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

‘Cilla,’ said Mr. Prendergast, at the window, ‘can I have a word with you?’

‘At your service,’ she answered, as she came out to him, and saw that Robert had left him.  ‘Only be quick; they want to photograph me in my ball-dress.’

‘You won’t let them do it, though,’ said the curate.

‘White comes out hideous,’ said Lucilla; ‘I suppose you would not have a copy, if I took one off for you?’

‘No; I don’t like those visitors of yours well enough to see you turned into a merry-andrew to please them.’

‘So that’s what Robert Fulmort told you I did last night,’ said Lucilla, blushing at last, and thoroughly.

‘No, indeed; you didn’t?’ he said, regarding her with an astonished glance.

‘I did wear a dress trimmed with salmon-flies, because of a bet with Lord William,’ said Lucilla, the suffusion deepening on brow, cheek, and throat, as the confiding esteem of her fatherly friend effected what nothing else could accomplish.  She would have given the world to have justified his opinion of his late rector’s little daughter, and her spirits seemed gone, though the worst he did was to shake his head at her.

‘If you did not know it, why did you call me that?’ she asked.

‘A merry-andrew?’ he answered; ‘I never meant that you had been one.  No; only an old friend like me doesn’t like the notion of your going and dressing up in the morning to amuse a lot of scamps.’

‘I won’t,’ said Lucilla, very low.

‘Well, then,’ began Mr. Prendergast, as in haste to proceed to his own subject; but she cut him short.

‘It is not about Ireland?’

‘No; I know nothing about young ladies; and if Mr. Charteris and your excellent friend there have nothing to say against it, I can’t.’

‘My excellent friend had so much to say against it, that I was pestered into vowing I would go!  Tell me not, Mr. Prendergast,—I should not mind giving up to you;’ and she looked full of hope.

‘That would be beginning at the wrong end, Cilla; you are not my charge.’

‘You are my clergyman,’ she said, pettishly.

‘You are not my parishioner,’ he answered.

‘Pish!’ she said; ‘when you know I want you to tell me.’

‘Why, you say you have made the engagement.’

‘So what I said when she fretted me past endurance must bind me!’

Be it observed that, like all who only knew Hiltonbury through Lucilla, Mr. Prendergast attributed any blemishes which he might detect in her to the injudicious training of an old maid; so he sympathized.  ‘Ah! ladies of a certain age never get on with young ones!  But I thought it was all settled before with Miss Charteris.’

‘I never quite said I would go, only we got ready for the sake of the fun of talking of it, and now Rashe has grown horridly eager about it.  She did not care at first—only to please me.’

‘Then wouldn’t it be using her ill to disappoint her now?  You couldn’t do it, Cilla.  Why, you have given your word, and she is quite old enough for anything.  Wouldn’t Miss Charlecote see it so?’

To regard Ratia as a mature personage robbed the project of romance, and to find herself bound in honour by her inconsiderate rattle was one of the rude shocks which often occur to the indiscriminate of tongue; but the curate had too much on his mind to dwell on what concerned him more remotely, and proceeded, ‘I came to see whether you could help me about poor Miss Murrell.  You made no arrangement for her getting home last night?’

‘No!’

‘Ah, you young people!  But it is my fault; I should have recollected young heads.  Then I am afraid it must have been—’

‘What?’

‘She was seen on the river very late last night with a stranger.  He went up to the school with her, remained about a quarter of an hour, and then rowed up the river again.  I am afraid it is not the first time she has been seen with him.’

‘But, Mr. Prendergast, she was here till at least ten!  She fainted away just as she was to have sung, and we carried her out into the cloister.  When she recovered she went away to the housekeeper’s room—’ (a bold assertion, built on Owen’s partially heard reply to Phœbe).  ‘I’ll ask the maids.’

‘It is of no use, Cilla; she allows it herself.’

‘And pray,’ cried Lucilla, rallying her sauciness, ‘how do you propose ever to have banns to publish, if young men and maidens are never to meet by water nor by land?’

‘Then you do know something?’

‘No; only that such matters are not commonly blazoned in the commencement.’

‘I don’t wish her to blazon it, but if she would only act openly by me,’ said the distressed curate.  ‘I wish nothing more than that she was safe married; and then if you ladies appoint another beauty, I’ll give up the place, and live at – college.’

‘We’ll advertise for the female Chimpanzee, and depend upon it she will marry at the end of six weeks.  So you have attacked her in person.  What did she say?’

