s tail—a blue feather lined with yellow—an irresistible charm to a fisherwoman.  But here even the tranquil Eloïsa murmured that Cilly must never do so again when she went out with her.

‘No, Lolly, indeed I won’t.  I prefer honesty, I assure you, except when it is too commonplace.  I’ll meddle with nothing at Madame Sonnini’s this afternoon.’

‘Then you cannot come with us?’

‘Why, you see, Honor, here have Rashe and I been appointed band-masters, Lord Chamberlains, masters of the ceremonies, major-domos, and I don’t know what, to all the Castle Blanch concern; and as Rashe neither knows nor cares about music, I’ve got all that on my hands; and I must take Lolly to look on while I manage the programme.’

‘Are you too busy to find a day to spend with us at St. Wulstan’s?’

A discussion of engagements took place, apparently at the rate of five per day; but Mrs. Charteris interposed an invitation to dinner for the next evening, including Robert; and farther it appeared that all the three were expected to take part in the Castle Blanch festivities.  Lolly had evidently been told of them as settled certainties among the guests, and Lucilla, Owen, and Rashe vied with each other in declaring that they had imagined Honor to have brought Phœbe to London with no other intent, and that all was fixed for the ladies to sleep at Castle Blanch the night before, and Robert Fulmort to come down in the morning by train.

Nothing could have been farther from Honora’s predilections than such gaieties, but Phœbe’s eyes were growing round with eagerness, and there would be unkindness in denying her the pleasure, as well as churlishness in disappointing Lucy and Owen, who had reckoned on her in so gratifying a manner.  Without decidedly accepting or refusing, she let the talk go on.

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