‘Nothing that she could help.  She stood with those great eyes cast down, looking like a statue, and sometimes vouchsafing “yes, sir,” or “no, sir.”  It was “no, sir,” when I asked if her mother knew.  I am afraid it must be something very unsatisfactory, Cilla; but she might say more to you if you were not going away.’

‘Oh! Mr. Prendergast, why did you not come sooner?’

‘I did come an hour ago, but you were not come down.’

‘I’ll walk on at once; the carriage can pick me up.  I’ll fetch my hat.  Poor Edna!  I’ll soon make her satisfy your mind.  Has any one surmised who it can be?’

‘The notion is that it is one of your musicians—very dangerous, I am afraid; and I say, Cilla, did you ever do such a thing—you couldn’t, I suppose—as lend her Shelley’s poems?’

‘I?  No; certainly not.’

‘There was a copy lying on the table in her little parlour, as if she had been writing something out from it.  It is very odd, but it was in that peculiar olive-green morocco that some of the books in your father’s library were bound in.’

‘Not mine, certainly,’ said Lucilla.  ‘Good Honor Charlecote would have run crazy if she thought I had touched a Shelley; a very odd study for Edna.  But as to the olive-green, of course it was bound under the same star as ours.’

‘Cilly, Cilly, now or never! photograph or not?’ screamed Rashe, from behind her three-legged camera.

‘Not!’ was Lucilla’s cavalier answer.  ‘Pack up; have done with it, Rashe.  Pick me up at the school.’

Away she flew headlong, the patient and disconcerted Horatia following her to her room to extract hurried explanations, and worse than no answers as to the sundries to be packed at the last moment, while she hastily put on hat and mantle, and was flying down again, when her brother, with outspread arms, nearly caught her in her spring.  ‘Hollo! what’s up?’

‘Don’t stop me, Owen!  I’m going to walk on with Mr. Prendergast and be picked up.  I must speak to Edna Murrell.’

‘Nonsense!  The carriage will be out in five minutes.’

‘I must go, Owen.  There’s some story of a demon in human shape on the water with her last night, and Mr. Prendergast can’t get a word out of her.’

‘Is that any reason you should go ramping about, prying into people’s affairs?’

‘But, Owen, they will send her away.  They will take away her character.’

‘The—the—the more reason you should have nothing to do with it,’ he exclaimed.  ‘It is no business for you, and I won’t have you meddle in it.’

Such a strong and sudden assumption of fraternal authority took away her breath; and then, in terror lest he should know cause for this detention, she said—

‘Owen! you don’t guess who it was?’

‘How should I?’ he roughly answered.  ‘Some villainous slander, of course, there is, but it is no business of yours to be straking off to make it worse.’

‘I should not make it worse.’

‘Women always make things worse.  Are you satisfied now?’ as the carriage was seen coming round.

‘That is only to be packed.’

‘Packed with folly, yes!  Look here!  11.20, and the train at 12.5!’

‘I will miss the train, go up later, and sleep in London.’

‘Stuff and nonsense!  Who is going to take you?  Not I.’

In Lucilla’s desperation in the cause of her favourite Edna, she went through a rapid self-debate.  Honor would gladly wait for her for such a cause; she could sleep at Woolstone-lane, and thence go on to join Horatia in Derbyshire, escorted by a Hiltonbury servant.  But what would that entail?  She would be at their mercy.  Robert would obtain his advantage—it would be all over with her!  Pride arose; Edna’s cause sank.  How many destinies were fixed in the few seconds while she stood with one foot forward, spinning her black hat by the elastic band!

‘Too late, Mr. Prendergast; I cannot go,’ she said, as she saw him waiting for her at the door.  ‘Don’t be angry with me, and don’t let the womankind prejudice you against poor Edna.  You forgive me!  It is really too late.’

‘Forgive you?’ smiled Mr. Prendergast, pressing her caressing hand in his great, lank grasp; ‘what for?’

‘Oh, because it is too late; and I can’t help it.  But don’t be hard with her.  Good-bye.’

Too late!  Why did Lucilla repeat those words so often?  Was it a relief to that irreflective nature to believe the die irrevocably cast, and the responsibility of decision over?  Or why did she ask forgiveness of the only one whom she was not offending, but because there was a sense of need of pardon where she would not stoop to ask it.

Miss Charlecote and the Fulmorts, Rashe and Cilly, were to be transported to London by the same train, leaving Owen behind to help Charles Charteris entertain some guests still remaining, Honora promising him to wait in town until Lucilla should absolutely have started for Ireland, when she would supply him with the means of pursuit.

Lucilla’s delay and change of mind made the final departure so late that it was needful to drive excessively fast, and the train was barely caught in time.  The party were obliged to separate, and Robert took Phœbe into a different carriage from that where the other three found places.

In the ten minutes’ transit by railway, Lucy, always softened by parting, was like another being towards Honor, and talked eagerly of ‘coming home’ for Christmas, sent messages to Hiltonbury friends, and did everything short of retractation to efface the painful impression she had left.

‘Sweetest Honey!’ she whispered, as they moved on after the tickets had been taken, thrusting her pretty head over into Honor’s place.  ‘Nobody’s looking, give me a kiss, and say you don’t bear malice, though your kitten has been in a scratching humour.’

‘Malice! no indeed!’ said Honor, fondly; ‘but, oh! remember, dear child, that frolics may be at too dear a price.’

She longed to say more, but the final stop was made, and their roads diverged.  Honor thought that Lucy looked white and trembling, with an uneasy eye, as though she would have given much to have been going home with her.

Nor was the consoling fancy unfounded.  Lucilla’s nerves were not at their usual pitch, and an undefined sense of loss of a safeguard was coming over her.  Moreover, the desire for a last word to Robert was growing every moment, and he would keep on hunting out those boxes, as if they mattered to anybody.

She turned round on his substitute, and said, ‘I’ve not spoken to Robin all this time.  No wonder his feathers are ruffled.  Make my peace with him, Phœbe dear.’

On the very platform, in that moment of bustle, Phœbe conscientiously and reasonably began, ‘Will you tell me how much you mean by that?’

‘Cilly—King’s-cross—1.15,’ cried Ratia, snatching at her arm.

‘Oh! the slave one is!  Next time we meet, Phœbe, the redbreast will be in a white tie, I shall—’

Hurry and agitation were making her flippant, and Robert was nearer than she deemed.  He was assisting her to her seat, and then held out his hand, but never raised his eyes.  ‘Goodbye, Robin,’ she said; ‘Reason herself shall meet you at the Holt at Christmas.’

‘Good-bye,’ he said, but without a word of augury, and loosed her hand.  Her fingers clung one moment, but he drew his away, called ‘King’s-cross’ to the coachman, and she was whirled off.  Angler as she was, she no longer felt her prey answer her pull.  Had the line snapped?

When Owen next appeared in Woolstone-lane he looked fagged and harassed, but talked of all things in sky, earth, or air, politics, literature, or gossip, took the bottom of the table, and treated the Parsonses as his guests.  Honora, however, felt that something was amiss; perhaps Lucilla engaged to Lord William; and when, after luncheon, he followed her to the cedar room, she began with a desponding ‘Well?’

‘Well, she is off!’

‘Alone with Rashe?’

‘Alone with Rashe.  Why, Sweet Honey, you look gratified!’

‘I had begun to fear some fresh news,’ said Honor, smiling with effort.  ‘I am sure that something is wrong.  You do not look well, my dear.  How flushed you are, and your forehead is so hot!’ as she put her hand on his brow.

‘Oh, nothing!’ he said, caressingly, holding it there.  ‘I’m glad to have got away from the castle; Charlie and his set drink an intolerable lot of wine.  I’ll not be there again in a hurry.’

‘I am glad of that.  I wish you had come away with us.’

‘I wish to heaven I had!’ cried Owen; ‘but it could not be helped!  So now for my wild-goose chase.  Cross to-morrow night; only you were good enough to say you would find ways and means.’

‘There, that is what I intended, including your Midsummer quarter.  Don’t you think it enough?’ as she detected a look of dissatisfaction.

‘You are very good.  It is a tremendous shame; but you see, Honor dear, when one is across the water, one may as well go the whole animal.  If this wise sister of mine does not get into a mess, there is a good deal I could do—plenty of sport.  Little Henniker and some Westminster fellows in the –th are at Kilkenny.’

‘You would like to spend the vacation in Ireland,’ said Honor, with some disappointment.  ‘Well, if you go for my pleasure, it is but fair you should have your own.  Shall I advance your September allowance?’

‘Thank you.  You do spoil one abominably, you concoction of honey and all things sweet.  But the fact is, I’ve got uncommonly hard-up of late; no one would believe how ruinous it is being with the Charterises.  I believe money evaporates in the atmosphere.’

‘Betting?’ asked Honor, gasping and aghast.

‘On my honour, I assure you not there,’ cried Owen, eagerly, ‘I never did bet there but once, and that was Lolly’s doing; and I could not get out of it.  Jew that she is!  I wonder what Uncle Kit would say to that house now.’

‘You are out of it, and I shall not regret the purchase of your disgust at their ways, Owen.  It may be better for you to be in Ireland than to be tempted to go to them for the shooting season.  How much do you want?  You know, my dear, if there be anything else, I had rather pay anything that is right than have you in debt.’

‘You were always the sweetest, best Honey living!’ cried Owen, with much agitation; ‘and it is a shame—’ but there he stopped, and ended in a more ordinary tone—‘shame to prey on you, as we both do, and with no better return.’

‘Never mind, dear Owen,’ she said, with moisture in her eye; ‘your real happiness is the only return I want.  Come, tell me your difficulty; most likely I can help you.’

‘I’ve nothing to tell,’ said Owen, with alarmed impetuosity; ‘only that I’m a fool, like every one else, and—and—if you would only double that—’

‘Double that!  Owen, things cannot be right.’

‘I told you they were not right,’ was the impatient answer, ‘or I should not be vexing you and myself; and,’ as though to smooth away his rough commencement, ‘what a comfort to have a Honey that will have patience!’

She shook her head, perplexed.  ‘Owen, I wish you could tell me more.  I do not like debts.  You know, dear boy, I grudge nothing I can do for you in my lifetime; but for your own sake you must learn not to spend more than you will be able to afford.  Indulgence now will be a penance to you by and by.’

Honora dreaded overdoing lectures to Owen.  She knew that an old maid’s advice to a young man was dangerous work, and her boy’s submissive patience always excited her gratitude and forbearance, so she desisted, in hopes of a confession, looking at him with such tenderness that he was moved to exclaim—‘Honor dear, you are the best and worst-used woman on earth!  Would to heaven that we had requited you better!’

‘I have no cause of complaint against you, Owen,’ she said, fondly; ‘you have always been the joy and comfort of my heart;’ and as he turned aside, as though stricken by the words, ‘whatever you may have to reproach yourself with, it is not with hurting me; I only wish to remind you of higher and more stringent duties than those to myself.  If you have erred, as I cannot but fear, will you not let me try and smooth the way back?’

‘Impossible,’ murmured Owen; ‘there are things that can never be undone.’

‘Not undone, but repented,’ said Honor, convinced that he had been led astray by his cousin Charles, and felt bound not to expose him; ‘so repented as to become stepping-stones in our progress.’

He only shook his head with a groan.

‘The more sorrow, the better hope,’ she began; but the impatient movement of his foot warned her that she was only torturing him, and she proceeded,—‘Well, I trust you implicitly; I can understand that there may be confidences that ought not to pass between us, and will give you what you require to help you out of your difficulty.  I wish you had a father, or any one who could be of more use to you, my poor boy!’ and she began to fill up the cheque to the utmost of his demand.

‘It is too much—too much,’ cried Owen.  ‘Honor, I must tell you at all costs.  What will you think when—’

‘I do not wish to purchase a confession, Owen,’ she said; ‘you know best whether it be a fit one to make to me, or whether for the sake of others you ought to withhold it.’

He was checked, and did not answer.

‘I see how it is,’ continued Honor; ‘my boy, as far as I am concerned, I look on your confession as made.  You will be much alone while thus hovering near your sister among the mountains and by the streams.  Let it be a time of reflection, and of making your peace with Another.  You may do so the more earnestly for not having cast off the burthen on me.  You are no child now, to whom your poor Honey’s pardon almost seems an absolution.  I sometimes think we went on with that too long.’

‘No fear of my ever being a boy again,’ said Owen, heavily, as he put the draft into his purse, and then bent his tall person to kiss her with the caressing fondness of his childhood, almost compensating for what his sister caused her to undergo.

Then, at the door, he turned to say, ‘Remember, you would not hear.’  He was gone, having left a thorn with Honor, in the doubt whether she ought not to have accepted his confidence; but her abstinence had been such a mortification both of curiosity and of hostility to the Charterises that she could not but commend herself for it.  She had strong faith in the efficacy of trust upon an honourable mind, and though it was evident that Owen had, in his own eyes, greatly transgressed, she reserved the hope that his error was magnified by his own consciousness, and admired the generosity that refused to betray another.  She believed his present suffering to be the beginning of that growth in true religion which is often founded on some shock leading to self-distrust.

Alas! how many falls have been counted by mothers as the preludes to rising again, like the clearing showers of a stormy day.

CHAPTER VIII

Fearless she had tracked his feetTo this rocky, wild retreat,And when morning met his view,Her mild glances met it too.Ah! your saints have cruel hearts,Sternly from his bed he starts,And with rude, repulsive shock,Hurls her from the beetling rock.—T. Moore

The deed was done.  Conventionalities were defied, vaunts fulfilled, and Lucilla sat on a camp-stool on the deck of a steamer, watching the Welsh mountains rise, grow dim, and vanish gradually.

Horatia, in common with all the rest of the womankind, was prostrate on the cabin floor, treating Cilly’s smiles and roses as aggravations of her misery.  Had there been a sharer in her exultation, the gay pitching and dancing of the steamer would have been charming to Lucy, but when she retreated from the scene of wretchedness below, she felt herself lonely, and was conscious of some surprise among the surviving gentlemen at her reappearance.

She took out a book as a protection, and read more continuously than she had done since Vanity Fair had come to the Holt, and she had been pleased to mark Honora’s annoyance at every page she turned.

But the July light faded, and only left her the poor amusement of looking over the side for the phosphorescence of the water, and watching the smoke of the funnel lose itself overhead.  The silent stars and sparkling waves would have set Phœbe’s dutiful science on the alert, or transported Honor’s inward ear by the chant of creation, but to her they were of moderate interest, and her imagination fell a prey to the memory of the eyes averted, and hand withdrawn.  ‘I’ll be exemplary when this is over,’ said she to herself, and at length her head nodded till she dropped into a giddy doze, whence with a chilly start she awoke, as the monotonous jog and bounce of the steamer were exchanged for a snort of arrival, among mysterious lanes of sparkling lights apparently rising from the waters.

She had slept just long enough to lose the lovely entrance of Dublin Bay, stiffen her limbs, and confuse her brains, and she stood still as the stream of passengers began to rush trampling by her, feeling bewildered and forlorn.  Her cousin’s voice was welcome, though over-loud and somewhat piteous.  ‘Where are you, stewardess? where’s the young lady?  Oh! Cilly, there you are.  To leave me alone all this time, and here’s the stewardess saying we must go ashore at once, or lose the train.  Oh! the luggage, and I’ve lost my plaid,’ and ghastly in the lamplight, limp and tottering, Rashe Charteris clasped her arm for support, and made her feel doubly savage and bewildered.  Her first movement was to enjoin silence, then to gaze about for the goods.  A gentleman took pity on the two ladies, and told them not to be deluded into trying to catch the train; there would be another in an hour’s time, and if they had any one to meet them, they would most easily be found where they were.

‘We have no one—we are alone,’ said Lucilla; and his chivalry was so far awakened that he handed them to the pier, and undertook to find their boxes.  Rashe was absolutely subdued, and hung shivering and helpless on her cousin, who felt as though dreaming in the strange scene of darkness made visible by the bright circles round the lamps, across which rapidly flitted the cloaked forms of travellers presiding over queer, wild, caricature-like shapes, each bending low under the weight of trunk or bag, in a procession like a magic lantern, save for the Babel of shrieks, cries, and expostulations everywhere in light or gloom.

A bell rang, an engine roared and rattled off.  ‘The train!’ sighed Horatia; ‘we shall have to stay here all night.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Lucy, ready to shake her; ‘there is another in an hour.  Stay quiet, do, or he will never find us.’

‘Porter, ma’am—porrterr—’

‘No, no, thank you,’ cried Lucilla, darting on her rod-case and carriage-bag to rescue them from a freckled countenance with claws attached.

‘We shall lose everything, Cilla; that’s your trusting to a stranger!’

‘All right; thank you!’ as she recognized her possessions, borne on various backs towards the station, whither the traveller escorted them, and where things looked more civilized.  Ratia began to resume her senses, though weak and hungry.  She was sorely discomfited at having to wait, and could not, like the seasoned voyagers, settle herself to repose on the long leathern couches of the waiting-room, but wandered, woebegone and impatient, scolding her cousin for choosing such an hour for their passage, for her desertion and general bad management.  The merry, good-natured Rashe had disappeared in the sea-sick, cross, and weary wight, whose sole solace was grumbling, but her dolefulness only made Lucilla more mirthful.  Here they were, and happen what would, it should only be ‘such fun.’  Recovered from the moment’s bewilderment, Lucy announced that she felt as if she were at a ball, and whispered a proposal of astonishing the natives by a polka in the great empty boarded space.  ‘The suggestion would immortalize us; come!’  And she threatened mischievously to seize the waist of the still giddy and aching-headed Horatia, who repulsed her with sufficient roughness and alarm to set her off laughing at having been supposed to be in earnest.